Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information” in C drive claiming a lot of disk space for apparently no practical purpose at all! You’d start off with a pretty neat 40 GB drive, and slowly over months you’d notice that you are only left with 5 GB in there whilst all your files summed up could only answer for 15 GB and the Windows+Program Files would be around another 10 GB. Where did the rest of the 10 GB vanish? The answer would be the hidden folder called “system volume information” (let’s call it SVI for ease of my typing). Seemingly windows saves information related to system restore inside that place and it is used when you actually perform a restoration (which is indeed a great facility). But when struggling for more disk space, I am sure you wouldn’t mind doing a trade off between what portion of your disk you want to give away for that purpose and what portion you want to keep for yourself.
Now here are some commands that you could use in the Command Prompt console in administrator mode in order to view and resize the space allocated for SVI:
1. To see the space allocated and used for SVI:
– Open Command Prompt with “Run as Administrator” option
– Type in: vssadmin list shadowstorage
– You will see Used Space, Allocated Space and Maximum Space for SVI
2. To see the restore information stored therein:
– Use in the same console command: vssadmin list shadows
3. To resize the maximum allocated space:
– Type in command: vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[here add the drive letter]: /For=[here add the drive letter]: /Maxsize=[here add the maximum size]
– E.g., vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=4GB
– You will see a prompt confirming resize done
– You can check the status again using the command discussed in point 1 above
4. Just to get rid of the space already consumed, but sticking to the same size of max-size as before:
– Do actions as per point 3 to set the max-size t, say, 1GB
– If you check now, most likely you’ll see that used space is now 0KB
– Do the resize again and set it back to what it was before
– Check your disk space availability in Windows Explorer, you should see the reclaim is done!
Hope this helps. I owe this to this webpage. This did reduce 15 GB in my laptop’s hard drive – which was great!
Great!! This worked perfect!
Thanks!
Thanks a bunch! I couldn’t shrink my boot partition because of this file. I deleted the old restore points and which deleted this SVI file and was then able to resize my partition! Your help was invaluable!
Thank you so much … this worked awesomely
Great page, I reclaimed 60GBytes, and I’ve only had Vista for a couple of months. Crazy OS!
Worked Awesome, Thank You
In two weeks that folder took up 45GB
Thanks man… this was awesome!
Wow, just installed Vista about a day ago, ran disc cleanup and defragmented (with Defraggler), ect…
All of a sudden I notice these unamed files that are 1.5gb – 3gb!!
SVI strikes again, thanks for this great tip, I too freed up 15gb.
Thanks! I just reclaimed 36 GB’s!!!
How can I turn off this “System Volume Information” or configure it to start only manually – not whenever it just feels like it?
(because I don’t like it taking over and going crazy with disk activity when I’m trying to use the PC)
John,
You can check out the point #3 in my post above. It shows how you can restrict the amount of space SVI can take. SVI contains important information which helps you to rollback your system using system restore in case you face a problem and want to do a restore. If you limit the space allocated to SVI, you limit the number of restore points you can go back to.
Thanks
Indrajit C
Thanks Indrajit!! Got back 20 GB.
And yes Thanks to John Barnett too!
Hi and THANKS,
This is awsome. Really good help.
Had used 250 GB on my harddrive but could only find files that took up some 110 GB, so where was the rest?
Had to spend hours looking through dedicated helpsites, but nowhere there was any help on how to take command of this #@! SVI.
I got 145 GB back!
this is folder is for the restore points of the system restore function in windows
so it does serves a lot of purpose because it backs up your system and settings on various dates.
do research first before claiming things smart ass
Smart Ass Commenter:
If you dont like my post – fine! Dont come here. You are not welcome.
I know what SVI does and what it contains. If you had taken the pain to ACTUALLY READ through my post and my comments here, you would have known that I knew.
And at least put your name in when you comment – so that I know who I am hating.
1 question how do i delete the SVI folder? I did what you said and resised to 1 gig but I try to delete and dont let me
You cannot delete the SVI folder – it is a system folder, needed by Windows operating system.
You can delete the svi folder. Just did it like 10 minutes ago. Keep in mind i booted into Ubuntu and removed it while i was in there 🙂 windows vista is working fine
Excellent post. One remaining question: How can I get rid of the SVI folder on my USB drive, which remained from restore points of another computer (which doesn’t exist anymore)? Vista lets me read that folder, but refuses to delete it (without any error message).
You can use the same process as mentioned in the post just change the drive name form C: to what ever your thumb drive is in.
try using a program that can “shred” files… FileMenu Tools worked for me. if you have Spybot Search & Destroy, that might also work.
Kenny,
Sorry – I have no clear clue on this. Have you tried doing formatting? It should ideally clean up the entire USB drive (do keep your data safe before you do that). If that does not work, you’d perhaps need to do some googling on the answer.
