Turn Off Shadow Copies to Speed Up Vista

Tech magazine PC Advisor rounds up 30 fairly standard “quick fixes” to fine-tune Windows XP and Vista systems, but one tip in particular caught my eye. Noting that all versions of Vista make “Previous Versions” or “Shadow Copies” of files when they change, but only the Enterprise, Business and Ultimate flavors can actually restore from them, the feature recommends moving your documents and personal files on a separate partition or drive and turning off “System Protection” on that portion. It might seem a bit excessive to save a few CPU cycles, but as the site points out, separating documents and programs also makes essential backups much easier to pull off.