Re: System Restore Size....HDD

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denmarfl wrote:
Your reply was very helpful; Thanks

Reviewing the article at the link provided it also outlines having 2 Page Files to "speed up you PC"? Now this seems to work against moving the Page File to another HDD. I do have a 2nd Internal HDD (E:\).... so if a user were to use 2 Page Files, 1 would save on the C:\ the other on the E:\ file....wouldn't both page files be the same size...and therefore the issue that I am experiencing, that is, using up 3GB HHD space daily on Restore Points (Vista creates a "System Restore" point any day when no other activity creates a Restore point)....that issue would contine.....since both Page Files would be the same size and 1 would be on the C:\ drive?

I have not changed the Page File to my E:\ HDD as yet. The concern is, if I had to use a prior Restore Point, wouldn't that restore point need the Page File as part of it to restore my PC back to the Restore Point\Date selected and since the Page File would not be part of the restore Point....my PC might not restore properly?

"RalfG" wrote:

The pagefile (swapfile) grows as you use apps until it reaches its optimum size. That size is either the system managed default (about 3.4GB on mine currently) or some value that you assign manually yourself. I'm assuming that loading the apps you habitually use into the swap file likely causes the fast growth. That in itself isn't the big issue to me. What I don't understand is why pagefile.sys is included in System Restore points in the first place. Serves no practical use as far as I can see and it puts a huge hit on how many restore points can be created.

The default location of the paging file is on the system drive but you can set it to be on any of the existing partitions/drives. There are instructions for changing the paging file size in Windows Help and support. Just search Paging file in Help. Moving the file is done in the same place.

Instructions for moving the page file here:

http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/move-and-optimize-windows-vistas-paging-file/

or

-- If you want to change the size and/or move pagefile.sys:

Open the System applet in Control Panel
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on the Performance -Settings button
Click on the Advanced tab again
Click on the Change button in the Virtual Memory section
Uncheck "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives..."

Click on each drive that is listed in turn and change its page file settings to your preference, or select No Paging file for a particular drive. Click Set for each drive that you change.
On your system drive change the setting to No paging file and click Set. Enable a paging file on the drive of your choice. You can either select Custom size for for the page file (a range of sizes actually, min to max) or let the System manage the file size. When finished with the settings, reboot to initiate the changes.

After you're done and rebooted the paging file will be in the new location and System Restore will not be including it in any subsequent restore points. At that point I deleted all of my existing restore points that had the old stored page files from the system drive. (turn off System Restore to delete restore points, then re-enable System Restore)


"denmarfl" <denmarfl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:7E0D4A34-AACD-4BAA-B230-BE41BDCD7A24@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lets see if I understand, you moved the pagefile to another partition....so
it continues to serve its purpose and does not get saved with each restore
Point.

What causes this file to grew to such a large file, and, in my case, almost
overnight without me doing anything, ie, adding a new program, changes, etc?

It just seems to me, whatever has caused this file to grew to such a larger
size happened overnight and whatever it is that is included in the pagefile,
my PC ran fine for 20 months without it. Is there not a way to ID what
caused the file to grew so large?

Lastly, is there a link to provide step-by-step instructions to do what you
did?

"RalfG" wrote:

I had a similar symptom. System Restore was archiving the pagefile.sys file
(which had reached 3.6GB at the time) in every restore point. Moved the page
file to a non-monitored partition.

"denmarfl" <denmarfl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:450BFD97-B035-4225-93F4-215F7087C2AE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks; b=as I wrote in my original message, I was able to determine that
it
was the System restore points that were causing me to lose 3 to 4GB of HDD
space daily becuase when I turned off System restore, I regained a whole
lot
of space. However, the new restore points simply start again to be
created
in the same 3 to 4GB Size. I don't want to turn if off permanently, it a
resource I may need some day. The issue is, and I hope someone has the
answer, the PC is almost 2 yrs old and just about 3 weeks ago it started
to
save Restore points in this 3 to 4GB size, prior to that I could go a week
and not lose 1GB. I have not installed\chnaged or altered anything on my
PC
so that is not the reason for the large restore Files. Hopefully someone
knows what file ot files overnight grew so large as to cause the
abnormally
large size System Restore points on my PC....possibly that file(s) can be
altered or deleted...afterall, my PC ran fine for 24 mos.....without the
large File(s).

"Peter Foldes" wrote:

See the following
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_clear_system_restore_po.htm
--
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.

"denmarfl" <denmarfl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:79F3044D-23B0-49BA-A0BF-A66F89DCE518@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Vista Home Prem 32bit. Has anyone come up with what is causing System
Restore Points on a PC that has been running for almost 2 years where
Restore
points were Restore Points took 5 to 7 days to equal 1GB, and now
suddenly
over the past 3 weeks each restore Point is taking up 3 to 4GB of HDD
space
Daily? I know its System restore using up space, if I turn it off,
which
deletes all Points, I regain the Space lost....but the process than
starts
over again. There has to be a file(s) that grew in size in 1 day
causing
this......






I deleted all the old restore points immediately after moving the page file so that I wouldn't run into the issue of having my changes undone the moment I did a system restore with one of those old points. In my case the restore points were essentially redundant since none of them was more than 3 days old and all were essentially identical anyway. The whole point of the excercise was to free up the space that all those copies of pagefile.sys were consuming so that over time I could actually start creating a useful collection of restore points again rather than be limited by that handful of huge sized points which were only a few days old at most.

As far as I can tell the page file is irrelevent to the actual system restoration. I've only needed to do one system restore since moving pagefile.sys and that went smoothly. AFAIK the only useful data that the pagefile contains pertains to programs that are actually running in real time, the rest being essentially a cache of software that you are likely to be using during any given working session on the computer. There's nothing in it that I know of which pertains to the actual re-installation of the OS or software. The only slight benefit from including the pagefile in SR, as far as I can see, would be to have a ready to use intact cache matching the software as it exists in the newly restored sytem. The alternatives would be that either the non-restored pagefile might contain software that was removed from the system during the restoration or the pagefile might need to be recreated from scratch after a restoration. From my point of view neither of those two scenarios is as bad as being limited to 5 or 6 system restore points that might only be 2 or 3 day old duplicates of each other and wasting 20-30GB of SR harddrive space to hold them.

As far as concerns about using multiple page files, I think that amounts to a bit of a red herring as far as we are concerned. IINM neither of us knows enough about the workings of Windows WRT swapfile usage to make any worthwhile changes to the system default of letting Windows manage the pagefile. If it wasn't for the drive space issues affecting my system restore points I wouldn't even have bothered moving the pagefile to another drive, although the drive it is on now is slightly faster than the system drive so there is that benefit.

Splitting the single file into multiple parts might be useful if drive space is limited on your system drive (not able to create the optimum sized swapfile) or if for some reason you wanted an especially large swapfile. We could specify an arbitrary size for the pagefile, or pagefiles, but I think it would be largely a waste of time and effort for little or no real benefit. IMO system tweaks that save minutes of operating time are worthwhile doing, those that save imperceptible microseconds of data loading times aren't.
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