Thanks
IC
Can you believe it, I got 80GB!!! And I have a 140 GB hard drive…. (Believe me though… just as expensive as the 1TB are since its 10,000 RPM). I just noticed it yesterday when I only had less than a gig left
Thanks!
No shadowstorage option in 1.0 (2001), which I have on my XP Home Edition, as opposed to the 1.1 (2005) you used. Dunno if I can just swap in the newer .exe…?
Anyway, on XP I suppose you can temporarily recover the space, if you are convinced you have more checkpoints than you currently need, by pushing the backup allocation slider down from the default 15% max, exiting to put it into effect and lose some backups, then push it back up again if you want to allow for the possibility of needing more checkpoints in the future. With no need to use the command line.
Hi Indrajit:
First: Thank you for the tip to reclaim space from SVI.
Question: is it OK to delete all old RP (restore points) found in the SVI?
Have a great day.
Hi Sam,
Thanks for your comment. About deleting all RPs found in the SVI – it’s really your decision. If you think you are in a position to restore the system without assistance of Windows in case systems crash occurs, then yes – you can delete all restore points. In case you want to be safe and let Windows do restoration for you – then don’t.
Cheers and happy new year!
IC
Hi Indrajit,
Your page is fascinating, and the only one i have found close to answering my question.
I have xp home, and am at uni, so cannot presently afford to replace my laptop. Over the last couple of years, my hard drive (when i look under properties on c drive ) has shrunk from it’s original 60gb down to 43 (total used and free) is this because i have had to restore the computer two or three times from the discs that come with it? And do i need to go through the same process? Or how do i start? I am afraid my mind is in ayurvedic medicine and not pc’s, i just need to recover my space? Thanks Scott
Scott,
If I understand your question correctly, when you do:
Windows Explorer
> C drive
>> Right click
>>> Properties
then you see that total capacity of disk is 43 GB? In the properties section there are 3 values shown:
1. Used space
2. Free space
3. Capacity
Can you tell me what exactly you see in each field?
If indeed you see that the “capacity” has reduced over time, that’s quite odd – because space consumption in SVI should not cause that. The only reason I can think of is if you have partitioned your disk into multiple drives then each drive (e.g., C drive) will less space. If that’s not the case, I doubt I can provide any help to you without actually getting my hands on the machine.
The best thing to do is to back up your data in a portable drive, and reformat the machine and do a clean windows (or any other OS) install. And I do not mean doing “restore” operation using your disks – I mean an installation from scratch. But you should be ready with all softwares and device drivers if you actually want to attempt that.
Cheers
Indrajit C
Thank you! My SVI was at 99GBs!!! It’s bad enough my HP computer takes up space on my HD with a restore volume then I have nearly 100GBs of space lost to system restore points.
OMG,thanks a lot I reclaimed 15gb from my 3 weeks old laptop!!love you dude!!
Scott,
If I understand your question correctly, when you do:
Windows Explorer
> C drive
>> Right click
>>> Properties
then you see that total capacity of disk is 43 GB? In the properties section there are 3 values shown:
1. Used space
2. Free space
3. Capacity
Can you tell me what exactly you see in each field?
If indeed you see that the “capacity” has reduced over time, that’s quite odd – because space consumption in SVI should not cause that. The only reason I can think of is if you have partitioned your disk into multiple drives then each drive (e.g., C drive) will less space. If that’s not the case, I doubt I can provide any help to you without actually getting my hands on the machine.
The best thing to do is to back up your data in a portable drive, and reformat the machine and do a clean windows (or any other OS) install. And I do not mean doing “restore” operation using your disks – I mean an installation from scratch. But you should be ready with all softwares and device drivers if you actually want to attempt that.
Cheers
Indrajit C
I have the problem you`ve explained above. I have 5.5GB less and in SVI I have exactly 5.5GB data. already deleted the folder. although I havent got back this free space. do you have any idea?
Thanks for this site! Its a great help!
Best regards,
F
If you are using windows xp (and i think it will be same in vista – but i dont have a machine handy right now to check), then you can control how much space is allocated to the SVI through the following:
My Computer > right click > Properties > System Restore tab > Settings button > Disk Space Usage scrollbar – drag this to the very minimum value – click on OK [this step will free up the space already taken up by SVI] and then you can put it back to where it was [if you wish].
Hope this will help.
Hi Indrajit,
Sorry am back at Uni, deep into work, and have not read this for a while.
Yes, to clarify, and to get the info i want, i do this:
Start
My Computer
Local Disk (right click)
Properties
Info displayed:
Used Space: 14,721,564,672 bytes 13.7GB
Free Space: 32,294,100,992 bytes 30.0GB
Capacity 47,015,665,664 bytes 43.7GB
Here are my queries, if anyone can help:
1)Why do the figures above not add up? e.g around 47 bytes then 43.7 GB or are these different sets of numbers?
