pc-tecky Posted October 13, 2008 Share Posted October 13, 2008 I'm confused as Scanner by Steffan Gerlach shows 53 GB used /91GB free (of 144 GB) on Vista, whereas Vista only shows 9 GB free. Where have all the command line tools gone? Is this a problem with VSS (volume system shadow), the registry, or something else?I'll try the VSS trick mentioned on other sites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tushman Posted October 13, 2008 Share Posted October 13, 2008 I'm confused as Scanner by Steffan Gerlach shows 53 GB used /91GB free (of 144 GB) on Vista, whereas Vista only shows 9 GB free. Where have all the command line tools gone? Is this a problem with VSS (volume system shadow), the registry, or something else?I'll try the VSS trick mentioned on other sites.Use the disk management snapin console. At the run command line type the following without the quotes:"diskmgmt.msc" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted October 13, 2008 Share Posted October 13, 2008 I'd also run chkdsk on the volume. You could have corruption causing an incorrect reading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc-tecky Posted October 14, 2008 Author Share Posted October 14, 2008 The disk management snap-in module, chkdsk, amd windows explorer all display the same results. More to follow, once I find those commands for VSS again... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kkehoe Posted October 14, 2008 Share Posted October 14, 2008 Windows does account for the space used by restore points and shadow copies whereas this utility does not appear to do that. I ran it on my machine and the numbers were out by about 15GB. I got them to be almost equal after deleting all but my most recent restore point.I would tend to go with what the operating system tells you because, right or wrong, that's the one that's gonna matter. That said, your discrepancy seems a bit large to be just restore points so further investigation might be required. If you don't need them, I would try dumping the restore points and see what that does to the numbers.Kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tushman Posted October 15, 2008 Share Posted October 15, 2008 (edited) The disk management snap-in module, chkdsk, amd windows explorer all display the same results. More to follow, once I find those commands for VSS again...The volume shadow copy takes up a maximum of 15% of the total drive capacity by default. Going by the data you provided in your original post, 15% usage of a 150 GB hard drive should give you about 22.5GB. I don't think the VSS (in your case) is responsible for the large discrepancy. The "Scanner" software you used shows 91 GB free and yet Vista only shows 9 GB? That's a 82 GB discrepancy! Even if vss was partly to blame it can only account for 22.5 GB of that huge discrepancy.Try using Space Monger to see what specific file (and directories) are taking up your space. There is a 30-day trial available.http://www.sixty-five.cc/download/By the way, you can change the maximum value of the vss mentioned above by using the following example.1) Open up the command prompt with admin privileges.2) Type the following:vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=500MBThe /For switch is for which drive the OS is loaded on.The /On switch is used for which drive the restore points reside on.The /MaxSize switch is to set the limit. 100 MB, 200 MB etc.Do not shrink the maximum size down too small - for it will limit the number of restore points you can store on your computer. Edited October 15, 2008 by Tushman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc-tecky Posted October 15, 2008 Author Share Posted October 15, 2008 (edited) Temporarily disabling VSS/system restore did increase the free space to 28GB. As soon as I re-enabled VSS/system restore the free space went right back to ~9GB, after running the VSS command, the drive now has ~6GB of free space. Something is broken in that VSS/system restore does not abide by the maximum threshold as set by the user.How can I effectively remove any prior restore points from this system? Edited October 15, 2008 by pc-tecky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc-tecky Posted October 15, 2008 Author Share Posted October 15, 2008 (edited) This is so maddenningly crazy, and it makes no sense. The math still doesn't seam to add up either, but at least it's a little better now. So this system dropped down to ~6GB of free space and then, with the time between posts, jumped to ~24GB of free space. All I did after running the VSS command was to let it sit as I moved on to other things. I tell you, it's simply got to be pure madness, it crazy madness. And it still doesn't make any sense! Scary, ~67GB is unscannable according to the trail of SpaceMonger. So who or what is using up all of this space?A new question:Does a system with 4GB of ram still need a page file? If not, that would certainly free up more space. Edited October 15, 2008 by pc-tecky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.