Sun, 29 Jan 2006 01:33:00
Holy bloat Batman!
Xp users, listen up. Running out of space on your main system drive? I have over a terabyte of disk space, but my main C:\ drive is a 74GB Raptor drive, so space is at a premium. I just found 24 GIGABYTES of space. Where’d I find it?
System Restore.
If you have it enabled, you are not getting your money’s worth out of your hard drive. Now, I don’t suggest turning it off: I have salvaged a system more than once using System Restore. However, I do recommend manually cleaning it out every now and again.
Open Windows Explorer, right-click on your system drive and click “Properties.” Click the button labeled “Disk Cleanup.” After it calculates for a moment, click the “More Options” tab and look for the System Restore section at the bottom of that tab. Clicking “Clean up” will remove all System Restore points except the most recent one. If you have not installed anything in the last 48-72 hours, this is perfectly safe. Kill it all. If you have installed anything new recently...wait a few days then run the clean up.
24GB on a 74GB drive was a HUGE reclamation of space for me. While I was there, I went to the previous “Disk Cleanup” tab and removed old files. Saved another gig and a half.
This is pretty basic stuff, sure, but I don’t consider myself a casual user...I am very definitely a “power user” and I forgot completely that System Restore was eating my drive space. Check it out on your XP system...see what you can reclaim.
Why did I do this, by the way? Because I was down to 4GB of free space. Sure, my Games folder is 32.44GB...what’s your point? You think I’m uninstalling GTA:SA or Doom or Halflife2 (or the other 54678 games Steam gives you when you buy the big HL2 package)? No frigging way. ;)
Posted by JimK at 01:33 AM on January 29, 2006
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology)
Tags:
Technorati: Windows XP System Restore
Comments:
#2 Posted by davidst 
on 01/30 at 02:10 AM -
I turned mine off ages ago! Didn’t realize they could get *that* big though.
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#1 Posted by hephaestussum
on 01/29 at 07:39 AM -
I successfully recovered about 3 gigs of my hard drive. Of course, it still had 87 gigs free anyway. I’m one to keep my hard drive clean. It makes for faster operating.