2) My laptop is supposed to be 60GB
3) When I first had my laptop, i am quite sure the capacity was around 57GB
4) I read that everytime you use the discs to reset the computer to factory settings, a partition is created for the system restore, and so over time the hard disc gets smaller and smaller, as there are partitions set aside for each time the computer is reset. i have had to do this operation around three times over the last two-three years due to old freeware and shareware software trials/ viruses/ configuration clashes etc.
5) its great to start my new uni year with a clean computer, as when I research I am constantly saving things that appear useful at the time, but by the end of the year, I can’t remember what is what. i understand that each time these discs to reboot the system are used, they are programmed to partition a space for restore purposes, but in theory that means that eventually after using these discs 10-15 times there will not be any hard drive left at all?
Simply wanted to reclaim these partitions and get back my space?
Scott
Scott,
Thanks for your reply. My answers:
1. Your used + free = total equation is balancing quite well. I won’t worry about 47 bytes’ difference. 13.7 GB + 30 GB = 43.7 GB looks fine enough.
2. The problem is where is your remaining hard drive – that’s what we should focus on. If you had a so-called “60 GB” hard drive, I would assume, across all disk partitions (visible and invisible/unallocated), the total usable space for you would have been 60*(1000/1024)^3 = 55.88 GB. Out of this, clearly your current “C drive” has 43.7 GB.
3. Do you have D/E/F etc. drives as well? Do they sum up?
4. If not, then we have a different problem. I need to know if all of your hard disk is allocated to a logical drive or not. For checking that you need to go to: My Computer > right click > Manage > left menu option “Disk Management”. It will show you a graphical representation of what is the utilisation of your entire hard disk. If, for example, you have the missing 55-43 GB space “unallocated” to any logical drive, then it will appear there and will say so. Please check this and let me know.
Best of luck,
Indrajit C
many thanks for your help!
Wow, thanks a lot for this! Every Windows Vista user should know about this tip!
What if you just right-click My Computer, go to System Restore and adjust the slider to adjust the amount of disk space available for restore point? Does that do the same thing as the command line procedure you describe?
Cheers
Nicolas
One way to reduce the size of the SVI is to remove all Restore Points except the most recent one. Do this when you are confident all is well.
In Windows XP, log on with administrator privileges. Click Start | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup. If you have more than one partition, a Select Drive dialog opens; pick a partition from the drop-down list. Click on the Other Options tab. The bottom third of the window allows you to delete all the old Restore Points. Click OK. If you have a lot of Restore Points, Windows will grind away for a few seconds.
I did this a couple of days ago, and on each of my partitions, the SVI is still 0 bytes.
The difference between a gibibyte (1024^3 bytes) and a gigabyte (1000^3 bytes) is more than 7%. I bought some Seagate hard drives with 320 gigabytes, meaning the manufacturer guarantees 320 billion bytes. The BIOS and Windows report only 297 “gigabytes” (actually gibibytes) which is, roughly 320 billion bytes. Many computer users are confused by this.
@Scott (and perhaps other people):
Your problem is bigger. Many manufacturers ship computers with a recovery system that depends on hiding a disk image where nobody cannot get at it. But tech support can tell you how to access the hidden image to restore your hard disk to exactly the state it was in when it left the factory.
This image is stored in a special partition called a Host Protected Area. The space used by the HPA is hidden from the BIOS (and therefore inaccessible). The trick is simple. The hard disk reports a false size to the BIOS and the operating system. The HPA is the space between the reported last sector and the actual last sector.
Another trick is the Device Configuration Overlay, used by manufacturers to make drives of various sizes all look like the same size. (I guess this has to do with cloning the hard disks — much faster than installing everything on each computer separately. (Modern cloning software can expand or shrink the partition to fit the source disk to the target disk.)
The Wikipedia articles on HPA and DCO not only give more information, but have links to software that shows you whether you have an HPA or a DCO, how big it is, and enables you to resize it or delete it.
It could be that your computer’s recovery system makes an image of your disk in an expanded HPA, so that you can roll back the recovery to an earlier state (just guessing — I kind of doubt it).
Go to
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
and download the HDDerase tool. This is designed to overwrite every single byte of data on the drive so that it cannot be recovered even by forensic tools. It gives the option of also deleting the HPA or DCO if there is one. Afterwards you can make a clean install of Windows. (But first be sure to back up all your important emails, uni projects, baby pictures, and so on.)
Good luck.
@Scott,
Another thought: You may have caught a rootkit.
Try this for a comparison. Boot into the computer’s BIOS Setup program. This always lists all the internal drives, and the size of each. How does this compare with the size reported by My Computer? If the two sizes are different, something is seriously wrong.
A rootkit is malware that installs itself in such a way that normal disk operations cannot detect it. Even so, it runs every time the computer boots.
It does this by intercepting system calls that might expose it. As a result, Windows Explorer (*not* Internet Explorer) does not see the space used by the rootkit, either on the hard disk or in RAM.
