After playing around with Vista for a few months, I noticed that it is slowly eating up my hard drive space - and I couldn’t figure out where it is all going. A quick Google search made me realize that it uses a lot of gigabytes for ‘System Restore’. I rarely ever use this so it is really unnecessary for Vista to take 15+ GB for it - in my case. Here is what you can do to check how much space Vista is using for System Restore and to decrease it.

To check how much space is being used, go to command prompt with administrator privileges:

1. Click Start - All Programs - Accessories. Right click on ‘Command Prompt’ and click ‘Run as Administrator’.
2. Type the following in the command prompt:vssadmin list shadowstorage The results shown will be similar to this:

   Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 2.702 GB
   Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 2.933 GB
   Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 5 GB

3. If you feel like Vista is taking up too much space, then use this command to lower it:vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=[Drive Letter]: /For=[Drive Letter]: /Maxsize=[space]For example, I executed this command to lower it to 2GB:

   vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=2GB

This saved me more than 10 gigabytes, which I can use to store more essential files on the hard drive.

Source: Watching The Net

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Today, practically everyone has a CD/DVD burner which they use to record their favorite media. Therefore, its getting increasingly harder to keep all of the CD’s organized in one place. Here are some tips that you can use to keep yourself organized with all those CD’s everywhere:

1. Purchase Slim Jewel Cases

They are cheap and can save you a lot of time by keeping all the cd’s in one spot.

You can even differentiate the cases by color. For example, keep all your music in the green jewel case, movies in the red, games in the blue, and so on.

2. Label Everything!

Make sure to label every Jewel Case and CD that you have. Did you ever find 10 cd’s lying around in your drawer without knowing what each one is?

Don’t waste your time by having to place each CD inside your computer to figure out what’s inside. Think Ahead! Label your cd’s and cases.

3. Store The Cases Efficiently

If you have any CD’s which you constantly use, keep them nearby your desk for easy access.

However, keep the ones that you don’t frequently use stored in a non-intrusive place - like a drawer. There is no need to have a CD containing backups of all your documents on your desk for years, waiting for you to reformat your computer. Keep those useful but rarely used CD’s stored somewhere where you will surely find them.

4. Use An Alternative:

A. External Hard Drives:

Today, hard drives come really cheap for their value. Instead of keeping all your backups - music, documents, movies - on hundreds of CD’s/DVD’s , just buy one external hard drive and load it with all your backups. It will make the next reformat painless and quick.

B. USB Thumb Drives

Instead of taking your CD’s around with you, why not just take flash drives? They are pretty cheap now and could carry some serious drive capacity - from 1GB-16GB.

5. Use CD Images Instead

If you have a lot of hard drive space on your computer, you can use mounting program like Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120% to mount your CD image onto a virtual drive. This acts exactly the same as if you burn the image onto a cd and place it into your physical drive - only without the clutter.

Photo’s by Jorge Sato and popntek

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