Windows 8 How to Change the System Restore location

[boblink]

Hi, I can't seem to figure out WHERE W8 stores the System Restore Points that I create so I created a 500GB Partition on an External HDD that I would like to use to save System Restore files and my question is WHERE in W8 can I CHANGE the location for System Restore?
Thank you for your help,
Bob

 

[Adamsappleone]

Hello boblink,

Unfortunately, you can't.
A system restore file (System Volume Information) must be on the drive it is protecting. This is the way the OS is designed, so you cannot move it to another drive.

Don

 

[boblink]

Thanks for the information Don, I Partitioned my HDD and didn't leave very much room on the "C" Drive (where W8 resides) for System Restore backups, which take a LOT of space, is their a utility that will allow me tp EXPAND the "C" Drive since I have LOTS of space (1T HDD) that I Partitioned ("D", "E", "F", "G", "H",.... ) that are beUNDER utilized and available to be shrunk or deleted?
Thanks,
Bob

 

[Medico]

Any third party partitioning app will allow resizing of the various partitions. I use Partition Wizard for this chore.

It will be a 2 step process:

First you must resize the second partition to make it smaller. This process will take place outside of Windows as all the data in that partition must be moved as part of the resize. When you select Apply in Partition Wizard it will reboot and complete before booting back into Windows.

Once you reboot, you will now see Unallocated space in place of the smaller partition.

Second you will then resize the C Drive to use the unallocated space you created in step one.

My screen shot shows how to resize the various partitions. You just grab whatever edge you wish to resize and drag it to the new position you wish to have. In your case the first step would involve grabbing the right hand edge and dragging it to the right. This is why the data in the partition has to be moved. The unallocated space will be in front of the second partition (to the right of the C Partition).

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[boblink]

Thanks Meds, I installed the minitool Partition program and am attaching a ScrShot of my Partitioned HDD that shows LOTS of available space and have a couple of questions.
I tried Move/Resize but got an error message advising that the Free version of the program does not support this function.
Should I be using Move/Resize or something other function?
Also, since I am trying to Expand the Partition that contains the OS ("C" Partition) will the program allow me to do that?
Thank you for your help.
Bob

 

[Medico]

According to your screen shot your OS drive is 186 Gb with only 60 % used. Although that's a lot of used space, it leaves plenty of space for System Restore points.

You can limit the space for System Restore. Type Restore in search. Choose create a restore point, then configure. You can set the amount of space to reserve for System Restore.

I am unsure why you are having a problem with Partition Wizard. I just tried it and this is what I get when I choose Move/Restore (You have to actually choose the partition you wish to resize)

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You might try to uninstall/reinstall Partition Wizard. I have used this for several years and never saw this error.

 

[boblink]

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Hello again Meds, I'm sorry to keep on bothering you, I must be braindead because I can't seem to grasp this. I have enclosed another ScrShot which show (almost shows) that when I try to resize the "C" Partition, the programs does not allow me to, that is it doesn't allow me to DRAG the right hand edge of bar or for that matter, ANY part of the "bar", what I get is a rectangle on it's head (arrows pointing N,E,S & W) and I am unable to grab ANYTHING and move it. When I tried to manually change the Unallocated Space Before or Unallocated Space After, it would not accept and numbers that I entered (would move from zero) and when I manually tried to increase the UP arrow (to the right of Partition Size), it wouldn't allow me to do this but if I tried to decrease the Partition size, it WOULD allow me to make it smaller, not Bigger. I don't understand since I have 100s og GBs of Unallocated space available
Thanks Meds,
Bob

 

[Adamsappleone]

Hello boblink;

You don't have the space available at either end of the OS partition to do anything. the only thing you can do is to shrink the OS partition, which is not what you want to do.

Looking at how you have your drives setup, if it were me, I would move "K", "L", "M", "T" & "P" off the OS drive and copy them to the 2nd drive, either using the mentioned partitioning software or Aomei Partition Assistant, which has a free edition.

Moving partitions from one drive to another would be using the "Copy partition wizard" function, then once they have been copied, you can delete the original leaving you with all that unallocated space to extend the OS partition.

Keep us posted

Don

 

[Medico]

You cannot resize (make it bigger) the C Drive until you first resize the K drive and make it smaller. Grab the left border of the K Drive and drag it to the right. Click Apply. The computer will reboot and make the changes. Once you reboot you will see unallocated space in the area you just made the K drive smaller. Now you can grab the right border of the C Drive and drag it right to add the unallocated space to the C Drive.

This will take 2 steps. It cannot be done by dragging the C Drive border to a new location without first making the space to do this.

 

[boblink]

Thank you for ALL your help Meds,
Bob