Lost hard drive space after Vista defrag?

[carl allison]

how can you lose hard drive space after you defrag your computer attempting to increase your space and not lose it?

 

[ksiemb]

how can you lose hard drive space after you defrag your computer attempting to increase your space and not lose it?

Disk Defragmenter is a tool that rearranges the data on your hard disk and reunites fragmented files so your computer can run more efficiently.

Your lost disk space is probably allocated to the shadow copy System restore points, which by default takes up to 15 % of the total capacity of hard drive.

Deleting some system restore points will not give disk space back as windows permanently assigns some hard drive space for system restore, you can reduce the disk space assigned for system restore, try the below steps.

1. Click the start menu
2. Click on All Programs, and then Accessories
3. From the accessories menu, right click on Command Prompt and select "run as administrator"
4. Type vssadmin list shadowstorage into the command prompt
5. The results should tell you the amount of storage used and the maximum amount allotted
1. Type vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=[your hard disk]: /On=[your hard disk]: /MaxSize=[how much space you want to allocate]
2. For example: "vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=2GB"
3. You should get a message saying successfully resized the shadow copy storage association, and you should have more free space on your hard drive.
The disk defragmentation might have taken up hard drive space if there are errors on the drive.

You may run a scan disk command to remove the bad sectors from the hard drive and then run disk cleanup and check if it works.

 

[carl allison]

Best answer selected by carl allison.

 

[carl allison]

great answer to a puzzling problem. I need your computer savvy to help me solve another nagging problem i have in itunes i cannot eject my ipod because metadata never index is popping up from nowhere and i cannot dislodge my ipod from the eject selection

 

[ksiemb]

great answer to a puzzling problem. I need your computer savvy to help me solve another nagging problem i have in itunes i cannot eject my ipod because metadata never index is popping up from nowhere and i cannot dislodge my ipod from the eject selection

Please start a new thread, as this has nothing to do with the original.

 

[MarylinC]

Hi,

I just signed up to say big thanks to ksiemb for your answer above. I bought an additional 3TB internal drive less than 6 months back and the space just seemed to be disappearing for no obvious reason. I'd never heard of ShadowStorage before.

I hadn't defraged this drive since I bought it and thought it was well overdue but when I did my free space started to really drop. After googling the problem I found this and after I followed the instructions I instantly went from having 40GB free space to 720GB of free space.

Thank you so much!

 

[huciosang]

how can you lose hard drive space after you defrag your computer attempting to increase your space and not lose it?

Disk Defragmenter is a tool that rearranges the data on your hard disk and reunites fragmented files so your computer can run more efficiently.

Your lost disk space is probably allocated to the shadow copy System restore points, which by default takes up to 15 % of the total capacity of hard drive.

Deleting some system restore points will not give disk space back as windows permanently assigns some hard drive space for system restore, you can reduce the disk space assigned for system restore, try the below steps.

1. Click the start menu
2. Click on All Programs, and then Accessories
3. From the accessories menu, right click on Command Prompt and select "run as administrator"
4. Type vssadmin list shadowstorage into the command prompt
5. The results should tell you the amount of storage used and the maximum amount allotted
1. Type vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=[your hard disk]: /On=[your hard disk]: /MaxSize=[how much space you want to allocate]
2. For example: "vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=2GB"
3. You should get a message saying successfully resized the shadow copy storage association, and you should have more free space on your hard drive.
The disk defragmentation might have taken up hard drive space if there are errors on the drive.

You may run a scan disk command to remove the bad sectors from the hard drive and then run disk cleanup and check if it works.

Thank you so much!