One way to detect rootkits is to compare the size of a directory as reported by Windows Explorer (or My Computer) with the size reported by low-level commands that do not use the normal calls. If the two sizes differ, something is hiding. Anti-rootkit tools do this.
There are now a dozen or more tools that will expose and remove rootkits. Try the well-known antivirus vendors; some of the tools are free. (Do *not* Google for rootkit removal — most of the hits are bogus fake security tools.)
However, the fastest way (indeed, the only certain way) to get rid of rootkits and other malware is to delete the partition. The Windows Setup CD-ROM, if you have one, will offer to do this for you. Just delete every partition until there is none left, just unallocated free space. Then create a new partition and format it; avoid the quick format. Finish installing Windows. Re-install your favorite apps. Restore your crucial data. (You did back up your emails and uni projects before you started?)
@Scott, yet another thought. Your hard disk may be dying.
When the firmware (on the circuit board inside the disk drive) finds a bad spot on the disk, it reallocates that sector number to a sector held in reserve. When the drive runs out of reserve sectors, the operating system sees a bad sector. The OS remembers the fact, so it won’t use it. This leads to a slow shrinkage of disk space.
To see whether this is your problem, double-click on My Computer, and right-click on the hard drive. Select Properties (bottom of the menu). In the window that opens, click on the Tools tab. The top third of the window is devoted to error-checking. Do it.
You will have to reboot to perform the check, which will occur in “DOS mode”, just before Windows is loaded. Watch the screen carefully. (This takes time; eat lunch while you watch.) At the end there should be a summary, listing bad sectors, among other useful facts.
A lot of third-party disk utilities do this, too.
If you have bad sectors, it is time to replace your hard drive. This can be done on almost any computer, even a laptop — the only tool you need is a screwdriver. Hard drives are amazingly cheap nowadays, but for a laptop you may be forced to buy one from the original manufacturer.
The files in that directory seem useless too, as when accessing them with Linux, all I see a bunch of multi-GB files full of “00”
awesome..thanx a lot!!!!!!
what the? Normally Wouldn’t u just Do a window disk clean up and delete those recent restore point
rather then messing with this
After second install of WIN-XP on my new ASUS eee_pc 901 (uses SSD instead of Hard drive), I see on the drive that of 3.7 GB of SSD, 2.67 GB been used!!
Checking my C drive shows that there is just 65MB for Document and setting folder, 115 MB on Program files folder, and 979 MB for windows folder.
It means WIN-XP installment took less than 1.2 GB but from 3.7 GB of total drive, just 1 GB free space is availlable.
What is the problem?
It is just the second install on a brand new PC.
By the way on first install it used about 1.2 GB.
I am required to take everything off of an external hard drive prior to use. We want the external to just be a place to store data and nothing else.
I find that even when I delete all files from the external hard drive then delete partition then do a complete format. I still have the system volume Information file to conted with.
Is there a way to completely delete this file on an external and would it matter if it were deleted.
I can understand where you might want to be able to restore what is saved on a C drive but would that restore process work on an external after all other files have been removed?
Thank you for any advice you can give me on this subject.
Great tip! Googled away and found this site with this info.
Have proceed to look into vssadmin options for all the Windows boxes I inherited at my workplace and found a long-standing issue with one.
A little bit of knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but in the case, it led me to look for much more to better manage my devices!
Great tip! Helped me reclaim 50GB. Thanks!
You can just disable system restore for C:\ in the configuration. This will erase all the previous restore points. Then enable it back, and create a new restore point, and you gained back your Gbs 🙂
Awesome Guide Helped me get back 100 gigs.
[…] […]
You are a clever man Indrajit! Thanks to you, I just reclaimed 35GB! And no more bloody annoying spinning disk! Thanks you very much! Cheers Roger
Hi,
I had weird problem I am not good with computers as obvious i am here looking for help. I felt that my laptop was not working normally taking long at startup and other normal processes so, I have Avast and I was casually scanning my lappy and it got stcuk at point SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION and it kept on scanning it for an hour then I manually aborted the scan. and i tried to open the SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION folder but it always said access denied. Scanned with Malwayre bytes but no better.
Looking forward to hear from you ,
Thanks
Also i tried to type “vssadmin list shadowstorage” in cmd but didnt worked as you wrote in starting and then i wrote vssadmin shadows and it said no shadow copies !!
I am not good with computer man !!
thanks. got 14GB back.
Wow, I got about 12GB back. Why does Vista do this? The first day the storage volume information was about 2GB. The next day it was 15, and about an hour after that it grew another GB. The maximum was more than 60GB! Thanks for this information.
Hi Inrajit,
As soon as i write vssadmin in command prompt it flashes for 1 sec and vanishes. Dont have any idea what to do . Help please
BTW, do you know what the minimum recommended size is?
