How in the Tech

Managing the space consumed by Windows 7 Backup and Restore

By Adam Myers ⋅ April 13, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Backup, Windows 7

Everyone by now knows that they need to be backing up the data that is most important to them. While Windows has provided the ability for users to schedule backups, it wasn’t exactly user-friendly or feature filled. Microsoft has given some attention to this critical system process in Windows 7, sprucing up the interface and generally smoothing out the complications. While still not heavy on features, Backup and Restore allows the user to set up a series of folders to backup, to which location, and how often. Bare-bones but better than nothing.

Unfortunately, the entire process can consume massive amounts of hard drive space – probably more than you realize if you rely on this process. You may have backups stored on the system that aren’t necessary for example; many home users have little need to restore the state of the digital family photos from 6 months ago – they are merely interested in the current conclusive state of their digital library.

If this sounds like you, here is how we can reclaim some of that space.

Initiate the Backup and Restore dialog by clicking Start and searching for backup restore.

Underneath the Backup section select Manage Space.

Here you see the data size of backups broken down by categories. To view the actual backup sets click View backups.

All the available backups on the system are listed by date and size. While you probably want to keep your most recent backup – Windows will prompt you to run a backup if you attempt to remove it – the older backups may not be worth keeping around. Deletion is as easy as highlighting the set in question and clicking Delete.

Windows System Images are snapshots of the Windows System typically taken daily or any time a critical change is made in Windows. This can be as simple as a software installation, to driver update, or even Windows Update. By default, Windows will allot up to 30% of the available disk space for imaging purposes; not an insubstantial bit by any measure! If you agree, you can instruct Windows to only keep the latest image by choosing Change Settings under System image.