If you are making good use of the system restore feature in Windows, then you realize that all the restore points are taking up a lot of storage space in your hard disk. The good thing is you can easily delete system restore points as needed to gain back lost space.
Delete All Old System Restore Points at Once
Windows provides an option to quickly delete all but recent restore points. However, this option is buried deep and you may not find it unless you know where to look.
To delete all old restore points, search for “Disk Cleanup” in the Start menu and open it.
The above action will open the Disk Cleanup utility. Select “Primary (C:)” from the drop-down menu and click on the “OK” button.
Click on the “Clean up system files” button. Since the restore points are system files, you cannot see them unless you choose to clean up the system files.
This action will re-open the cleanup wizard. Select the C drive and click on the “OK” button.
You will see a new “More Options” tab in the window. Navigate to the new tab and click on the “Clean up” button under “System Restore and Shadow Copies” section.
In the confirmation window, click on the “Delete” button. As soon as you do, Windows will delete all the old restore points while keeping the recent ones.
Delete Old System Restore Points Individually
If you’d rather pick and choose which restore points to delete, you can do that too. Since Windows has no specific option to delete individual restore points, we are going to use a free and lightweight third-party tool called System Restore Explorer. Download and install it like any other software.
After installing, launch it by searching for it in the Start menu. As soon as you launch it you will see all restore points. By default, the software will hide the restore points created in the last five days. If you want to see them, uncheck the “Hide restore points created in the last 5 days” checkbox.
The good thing about this software is that you can mount the restore points and see what’s in them. It’s very useful if you want to recover files or folders. To mount a restore point, select it from the list and click on the “Mount” button.
The above action will mount the restore point and open it in the File Explorer. You can explore it like any other drive or folder.
Once you are done with that, click on the “Unmount” button to unmount the mounted restore point.
To delete a restore point, simply select it from the list and click on the “Delete” button.
Click on the “Yes” button in the confirmation window and you are done.
As you can see from the below image, deleting a restore point freed up around 5Gb of space.
Alternatively, if you are using CCleaner then you don’t have to install any other software. Open CCleaner with admin rights and navigate to “Tools -> System Restore.” Here you can select and delete any individual restore points as needed. However, you will miss the “Mount” feature provided by System Restore Explorer.
Do comment below sharing your thoughts and experiences about using the above methods to delete old restore points in Windows.
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System restore point feature has been part of Windows operating system for a long time. The feature allows you to quickly restore your Windows PC to an earlier date without losing your personal files. For instance, if your PC starts acting up today, you can restore your PC to a previous date (when your PC was working well) to fix all issues under 10 minutes.
Depending on the disk space allocated to the restore point feature and number of restore points created, the system restore point feature might be consuming few hundred MBs to GBs of disk space on your PC.
If your PC is running out of free disk space, you might want to delete all or specific old restore points to free up disk space on Windows 10 PC.
Like its predecessors, Windows 10 also includes options to delete all restore points and delete all but the most recent restore point. If you want to delete individual restore points, you need to use free third-party utilities.
WARNING: While deleting restore points is safe, remember that you won’t be able to restore your PC to an earlier date. We suggest you delete all restore points only when your PC is running out of disk space.
Refer to the given below directions to figure out how to delete restore points in Windows 10.
Method 1 of 3
Delete all restore points in Windows 10
To delete individual restore points, refer to the directions in Method 3 of this article.
Step 1: Type Sysdm.cpl in the Start/taskbar search field and then press Enter to open System Properties dialog.
Step 2: Switch to the System Protection tab. In the Protection Settings section, select a drive, and then click Configure button. Please note that restore point feature is separate for all drives on your PC.
Step 3: Finally, in the Disk Space Usage section, click the Delete button. Click Continue button when you see the warning dialog to continue deleting all restore points for the selected drive.
Now, to delete restore points from all drives, please repeat step 2 and step 3 again.
NOTE: As you can see in the picture, you can reduce the disk space allocated to the system restore feature.
After deleting all restore points, we recommend you create a new restore point so that you can restore your PC to the current date if and when required.
Method 2 of 3
Delete all but the most recent restore point in Windows 10
An option in Windows 10 and earlier versions allows you to delete old restore points but keep the most recent restore point.
Please refer to our how to delete all but most recent restore point guide to delete all restore points but the keep the most recent one.
Method 3 of 3
Delete individual restore points in Windows 10
There may be times when you want to delete specific restore points rather than deleting all restore points. Although there is no provision in Windows 10 to delete select restore points, you can use third-party tools to delete specific restore points.
Restore Point Creator is a free utility designed to help Windows users to manage system restore points, including deleting individual restore points. The program is easy to use and is fully compatible with Windows 10. Download, install, run, select a restore point to delete and then click Delete Selected Restore Point button.
Windows computer running out of hard disk space even after clearing out the temporary folder and other junk files? This can Cause by number of old System Restore point Copies. lowering the disk space allotted to System Restore, delete the System Restore snapshots which includes previous versions of files or Upgrading the hard disk is the ultimate solution though. This post we discuss How To Delete System Restore points to save and free up disk spaces.