Thank you. In 30 seconds and half a page you provided me with all the info the stupid bloated Vista Online/Local Help System so carefully managed to hide from me. Long live the command line.
When I type in “vssadmin list shadowstorage” I get the following output:
vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.
No items found that satisfy the query.
I’m on Vista 32-bit
I ran CCLEANER and there is an option to remove the system points you desire.
Use it at your own risk…considering the implications that you cannot reverse back to those points.
I have a terabyte, and the SVI was set to 1% – 10GB…which isn’t too bad. I don’t know why it would add up to more than that.
Indrajit- just wanted to say THANK YOU (or as we say here in Hawaii, MAHALO) for the great information!! I ran Defraggler time and time again, and was trying to figure out why my SVI was consuming so much disk space. Your detailed blog helped finally shed light on what was going on in my Vista 64-bit system.
Followed your steps and suggestions to the letter, and reclaimed 45GB from my hard drive. YAY!!
One question: do you have or is there a recommended size for the SVI?? I set my SVI to 5GB.
Thanks again!!
wow…i know i download a lot of stuff all the time but i started to notice something was up when the windows folder + music/pics/downloads weren’t matching up to how much space i was “using”. Just recently switched to windows 7 and definitely saw something was up, thanks so much for the tip, i recovered about 200Gb off my 1Tb drive, thats crazy!!
I love you. I was wondering why my hard drive’s space kept getting eaten up. Now I just regained 40 GB.
Well Indrajit, this all looks great but it doesn’t work for me. I have XP SP3 and have always set hidden folders and files to show themselves. I can see daily restore points available under system restore, and a recent virus sweep turned up one or two nuisances in SVI folders which I would like shot of. But all SVI folders show empty, 0 bytes, nothing to get hold of and apparently no restore information is in fact being held anywhere.
So is this some virus which got past Kaspersky, or what?
TIA
Rip
This is brilliant. Thanks for the detailed info!
Hey, this website seems to help a ton of people but for some reason when I keep using the prompts you have written just a small box with some text appears and disappears so fast i don’t have time to read, then nothing happens. I don’t know what to do? I have at least 11GBs of storage and with only a 64GB hard drive it’d be great if you knew what was wrong! Thanks!
Seems you are putting in the commands in Run… box under Start Menu. It won’t work that way. You need to follow the steps properly that I have written. Open a Command Prompt window with Run As Administrator privilege and then use the commands. For details, please read the blog carefully from start.
I am running windows7 ultimate and and this is the command I use and it cleared out all the files!!
vssadmin Delete Shadow /For=C: /Oldest
I tried yours and it didnt work and it prompted me to use the one I posted! I hope this helps.
Sorry, I forgot to say that I dont use restore points on my pc I just back my whole system up with acronis and there was still over 5 gbs in the file!
Very very useful saved me a lot of disc space
Thanks to this tip, I finally figured out what those large number of files under SVI, while running Defraggler.
This info saved me alot of time!!!
I was able to claim 50 gb. I am an “accidental” administrator for our server. We are storing files on the drive and I notice the other day suddenly we were almost out of space. Blah, Blah, Blah…
Anyway thanks for posting this….
@author stupid
If you’re trusting Microsoft to back up your system, your the real fool.
Ideally TURN OFF all rollback, restore, recovery options built into Windows.
Download one of hundreds of FREE ghosting tools, or pay excessive amounts to use a paid version (Norton, Paradox, SuperGhost)
Create an independent clone of your drive from the MBR/Partition level.
Save that clone set on secondary media, ie another drive or DVD/HDDVD/BluRay R/RW media, or a large flash drive.
Better than restore points et al from Windows, as it covers the raw binary IO level; it can save you from hardware targeting viri such as those devils that get into your MBR, among other issues.
I have a backlog of backups, and my laptop is running out of disc space. I have tried all of your commands, and others too, but my Vista Business will not recognize them.
I also went with my CCleaner, and they don’t even show up to delete.
I too found that Defragler showed me that I had way too much space being used up with all of these SVI’s that I
could now care less if the whole OS crashed without them.
Tried all commands, and they are responded with unrecognized.
Help! Help!
i got back 60gigs!! all i did was disable system restore, ive never used anyways
I got back 47GB! Awesome, thanks a bunch!
Thanks a lot,
like most of the comments above,
I reclaimed 333GB(!) from your explanation.
Cheers.
Roni
[…] […]
This worked like a charm. On my crappy laptop with Vista, I got back 20 gigs of space with this one fix.
Thanks a lot. 🙂
The “Thanks” continue. Recovered 85GB from a 100GB drive. Thanks much for the help!!
🙂
Thanks alot this worked perfectly!
Thanks, I recovered about 10GB very quickly. I don’t need many restore points because I do a full system disk-mirror weekly to an external bootable disk. If my disk ever fails, I can be up and running on a system less than a week old, within 10 minutes.
