Backup System Volume Information
Roger Cook
partitions (I am running out of capacity on the tape drive) ? Some of these
have grown to giant proportions probably because of the generous limits I
have set for the Shadow Volume Copy Servive.
Jenny wu [MSFT]
Thanks for using the SBS newsgroup!
For your description, I understand that you have concerns about backup the
System Volume Information folder. If I am off base, please don't hesitate
to let me know.
The System Volume Information folder contains system information about the
volume (as opposed to information about the system volume, which you might
guess from its name). Windows 2003 components that use the System Volume
Information folder include the encrypting file system (EFS) and the content
indexing service. The tracking.log file is generated by the system to
record the relevant information.
The information is important enough to the integrity of the drive that not
even the Administrator account is allowed to manipulate the directory or
its contents. It is created when the drive is accessed or when a Windows NT
4 NTFS partition is converted to NTFS5. It is not recommended that you do
not backup the System Volume Information.
The Shadow Copy service in Windows Server 2003 also places snapshots in the
System Volume Information folder. Based on my research, the most of the
disk space is taken up by shadow copy snapshots. It''s safe to delete the
snapshots. To prevent Shadow Copy consuming too much disk space, you can
set a limit for the amount of hard disk space that will be used to store
snapshots. To do so:
1. Right-click the drive letter in Windows Explorer and click Properties.
2. On the Shadow Copies tab, click Settings.
3. Modify the maximum size as desired to limit future growth.
Another solution to the issue, you can move the information folder to
another volume for Volume Share Copy for Shared Folder, I would also like
to provide you with following additional information.
The volume shadow copy content would be stored at <Drive>:\System Volume
Information by Default.
To store the shadow copies of another volume on the same file server, a
volume can be dedicated on separate disks. For example, if user files are
stored on H:\, another volume such as S:\ can be used to store the shadow
copies. Using a separate volume on separate disks provides better
performance and is recommended for heavily used file servers.
The volume where the shadow copies are stored is set to the volume that
contains the source files by default. You can change the storage volume
when there are no shadow copies present. If you need to change the storage
volume for a volume that has already been enabled, you must first delete
all of the shadow copies on that volume.
A. Open Computer Management.
B. In the console tree, right-click Shared Folders, select All Tasks, and
click Configure Shadow Copies.
C. Click the volume where you want to make changes, and then click Settings
(If shadow copy is enabled, you should first click Disable).
D. In the Settings dialog box, change the "Located on this volume" and
click OK.
E. Click Enable.
However, you cannot use a network drive for storing your shadow copies on a
network share. You can use a local volume only. Even in cluster
configurations, the original (shadowed) disk, and the shadow storage disk
must be in the same cluster group, which means that they are both visible
to the active node.
More information:
Volume Shadow Copy Service Technical Reference
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/all/techre
f/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/windowsServ/2003/all/techre
f/en-us/W2K3TR_vss_intro.asp
Hope above information helps! I am happy to be assistance of you and look
forward to your reply!
Have a nice day!
Sincerely,
Jenny Wu
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--------------------
>From: "Roger Cook" <aka...@hotmail.com>
>Subject: Backup System Volume Information
>Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 10:04:53 -0000
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Roger Cook
have used it quite a lot. I like to set aside quite a lot of space for it -
this does however lead to a large System Volume Information folder.
This site is not currently using encrypted files so in view of the size of
the folder and the restricted capacity of the backup tapes I am very tempted
to exclude the System Volume Information folders from the backup. Obviously
I would lose any shadow copies if I had to restore but I can live with that.
""Jenny wu [MSFT]"" <v-ya...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:$FLwLGHA...@TK2MSFTNGXA02.phx.gbl...
Jenny wu [MSFT]
Thanks for your update.
The "System Volume Information" folder is a system folder and is used to
save operating system information. For example, this folder may contain
system restore information, Volume Shadow Copy information, encrypting file
system (EFS) and the content indexing service, and so on. All related
information is stored in tracking.log file, we can not exclude the EFS file
from the system volume information folder.
Additionally, I would like to suggest you take a look at the following
article to get updates of VSS.
833167 A Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) update package is available for
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=833167
Related information:
814594 How to Locate and Correct Disk Space Problems on NTFS Volumes
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=814594
More information:
To free up space, I would like to give you some suggestions to it:
1. Use the "Eseutil /d" command to defrag the Exchange 2003 server
databases. When the users delete messages, the size of the database will
keep the same and you must perform an offline defragmentation using the
exeutil tool to reduce the Exchange database seize. Please note that
defragmenting a database requires free disk space equal to 110 percent of
the size of the database that you want to process so if you do not have
enough free space to run the eseutil tool, you can defrag the database on
another computer. See:
328804 How to Defragment Exchange Databases
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=328804
192185 XADM: How to Defragment with the Eseutil Utility (Eseutil.exe)
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=192185
2. If a defrag still cannot free up much space of your C drive, you can
consider moving the Exchange databases and log files to another hard drive
with bigger capacity. You can refer to the following MS KB articles to get
more information on doing this:
821915 How to move Exchange databases and logs in Exchange Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=821915
3. You can also move client programs folder, sharepoint database, monitor
database, and so on to another location to free up C drive disk space.
You can refer to the following MS white paper to move data folders as you
want to:
Moving Data Folders for Windows Small Business Server 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sbs/2003/maintain/movedata.mspx
830254 How to move the client programs folder to another location in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=830254
If you have any further questions on the issue please let me know. I am
happy to be assistance of you!
Have a nice day!
Sincerely,
>References: <OABTry8$FHA...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl>
<$FLwLGHA...@TK2MSFTNGXA02.phx.gbl>
>Subject: Re: Backup System Volume Information
>Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:52:40 -0000
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