Windows Vista has a unique feature known as a shadow storage service. It uses this to allocate storage space for it’s System Restore feature. The problem with this feature is that by default, it is almost always set to it’s maximum value (on my system this was 19.45GB!). During the lifetime of your laptop the chances are you’ll need to use System restore at least a few times, but if you’ve owned your laptop or PC for more than a few months or even years – are you really going to need to revert back to a config from that long ago?. Chances are – the answer is no. Using the following steps I reclaimed back 7GB of storage space on my C:\ drive so I definitely think it’s worth checking out!.

1. First of all, go into Start>Computer, Local Disk (C:) then you’ll see the available disk space you have left on your Windows Vista desktop/notebook computer.

2. You might notice that the free hard drive space has been lowering for no known reason (eg: you haven’t even been installing new programs and software). Or you might just like to free up some of your currently used space for better performance.

3. Now go into Start>All Programs>Accessories>Command Prompt (make sure you right click on Command Prompt first, and select “Run as administrator”). You will be able to review your “Shadow Storage” – unique to Windows Vista for working with “System Restore” (see Tips).

4. To find out how much hard drive space is being used by Shadow Storage, type in carefully the following:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

5. Then press Enter/Return. Command Prompt will show the allocated space towards Shadow Storage. This can be reduced to allow more free hard drive space, but see Tips first for more info.

To reclaim your storage space…

1. Exit the program and follow Step 3 again. In order to reduce the Shadow Storage  type in:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=1.0GB
(here add the maximum space you will allow for Shadow Sorage, example: 2.0GB)

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