Windows 10

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Configure Restore Points

You reviewed how to enable System Restore earlier in this tutorial. You also need to make sure you understand how to configure the amount of disk space that restore points occupy and how to remove old restore points manually to recover disk space.

The Recovery item in Control Panel contains the advanced recovery tools. Configure System Restore enables you to perform the several tasks relating to restore points that this section covers in more detail.

Change restore settings

On the System Protection tab of System Properties, if you have administrative privileges, you can modify the protection settings for your system.

Most users configure just the system drive for system protection. If you use additional drive volumes and store any data on them, consider using system protection for these drives also. The system protection feature helps prevent permanent data loss when you accidentally change or delete files, or files become corrupted.

To modify the drives that you currently protect using restore points, follow these steps.

1. Open Control Panel and click Recovery.
2. Click Configure System Restore.
3. If prompted by UAC, click Yes.
4. Under Protection Settings, select the drive on which you want to modify protection and click Configure.
5. In Restore Settings, you can select Turn On or Disable System Protection.
6. Click OK.

Manage disk space

With system protection enabled, your computer regularly creates and saves restore points containing your computer's system files and settings. Even if you do not perform any significant system events, such as install software or upgrade a device driver, a restore point is created automatically. A scheduled task every seven days creates a restore point if no restore point was created during the past week. You can create restore points manually, but this is unlikely to be practical for most users.

For each drive that you want to use system protection, you can adjust the maximum disk space reserved for the feature. Over time, this allocation will be consumed. When the space is full, older restore points are automatically deleted to make room for new ones.

To resize the maximum storage space that system protection uses for a drive, sign in as an administrator and follow these steps.

1. Open Control Panel and click Recovery.
2. Click the Configure System Restore link.
3. If prompted by UAC, click Yes.
4. Under Protection Settings, select the drive and click Configure.
5. In Disk Space Usage, adjust the Max Usage slider to the percentage of the total drive that you want to allocate and click OK.

To perform the same process by using the command prompt, use the vssadmin command-line tool as detailed in these steps.

1. Right-click Start and select Command Prompt (Admin); accept UAC.
2. To show you the current maximum usage size for all drives that use system protection, type vssadmin list shadowstorage and press Enter.
3. To resize the space allocated for system protection to 5 percent of the total volume size, type vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=C: /on=C: /maxsize=5% and press Enter.
4. Close the command prompt.

Note: Specify the Unit Measurement
For the disk space size, you can use either a percentage of the drive or one of the following units: KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, or EB. If you do not specify a unit, the value defaults to bytes.

Create or delete restore points

You have reviewed how restore points are created both manually and automatically. To create a restore point manually, you must have administrator privileges. When you create a restore point, the feature creates a restore point that includes all drives that are protected.

If you find that not many restore points are available, you can increase the space used for system protection.

Note: Safe Mode
You cannot create a restore point if you started Windows 10 in Safe Mode.

To view the amount of space that system protection currently uses, you can use the vssadmin list shadowstorage command within an elevated command prompt or view the Current Usage amount in the System Protection For Local Disk dialog box. This usage information is reported on a per volume basis.

If you want to delete all restore points for a specific volume, click Delete in the System Protection For Local Disk (C:) dialog box. After you click Delete, you receive a warning message that you cannot undo the deletion. After it is deleted, the current drive usage for the selected drive is zero.

Another method of removing restore points is to use the Disk Cleanup feature, which removes all restore points except the most recently created one. In Disk Cleanup, click the More Options tab and choose Clean Up in System Restore And Shadow Copies.

Note: Turn off System Protection
If you turn off system protection on a disk, all restore points are immediately deleted from that disk.

You can remove all or selected restore points from the command prompt, using the vssadmin command. You need to use an elevated command prompt to use this feature.

When you use the vssadmin command-line tool, you see for each restore point the volume drive letter and a Shadow Copy ID number. This ID number is useful if you need to delete specific restore points. Examples using the vssadmin command-line tool to delete restore points are shown in Table below.

Command Line 			Description
vssadmin list shadows		List restore points are currently 
				stored on all drivers.

vssadmin delete 		This deletes all restore points
shadows /all			on all drivers.

vssadmin delete shadows 	This deletes all restore points
/all /quiet			on all drivers without confirmation.

vssadmin delete shadows 	Delete All Restore Points On C: Drive.
/For=C: /all

vssadmin delete shadows 	Delete Oldest Restore Points On C: Drive.
/For=C: /oldest

vssadmin delete shadows 	Delete Oldest Restore Points, using Shadow Copy ID.
/Shadow={3e6d99a8-4242-4a29-abcd-9887cd8aa911)