By the way, the command “vssadmin List ShadowStorage” gave me an “unexpected error” on Windows 7 [ver 6.1.7600]. Any idea why this happens? Even with this your procedure to modify it – reduced down to 4GB – worked well. Thank you.
great. Thanks alot!
Recovered 80gb from a 1TB drive… It appears that using the new version of Defraggler (2.0) created all those files and took up the extra space. I was sitting at about 498gb of free space.. and then ended up with 432gb or something after I ran a defrag on that drive…
Now I’m sitting at 513gb of free space with your tutorial.
Thanks soo much!
Really Helpful!
Actually, after first time I resized, the shadow storage became 0KB immediately. I found the stupid staff when I was defragging. Computer could not do it and there was such a file with more than 6GB that need to be defragged.
Thank you so much for posting this! I had a server with an 820G HDD which had only 30G free with 460G of files – over 310G was being used by system volume information!
Hi
I am not able to put in words how please I am with your help.
Congratulations and keep helping us to solve those stupid things from Microsoft.
thanks …
regained 12 GB !
I am on windows 7 x64 😀
i am window vista 64 bit (dell studio laptop), and i found if i just clear the restore points and the create a new one i get a few gigs back. the one thing i noticed is when you do a windows update, it creates another restore point, so i end up with two SVI files (one that i created and one that the system created), is there a way to make vista just save one restore point and just over right when it wants to make a new one? like when you save a document you don’t get two copies it just saves over the other one.
there is one other question i have, it about the pagefile.sys , is there a way to clean it up some how (like defragment it?)? (i know it’s not entirely related, but it still has to do with the system) the reason i ask because it’s taking up roughly 4gbs of space and has 2 fragments?
i hope i have provided enough information, if not i will provide more.
Thank you thank you thank you
Thanks a ton!! SVI was taking up over 300 GB on my storage drive!!!
WONDERFULLLLLLL…
Found this site and it is THE answer..as we have Xp, Vista, & W-7.
Thank yo soooooo much!!
btw..I also wonder about the PageFiles.sys ..ty
Anmesh ami4u_007@yahoo.com
thanks dude I have sucessfully reclaimed 50.7 GB on my vista Lapi.this program has been a problem since many months for my disk space many many thanks for your blog
This was totally great!! I have been trying to figure out a resolution to my hd space for a long time now. I freed up 150GB of prisoned space. I do not have to reimage or buy a new laptopn.
Thanks a bunch
SIMPLE WAY TO REMOVE HIDDEN SYSTEM RESTORE FILES: Windows allows up to 15% of each disc to be used (and will be used) for restore points. Here’s how to remove them quickly, taken directly from Vista’s in-computer Help and Support function: Navigate to “System Restore > How Much disk space does system restore require? > System Restore: Frequently asked questions > How Long are restore points saved?”. Then you will get this wonderful answer – “…turn off System Restore” (by un-checking all disc/partitions) …”and all restore points are immediately deleted from that Disk” (or partition)!!! I rebooted and had saved 187 Gbs from two internal drives! Remember though, if you don’t have a back up image and your system crashes with no restore point, you’re toast.
I have gone to making backup images on an external drive and will leave restore off. By the time I discovered that what I thought was a minor problem was major, all useable restore points had been overwritten because Windows Update triggers a new point with each change. I ended up wiping the C drive clean and starting over, weeks of work to get everything reloaded and working again.
Many thanks, i’d lost over 90gb, fantastic tip. 🙂
Thanks, Indrajit! Wonderful to learn there’s a max. setting for SVI; just used your commands to prevent an important disk volume from losing its last few hundred Mb of free space.
Worked amazingly. Thanks. Excellent explanation and steps. Thanks again.
[…] this helps. I owe this to this webpage. This did reduce 20 GB in my hard drive – which was great! Be Sociable, […]
Got almost 150 GB of my 300 GB drive back. Thank you!
AWESOME!
Got over 100GB back! You are a lifesaver! Thank you!
Thanks! I noticed I was the SVI consumed 200 GB on my 1 TB hard drive! Resized it to 60 GB, much more reasonable, and was a cinch thanks to the guide.
Hello!
I’ve recently reinstalled w7 ultimate (because of some freaking dll messing one of my app) and did a lot of restore to see which app/driver was problematic. Yesterday I noticed a lot of gone space from my D: partition without me doing something to it. after long searches through windows tools, disk checkers and defraggers I saw that 25GB were in svi.. So then I searched on google and the first website was this, good thing we think the same 🙂
I want to thank you for your post, was very helpful. Anyway, I was thinking: how on earth did svi on D took my space when I was restoring from C only?! and I have to mention, system protection is turned on for C only.
