For some time now, I’ve noticed that my notebook always seems to be quite full - I regularly move data onto an external hard drive, uninstall programs that I don’t use, and yet I always seem to have less than 5% disk space left.

What was most unusual was that every time I went through my cleaning routine, I would go to check my disk space - and the amount available didn’t increase, it decreased!

Today, I went through the cleaning routine again - same thing happens, I went from about 7.6 GB left to 6.5 GB… wtf?

I knew something had to be wrong somewhere - there is no way one can uninstall or delete more than 1 GB of files and end up losing space in the process… so as usual  I right-clicked on my C: drive, did the disk cleanup again, then noticed a tab for Advanced Options.

In those options, there was one to make additional space available by removing all but the latest System Restore point - bingo!

After checking the help file, it turns out that System Restore will use up to 15% of your hard disk to store restore points, deleting the oldest one as you go.  This is definitely true in Vista, perhaps in XP as well.

Once I cleared up all the additional restore points, I suddenly had 19% disk space available - and my machine started running a LOT faster (or at least it seems that way).

So if your machine seems to be a bit sluggish, do your spring cleaning, go and remove the additional restore points, and then defrag your disk (I went from 1% fragmentation to 19%).

You’ll thank yourself for doing this - and your hard disk will thank you too.