How can I recover disk space used up by System Volume Information

My laptop has 120GB disk space. It runs Windows 7. When I use 'SpaceSniffer', find out that 'System Volume Information' uses up 32G of space. And it has 5 files: 20.6 G, 3.4 G, 3.2G, 3.1 G, 2.4 G.

How can I recovered those space used by System Volume Information

Any my windows 7 restore point is already off.

Thank you.

3 Answers

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 System Volume Information:

1. To see the space allocated and used for System Volume Information:

   • Open Command Prompt with “Run as Administrator” option

   • Type in: vssadmin list shadowstorage

   • You will see Used Space, Allocated Space and Maximum Space for System Volume Information

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 step 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.

Most of that is from System Restore although it does sound pretty high. Go to Control Panel - System - System Protection to see how much space is allocated to system restore. Adjust as necessary. Sometimes if you re-install windows you get system restore data from a previous install left on disk - the best way to get rid of this is to boot from a Linux live CD like Backtrack 5 and delete the files.

You have it turned off, but the restore points are still there.

Goto to Desktop Cleanup: Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\System Tools\Disk Cleanup

and then click "Clean up System Files" - More options