To sum it up, many thanks! 🙂
Thank you so much !!. I left myself a 20GB SVI as some of my shadows were 18GB.. but recovered 280GB… I was literately minutes away from reformatting and starting over
If you’re on a fileserver, another option is to edit Shadow Copies in Disk Management. Under the drive letter properties you will see Shadow Copies. The amount of space that appears in ‘Used” should match up with System volume information. Becareful adjusting this as you can be deleting away a previous version that will not appear in a backup. This can be a problem if your SLA requires recovery to hourly versions.
hi
I checked out in mine but i do not have any resore point and shadow copy configure but still i do not know where my hard drive space is eaten up because yesterday i saw in my hard drive 1.71GB free and today it goes down to 1.48GB free. And when I check my hard drive’s all files property it consume around 20GB of space and i do not have any idea tha where the rest of my space is used up, My hard drive space is 40GB.
please help me out to solve this problem.
thanxs
Nirav
how i can reclaim my space in win 7? help me.i want to delete SVI folder from all drives or files in SVI folder. help me
thank u very very very much sir u r great
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this could be caused by a bug in the game or by the java virtual machine not being allocated enough memory.
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To any and all who are interested . . .
Is the space on my computer hard drive that contains SVI , considered unallocated free space, that is SVI defined as deleted files, and are these SVI files in unallocated free space that will be written over or is SVI a specific allocated space on the drive that will never be written over until re-sized as you indicate?
Also if SVI is always there on your drive will a user who deleted the files that are maintained in the SVI ever be able to see or open the files, if yes, how would they have to be restored?
What meta data is associated with the SVI files? is it possible to tell when the original file was stored, where it came from and when it was deleted?
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my inquiries.
Best regards,
JK
I have windows 7, sorry but this did not work for me.
Thanks so much worked like magic…………. I have been struggling with thisssss
Calisto
Big thank you for taking the time to write this simple and easy to follow instruction. Just freed up 80G of hard drive space.
Vishal, Please make sure when you launch the ‘command prompt’ you ‘run as administrator’.
If you want to reduce the shadow storage on your D: drive, please use this example.
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=D: /For=D: /Maxsize=20GB
Shadows are removed in chronological order, until they are below the size requested.
Good Luck!
Nirav: this may be helpful.
Please go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download, then delete all contents.
There is no real downside to this.
Also, If you have a directory named: C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\EventCache, then stop the Automatic Update service and delete contents of this folder. This will not give you much more room, but helps keep your system consistent.
Indrajit, you are a legend. Following your instructions the D drive on my old Vista laptop has just gone from 94% full to less than 25% full in one minute. Great post.
Just did this on my computer, which has Windows 7. Went from 24 to 77 GB. Indrajit, you are a blessing!
Great! tks
I keep getting the message:
“Error: The shadow copy provider had an unexpected error while trying to process the specified command.”
Any ideas?
Your VSS(Volume Shadow Copy) Service may be disabled. You can check the Services on Task Manager (right click start bar, Task Manager, click the Services tab)
Look for the VSS service, it will have the description ‘Volume Shadow Copy’. If the PID number doesn’t show, then its disabled.
Click the Services button below the table, it may have a shield icon beside it. The Management Console will come up with the Services list.
Before you enable the service, you must make sure the services it depends on are enabled. This is usually Remote Procedure Call, RPC Endpoint Mapper and DCOM Server Process Launcher. Those services are always enabled and cannot be disabled, but It may be different on Vista. The dependencies may be different also so click properties on the Volume Shadow Copy services and check the dependencies tab to make sure. To enable the services, Properties – select manual or automatic if you want it running every startup. Then click the play button at the top or the enable link.
Once you’ve enabled the VSS service try again.
Vista user btw
This works great.
Thanks! This worked great and just cleaned up 500GB on one of my servers! This is going into my toolbox.
Brilliant!
My 60GB OS hard drive was down to just 300MB and the system performance was grinding. Had no idea what was going on, then googled and found this page and recovered 9GB!! This webpage is definitely going into my useful items bookmarks.
Many thanks!
Gary
Wow, this piece of writing is good, my younger sister is analyzing these kinds of things,
thus I am going to inform her.
Thank you for this Post. While I haven’t implemented it yet, it certainly makes so much sense. I have several questions before I implement and they are:
1.) Can the SVI File be located on a dedicated Physical Volume?
2.) Can the SVI File be located on a dedicated Logical Volume?
3.) Is there an advantage or disadvantage to either Item 1 or 2 above?
4.) If Item 1 above is the most advantageous way to proceed, would it be wise to locate the System Page File on this Physical Volume also? My System appears to have a very low frequency of Memory Faults to Disk so I’m guessing it might be an advantage.
5.) I would also like to consider using the Disk in Item 1 as a dedicated Backup Drive. This would mean the Physical Drive would house / host the: SVI File, the System Page File and any Backups that would be generated weekly.
Thanks again for your Post and any feedback you might offer.
