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Toward a Better Computing Experience |
Neil Stahfest, Vice President, Tacoma Area PC User Group, Washington November 2010 issue, the Data Line NCStahfest (at) msn.com www.tapcug.org |
A few months ago, while discussing Windows 7 System Restore, I mentioned that there is a limit to the number of Restore Points that Windows will save. Restore Points are created every time there is a Windows 7 update so, generally speaking, at least one new Restore Point is created every week. It is possible that when you discover the need to use a Restore Point it will be too late to go back to the point you want.
Microsoft says that at least three to five percent of each disk should be reserved for Restore Points. As it happens, Microsoft has given us a way to control the amount of space reserved for Restore Points. All you have to do is click on the Start button, then right click on Computer and then left click on Properties. Now left click on System protection and you’ll see the System Properties window.
In the Protection Settings area you’ll see all the hard drives in your computer and whether or not Protection, System Restore, is enabled. In the example on the right, Protection is enabled for drive C but turned off for drives D and E. You can click on a drive, high lighting it, and then click on the Configure button.
When you click on the Configure button you open the System protection window. As you can see, in this new window, under Restore Settings you can choose what kind of information is saved in Restore Points, setting and previous versions of files or just previous versions of files. Or you can turn off Restore Points all together. Under Disk Space Usage you can use a slider to set the amount of space reserved for Restore Points and delete all previously saved Restore Points.
While we’re on the topic of saving and restoring, this might be a good time to talk about the Windows Recycle Bin. Periodically I guess all of us delete files and folders that we “think” we don’t need. Deleting files and folders is a two step process. When you click on “Delete” they go to the Recycle Bin. At that point they appear to be gone but they are not really deleted. If you check the amount of used space on your hard drive you won’t see any change. It is not until you empty the Recycle Bin that they are really gone. This gives you a chance to get restore deleted files and folders if you suddenly realize that you accidently deleted something that you need or simply change your mind. In that case, you simply double left-click on the Recycle Bin. After selecting the files or folders that you want to undelete with one left-click, just click on Restore all items (circled in red). Instantly the files or folders are back where they were before you deleted them.
Of course, just like your hard drive, the Recycle Bin is space limited. Typically 10% of your hard drive space is reserved for the Recycle Bin. If you don’t periodically empty the Recycle Bin it will eventually get full. At that point the oldest files will be deleted to make space for the newest deleted files.
After some thought, you may decide that the Recycle Bin is too large and wasting your hard drive space. After all, 10% of a 500 GB hard drive is 50 GB. You may need some of that space for something else. On the other hand, if you have a 160 GB hard drive a 16 GB Recycle Bin may seem too small. Fortunately, Windows gives you a way to change the size of your Recycle Bin.
All you need to do is to right-click on the Recycle Bin and then left-click on “Properties”. There is a separate Recycle Bin for every hard drive or hard drive partition that you have. As you can see in the example, under “Settings for selected location” you can control the size of the Recycle Bin. You also have an option to delete the Recycle Bin function as well as an option to delete the confirmation dialog when you delete files.