Post Contents :-
About System Restore feature
I hope you are very well about Widows system Restore point Feature. For them who don’t aware about the feature, In Windows operating system, System restore point is a very Helpful Feature that creates snapshots of certain files and information before critical operations such as updates or software installations takes place. If After perform any certain action you face deep problem then you can get back setting into the earlier date without losing any personal data by perform System Restore.
WARNING: While deleting restore points is safe, remember that you won’t be able to restore your PC to an earlier date. We suggest you delete all restore points only when your PC is running out of disk space.
Delete Old System Restore Points In Windows 10
System Restore Is Very Helpful to get rid of different problems by revert back to previous version, But The feature will occupy MB or GB space for their restore point on their computer PC. Whether your computer PC running out without disk space, you can choose to delete all or particular restore files to make free disk space on your Windows computer.
Note : Bellow points are applicable to All Windows Version include windows 10/8. and 7.
Delete all restore points in Windows 10
Press Win + R, Type Sysdm.cpl and hit enter key to open system properties then click on system protection. Or you can open Control panel -> System and Security > System and click on System protection.
Next under Protection Settings, select the System Disk and then click Configure As Shown Bellow image.
Finally, Under the Disk Space Usage section, click the Delete button. Click Continue button when you see the warning dialog to continue deleting all restore points for the selected drive. ( Note : This includes system settings and previous versions of files )
After deleting all Old restore points, we recommend To create a new restore point so that you can restore your PC to the current date if and when required.
Delete Restore Point Using Disk Cleanup
Also you Can Delete All System Restore points and Shadow Copies using Advanced Disk Cleanup Tool. Open This pc, Right Click on System Drive select properties. Under General Tab click on Disk Cleanup, Select the System Drive ( C:) then Ok. This Will Start cleaning process for Junk, Cache, System Error files. After that click on Cleanup System Files.
Again Select C: Drive the Let Windows To perform Advanced Cleanup. Then After this will Represent the Cleanup Window- Move to More Options Tab and Click on Clean Up Under System Restore and Shadow Copies As shown Bellow image.
Deleting a particular Restore Point
Also Windows allows you to delete a particular restore point using the
Vssadmin.exe console tool. For This you must have to open Command prompt as administrator Then Type vssadmin list shadows and hit enter key. This will display all available restore points list.
Now To delete a specific restore point, Copy The Shadow copy ID, Then type the following command:
vssadmin delete shadows /Shadow={shadow copy ID} Best king of the hill episodes ever.
Here Replace {shadow copy ID} portion with the appropriate value which you copied previously.
vssadmin delete shadows /Shadow={a60b1082-8e7e-4bf3-bc60-0acc331ead32}
Delete System Restore point using CCleaner
Also you Can Delete A specific Restore point of All Restore points with one click using Third party Free Utility Like CCleaner. Simply Download & install CCleaner then Open The application navigate to “Tools -> System Restore.” Here you can select and delete any individual restore points as needed.
I hope Above Steps helpful to Delete System Restore points or Cleanup Individual Restore point to Free up Disk Space on Widows computer. While Perform This action face any difficulty, Have any query or suggestion Feel Free to discuss on Comments bellow. Also Read Fix Disk Errors with Check Disk Utility(CHKDSK).
I have occupied 25 gb space of c drive for system resore point. and system automatically created 5 restore point and delete privous resore points. but i want to keep very 1st resore point and last 4 i dont't want. but windows don't allow to remove individual resore point. it only give option to delete every created resore point. Is it any ways to delete specific resore point?
fixer1234
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Akshay PethaniAkshay Pethani
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4 Answers
You can use newer version of Ccleaner. In this you can delete individual restore points. RogUE
Screenshot:
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user474716
To Delete all system restore points but keep the most recent one - do the following:
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Use C:WindowsSystem32vssadmin.exe it's self documenting: vssadmin /?
List your restore points:vssadmin list shadows
In the list note the Shadow Copy ID for the restore point you want to delete: Shadow Copy ID: {aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee}
Delete the restore point:vssadmin delete shadows /shadow={aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee}
Remove System Restore Point In Windows 7
If you only want to delete the oldest one:vssadmin delete shadows /for=C: /oldest
In your case you'd have to manually delete them by the id in order to leave the oldest intact. I don't know if vssadmin is available on all versions of Windows but at least on Pro versions.
Warning: also backups made with Windows backup and possibly other programs are created as shadow copies. I don't know what happens if you delete such.
kilves76kilves76
System Restore
Am i missing something? What the OP wants is indeed possible. The Answer of Kilves76 is really good but just a taste of what you can do, with care and clear thought.
Go here:
The site says it's for IT professionals, which is why i mentioned 'clear thought'. But what i found is clear enough to make me go to DOS by running COMMAND.exe as administrator and issue the command
to get Help, which gives a list of 7 commands. Then similarly get help with each of the commands by adding '/?' after each.
Take notes by copying all the help info into a text file, read, and say, 'That's easy enough' and have at it carefully. Or say, 'Uhhhh-uhuhh' and get the heck out of there!
(I can almost see an outline of a batch file to make mass deletions easier. But i always think that and usually find implementation a large pain or exercise in futility.)
EDITA few days ago I said that I may post my notes. Here they are:
Other commands (read about them and more at the link at the top of this Answer):
VSSADMIN LIST PROVIDERS and VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS
DSlomer64DSlomer64
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