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Space-hogs on your system: System Restore and the Recycle
Bin.
The two worst space-hogs on your system: System Restore and
the Recycle Bin. For example, on its own, the Recycle Bin will
take 10% of your hard drive space, an insane waste of space on
today's huge drives. The Recycle Bin should be sized to hold
either the largest files you're likely to have on your system;
or a typical day's worth of deletions; or some other rational
amount. Start with the Bin sized at just 2%-3% of the hard drive
total, and adjust up or down from there after several day's
operation, if necessary. You can adjust the Recycle Bin's size
by right clicking on its icon, and selecting Properties.
Similarly, System Restore will consume huge amounts of disk
space, if you let it. The space might be worthwhile if System
Restore were a truly complete and foolproof form of backup, but
it's not. At best, System Restore can and will get the core
operating system running again after a bad crash, but it doesn't
return all files to the pre-trouble state, and it can't remove
all traces of a program that went bad. As a result, System
Restore's usefulness is limited, and so should be its appetite
for disk space:
Right click on My Computer, select Properties, and select the
System Restore tab. Select your main drive (usually C:), click
Settings, and move the slider to reserve a reasonable amount of
disk space.
If you have more than one drive, you may wish to turn off System
Restore entirely for non-system drives. There's little, if any,
benefit to be gained by having them monitored. And if you're
really religious about making a full backup before you alter
your system or install new software, you may wish to completely
turn off System Restore for all drives. |