Best regards,
Mike Lynch
I would like to store the Shadow Storage information on D:. I have a hybrid drive system with C: having 102GB and D: having 298GB and which is almost empty. I have tried the resize command and it works find for C: but the same command specifying drive D: fails with a message: “The specified volume shadow copy storage association was not found.”
I have tried the “List Volumes” command and drive D: is listed but I can’t figure out where to go from here.
Can you provide additional insight?
Omigosh… thank you thank you thank you!!!!
I regained 110GB from a drive… came *this* close to tearing my hair out, wondering where 110GB went, LOL… 😀
What am I missing? Why can’t I just got to control panel>system>system restore>configure?
What’s the diff in setting the usage to 0% as opposed to doing it with vssadmin shadowstorage at the command prompt?
Thank you. I have an encrypted laptop hard drive and I tired to use a called defraggler to be able shrink my hard drive and I failed at it and finally I ended up losing 75gb of my space on my hard drive. Thanks to this posting, I was able to clear 75gb quickly. Thanks
Thank you very much Indrajit.
I had an SVI of 21 GB and reduced it to 5GB. Everything seems to be working perfectly.
Thanks again
Nigel
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Best post ever. It took about 5 months for my 3TB raid 10 drives to start getting noticeably bloated. Just recovered 500GB. Nice one!
Hey are using WordPress for your blog platform? I’m new to the blog world but I’m trying to get started and set up my own. Do you require any html coding knowledge to make your own blog? Any help would be really appreciated!
Post still helping even to today :).
Thank you.
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[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … […]
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[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … – 2008-03-25 · Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information …… […]
[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … – 2008-03-25 · Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information …… […]
[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … – 2008-03-25 · Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information …… […]
[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … – Mar 25, 2008 · Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information …… […]
[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … – Mar 25, 2008 · Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information …… […]
[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … – Mar 25, 2008 · Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information …… […]
[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … – Mar 25, 2008 · Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information …… […]
[…] Reclaiming disk space from “system volume information … – Mar 25, 2008 · Often seen and felt as a stupid problem in Windows (especially in Vista, as usual) is the habit of the strange entity called “system volume information …… […]
Thanks, reclaimed 105GB on my SSD!
Is there ANY way to reduce the Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space? I have a 500GB ssd and want it not to allow up to 50% allocation to this.
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 85.281 MB (0%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 2.93 GB (0%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 232.879 GB (50%)
nevemind forgot to retype vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=4GB
Hi Thanks a lot as i jus recovered 75GB space on harddisk with windows 7 OS
Is there any recommended max space for windows 7
Thank u once again
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Thanks sir, it worked like a charm..This forum saved me..
Indrajit, you are a life saver. I just had an issue where a client had over 14GB of SVI files on the same drive as their Exchange mailbox database. That filled up the drive. Finding your instructions and running the commands you described allowed me to lower the SVI folder to 3GB. This is great because we were still in the prep stages for migrating their Exchange mailboxes to a new server but weren’t ready to pull the trigger yet. Now we have breathing room again.
Worked great! Brought SVI down to 5GB. Question is, what are the disadvantages of doing this and how much disk space should really be allocated towards SVI?
Wohoo!! Thanks man!
Thank you!!
This helped me. Just saved a client over 400+GB worth of wasted space on their 1TB hard drive.
thanks you , i increased around 60GB space in C drive the approach is perfect.
[…] This sums it up very well Don’t forget to run the VSSAdmin commands under a 64bit CMD.exe if you’re on 64bit Windows. I know that sounds obvious but I run something called TakeCommand Console LE which is a great shell but the free version is 32bit only. […]
You can do what the author said with the command prompt or you can type this below into the command prompt/run prompt
cleanmgr
Disk Cleaner has an option for clearing out restore points and shadowstorage, and a few other tools.
Great article. I wish I could keep a few select old restore points.
彼は、最も適した活動の種類は、人から人へと変化し、それはより多くの親和性と興味を持っているとしなければならないことを説明しています。 「過去には、障害のある特定の種類の特定の活動を相関させる試みがあった、今日より包括的な視点が特異で、人々は同じ欠点を持っているが、それぞれの人が一意であることを理解し、個性、ライフスタイルを持っています。」心理学者たちは障害を持つ子供たちは新しい活動を実践するために取得するときに、いくつかの注意を払う必要があることを助言しますが、子供を持つために必要とされるケアよりも、より具体的なものは、「特定の環境アセスメントの詳細の認識を逃れることはできません人、例えば、シグナリングの特定の種類。ここでは読み書きになるために失敗した人の数を持っているので、時々書かれた警告は理解することはできません。画像や誰か指示の形で視覚的に表現することが重要です。だから、特に、水泳など、一定のリスクを伴うスポーツで、安全手順を強化することが重要です。」
MUSUMECI, Bárbara Soares. 1.786). 2005. (JOHNSON,
1987). http://articles.medianet.info/profile.php?a=3363
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