Reduce disk space used by SARemediation

Thank you

System repair was on and was set at 'recommended'. I just set it to minimum and will see how that goes before testing switching it off.

Thanks for the advice about TreeSize. I currently use WizTree 4 portable for disk mapping. I suspect it does much the same as TreeSize.

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@SteveTree wrote:
...System repair was on and was set at 'recommended'. I just set it to minimum and will see how that goes before testing switching it off....

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Hi SteveTree:

If you decide to permanently disable System Repair (and/or uninstall Dell SupportAssist Remediation) just be sure you have an alternate plan in place for emergency recovery if your Windows system files are ever corrupted and your computer can't be booted up.

Having Dell's System Repair enabled on my system isn't critical for me because I use Macrium Reflect Free to create the occasional full disk image of my system that I save to an external backup drive, and I've also used this software to create a bootable USB recovery media. If you need further information see Chris Hoffman's How-To Geek tutorial How to Create a Full-Disk Backup of Your PC with Macrium Reflect - that article is a bit outdated (images are for v6.x instead of the current v7.x) but it's a good place to start if you want to learn how to create your first system image and emergency recovery media.

I've also enabled Windows System Restore on my Inspiron 5584 as instructed in the Windows Central article How to Use System Restore on Windows 10 .  I've never understood why System Restore is disabled in Win 10 by default.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v20H2 build 19042.1052 * Firefox v89.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2105.5 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.4.0.117-1.0.1344 * Macrium Reflect Free v7.3.5925 * Dell SupportAssist v3.9.1.245 * Dell SupportAssist Remediation v5.4.1.14954 * Dell Update v4.2.1
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G 256 GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

Researching Shadow Copy changes between different versions of Windows (since XP, I think) may give some idea why Microsoft don't feel it needs to be enabled by default.  

I haven't had the need to use System Restore since Windows 7.  It was flaky to use. Sometimes it had a lot of restore points but would only load the most recent and then it took more than one attempt. To me, this is a little bit of evidence that 10 is better than 7 in some ways. 

FWIW, my data is mostly written to OneDrive so backup isn't a huge issue. It would be handy to easily recover things from desktop if the computer crashed but mostly these are recent things, easily reconstructed.

As tempting as it is to leave Dell's system repair off, it does give an alternative method of recovery that may recover Windows with all my personal settings intact. Telemetry tweaks alone take quite some time to configure.  

For anyone following, here is the size of SARemediation when switched off.  I switched it on and set it to minimum this morning but will need to be patient again to see how large it grows.

SARemediation seems to have settled on 14.1Gb. That's above the advertised 12Gb on the settings screen but is a good space recovery. Deleting Temp Drivers would clear another 1Gb. 

Hi @SteveTree 

I'm working with respective on this issue, is it possible for you to collect logs and share it with me.

Steps to collect SA Remediation logs

• Open C:\Program Files\DELL\SARemediation\plugin and run LogCollectionTool as administrator.

• Provide the file name and save it on Desktop.

• Once log collection process completed then the collected logs along with other logs.

 In case customer report SA OS Recovery failed to Install then collect Update Service logs also.

• Collect UpdateService full folder from C:\ProgramData\Dell

I have the recommended (15GB) settings, but Dell creates one (or often two) logfiles of 50GB+.

Any suggestions?

@tomahg Please refer my above comments and share required details and logs so I can engage with respective team for debug your issue.

This issue going to be fix with SA OS Recovery 5.5 version.

A temporal fix to liberate space on the client system be the following:

1. Temporally Disable SA OS Recovery from SAC settings page, this will automatically delete all snapshots and the liberate space under C:\ProgramData\Dell\SARemediation.
2. Manually run the Disk Cleanup tool on the C drive and click on “Clean Up System Files” to eliminated unnecessary data from C:\Windows\ directory
3. Enable SA OS Recovery from SAC setting page, this will schedule the creation of a snapshot in the following 30 minutes, after running the cleanup we expect that the snapshot size will be smaller.

Thank  you, NikhilKiroula.

I have disabled system repair. Is that the option you mean with "OS Recovery"?

After disabling "System repair" and running "Disk cleanup" the disk space is not restored. SARemidation takes up 159 GB now.

fyi this does not work. SA remediation creates > 100GB sized log files in program data that are not removed with a setting change to system repair.

But does SA OS Recovery also create files in c:\System Volume Information that does not get removed when disabling System Repair?

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@bob.herman wrote:

But does SA OS Recovery also create files in c:\System Volume Information that does not get removed when disabling System Repair?

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Hi bob.herman:

As far as I know, SupportAssist OS Recovery (also called Dell SupportAssist Remediation) does not create any files in the hidden C:\System Volume Information folder.  That folder is reserved for system restore points created by the built-in Windows System Restore feature, which is disabled by default in Windows 10 (see the Windows Central article How to Use System Restore on Windows 10).

The system repair points (snapshots) created by SupportAssist OS Recovery are saved in the hidden C:\ProgramData\Dell\SARemediation folder, and all those system repairs points should be removed after you turn off System Repair in either the SupportAssist settings [Options (gear icon) | Settings | System Repair] or the SupportAssist OS Recovery settings manager (Control Panel | System and Security | SupportAssist OS Recovery | Settings | System Repair) and re-boot your system.

Dell employee @NikhilKiroula might have something to add to that.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H1 build 19043.1348 * Firefox v95.0.0 * Microsoft Defender v.4.18.2110.6-1.1.18800.4 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.4.11.149-1.0.1513 * Macrium Reflect Free v 7.3.6391 * Dell SupportAssist v3.10.4.18 * Dell SupportAssist Remediation v5.5.0.16046 * Dell Update for Windows 10 Universal v4.4.0
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620