Re: System Volume Information.exe
Emmanuelle Riker
I have currently found out that System Volume information folder on my external HDD takes around 124GB of space. Hence I decided to delete it to free up some additional space. But for now everything what I have tried did not succeeded.
What I also thought of is to create a separate partition on this drive and move all the files there then format the partition with System Volume information and merge partitions back. This did not work quite well as creating new partition also created a System Volume information folder. And it took quite a while to do the partitioning.
NOTICE: I don't want to use third party software like Unlocker, Eraser or anything similar to these two. There should be a legit way to get rid of the files in Windows without third party software.
Quick notice: it's not possible to remove System Volume Information folder and its contents even with third-party solutions without taking an ownership of the folder.
That all the steps what I have taken in order to be able to delete the System Volume Information folder from the external HDD. This worked fine for my machine Win 10 Pro x64 and I've got my extra 124GB.
@Scott in his comments points out for a missing explanation for a more precise description of what exactly these commands do as well as proving why this method exactly works and other methods do not work.
Regarding to the meaning of the commands - I am not aware exactly what they do, I can only refer "primitively" that these shell commands help to take "full ownership" of this particular folder (more precise/technical description is welcome).
This method "works" better than others, because I was not able to find any other method what actually "work". And only following precisely these steps helped me to delete the folder in order to free up space on my external HDD.
Tell Windows not to create restore points on that drive.Search Windows for "restore point" & run. Click on Create a Restore Point. Click the external drive, then the Configure button, and select Disable System Protection.
Another thing you could try is to use a program for erasing files, like 'eraser' or some other application that is used to delete files and folders from hard drives. This solution would be the simplest in my opinion. I have used it to delete files that I could not delete from Windows due to various errors.
I was having the same problem and here's what I found on another site. I tried it on my Windows 10 system and it removed over 250 GB from the System Volume Information folder, bringing it down to 10.1 GB. (Ref: -1800984/delete-system-volume-information-space-drive.html )
The system volume information is a folder that contains information so Windows can "repair" your system when something fails. It is possible that there are too many images (copies of hard drive files and settings etc) stored and this is filling up your hard drive. What you can do is go to Windows Explorer and right click on your C drive. Choose properties and in the properties screen you can see your disk (probably coloured almost completely in blue) and below it there should be a button that reads "disk cleaning" or something like that. I run the dutch version and it is called "Schijfopruiming" so forgive me if my translation is a bit off.
The lower option is "system restore and shadow copies" or something like that. Here is says you can save additional disk space by removing all but the most recent restore points. If you click the clean up button below that one it will delete all restore points and shadow copies except for the last one. This does however mean your system should run fine, as you can no longer restore it to a previous state with the exception of the last stored one.
As for me, wish there was a way to change the location of the system volume information folder to an external drive, and to easily configure Windows to create more restore points (versus doing this). I have over 50gbs reserved for the C drive restore points, yet Windows left only one after the last update.
Beside using Linux (as some have suggested) if you are not looking for a permanent solution using rmdir "System Volume Information" \s when inside the root folder of the partition of the external storage should work (at least on Win10).
Formatting clearly doesn't work because it unmounts the external device, erases its data, creates a new partition and then mounts it again. The last triggers a reaction from Windows to recreate the pesky folder again.
Hi there,
I encountered a weird thing (bug?) that rclone attempts to access the system volume information folder when copying from the root of a local drive to another one.
I did try to exclude the folder using the --exclude "System Volume Information/**" flag, but it does not work when a --include flag exists.
There will be an error message about rclone cannot access the system volume information folder on the destination drive.
Furthermore, as described earlier, explicitly excluding the system volume information folder using --filter "- System Volume Information/**" does not work either.
BTW, I just tried the command without the --dry-run argument to see if this is a dry-run only problem.
However, in addition to the access denied error, rclone reports a new error:
FILE_NAME: Failed to copy: mkdir \\?: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Go to
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.)
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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 ?
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 ,