How does "Rescue and Recovery" decide how much disk to use ?

[southof40]

I've got a four year old T61 running Vista Ultimate that nominally has 145GB of disk but only 97GB is visible to me (when I run WinDirStat over the C: (and only) drive).

I'm assuming the rest of the disk is used by "Rescue and Recovery" (although it's not clear to me how I could check this - I've tried using the Blue Button on boot and I couldn't find an option in there to tell me how much was being used by RandR.)

I'm soon to buy another ThinkPad. I'd like to know how much disk I need to buy if I want to end up with, say, 500 Gb . Based on what's happening here I could order 500Gb and, after a little while, end up with significantly less for my own use.

Is there some sort of proportion "Rescue and Recovery" uses or does it just use up space until you're down to z% free space ?

I'm not anti RandR but I'd like to be in control of my disk (or at least know how much I will be in control of !)

[RealBlackStuff]

R&R itself uses up no more than 10GB, depending on laptop model..
But if you also use R&R for backups, that space can quickly increase and eventually swallow up all the free space on the hard drive!
Problem with recovery partitions is, that they include all the space-wasting crud and bloatware, plus they are already outdated as soon as they are put on the drive!
Not to mention that they are already space-wasters themselves...
A set of recovery CDs instead of an R&R partition makes more sense.
An then use a proper backup-program, and store your backup data on an external disk.
The currently largest available 2.5" laptop HD is 1TB.

[southof40]

Thanks for your reply and I take your point about alternative backup approaches (although I have to say I didn't 'turn on' RandR it was only after some time I discovered that it was actually doing what it does).

Having said that maybe you could offer some clarification to your statement about "eventually swallow up all the free space on the hard drive" ?

For the last year the amount of free space on my disk has been more or less the same (and nothing I've been doing would have been causing a significant net loss). This seems to indicate that one of the following is true :

• My analysis of what's taken the missing 50Gb is incorrect and none of this is related to RandR
• RandR has stopped making backups altogether for some reason
• RandR has continued to make backups but is smart enough to throw away old ones so that I'm still left with some free space

If the last option is true I'd be interested to know what approach it does use (even though I appreciate your basic point that there are alternative, and perhaps better, ways of doing this stuff in the first place) so that if I decide to continue using it I can plan my disk purchases accordingly.

While I'm here I read a reference to being able to move the backups created by RandR off to an external disk via the RandR utility. Is that correct ? If so how is it done (I had a dig around the RandR utility and couldn't see anything obvious).

regards

Richard.

[RealBlackStuff]

Hopefully someone else will chime in here.
I don't use R&R at all and never have.

I take regular images of my drives, and store them on a 2TB external HD, using Acronis TrueImage (currently: Home 2012).
Also do almost daily backups from my email and documents folders.
I have yet to come across a crashed drive, but I have backups if required.

[at both ends]

The problem is unlikely to be RnR and very likely to be Windows. Ever since XP, Windows grabs 15% of the disk by default for its own rescue ops using "restore points". My most recent tower purchase a few years ago came with a nominally 640GB drive. I had quite a time figuring why there was less than 500GB available.

You lose a little because of the difference between GB and GiB. You lose a little for the manufacturer's "put it back as it was from the factory" partition. Then Windows hides 15% of what's left, in that case close to 100GB. Then the installer grabs 25-30GB for Windows itself, and a bunch more for bloatware.

A 15% "contingency" is crazy in the day of 500GB+ hard drives. Cut it down the first time you turn the machine on. See e.g. http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-ch ... -vssadmin/

[southof40]

@RealBlackStuff : thanks for your reply. I do something similar but, because I couldn't find much high level information about RandR, decided to just let it keep running. A part of TP's I like is the whole BlueButton thing and, without knowing much about it, thought it might be best to leavel RandR alone for those purposes.

@atbothends: Thanks for your post. I was completely unaware of that. I ran the utiltity and it turns out that Shadow Copies are using 18Gb. The path mentioned for the storage location is :

Code: Select all

(C:)\\?\Volume{2cbfa54a-66ce-11dd-a703-806e6f6e6963}\

(the question mark shown is in my original and not an attempt at obfuscation) so I think when I do my WindirStat of of the C: drive that 18Gb may be in the 'visible' 97Gb (I run WindirStat as Administrator) so while it would be nice to have that back it doesn't form part of the 'missing' 48Gb. Along similar lines you refer to a "put it back as it was from the factory" partition but for ThinkPads isn't that RandR is managing ?


Anyway thanks to you both for your replies and if you or anyone else can tell me how I can view what RandR has saved I'd be very interested to hear.

[RealBlackStuff]

Hit Start/Run, type in: diskmgmt.msc and hit enter.
This only works if your Explorer shows hidden and system files.

[Rockrz]

Anybody know of a good utility to disable this or at least limit the size Windows takes up for restore purposes?

I use Acronis and have no need for Windows restore as it has proven unreliable... I'm not even gonna bother with it since I don't need it.

[RealBlackStuff]

You can completely disable it in Device Manager.

[Rockrz]

You don't say... k00L... I figured Bill would have rigged that up where it was not able to be disabled.

OK, so how do you get back the hard drive space it took away since this is going to be disabled?

[RealBlackStuff]

reboot after Restore is OFF.

[Rockrz]

Excellent... I knew that! I was just checkin you guys out... you got it going on!

Just kiddin... I'm actually surprised that it's that easy tho

Thanks for the tip... I'm off to turn this off...