How do I delete huge files from System Volume Information?

Anonymous

I have three large hard disks that I use to store backups of the system. Some program -- I think it was the defragmenter -- caused Win 7 to place huge files (> 4 GB) in System Volume Information. Nothing I do wil let me delete these files. I cannot even take ownership of them. When I try to take ownership of either the file or of System Volume Information I receive an "Access is denied" error on the file name. Nothing should prevent an administrator from taking ownership of any file on his system. How can I delete these huge files? Please do not answer "Use Disk Cleanup to delete all but the last restore point." That runs, but it deletes nothing. On a previous installation of Win 7, I could take ownership of System Volume Information and delete its contents, but ot on this new installation.

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Anonymous

Hello,

The System Volume information folder keeps the Restore point entries. Usually it is not recommended to delete the entries from the System volume information.

Step 1 : Stop the Volume shadow copy service.

a: Go to Start - Run and type Services.msc then press enter.

b: Under the Status column look for any entries that read as "Started", make it as “Stopped”.

**c:**Click apply and then ok.

Step 2 : Then take ownership of the System volume Information folder and then try to delete its contents.

How do I open a file if I get an access denied message?

Hope that helps.

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47 additional answers

Anonymous

2013-04-26T01:15:25+00:00

When I go to Windows Explorer and right click the drive in question, and choose Properties, there is no "Volume Shadow Copies" tab. Can you provide more detailed instructions on where you are finding this tab?

In Win 7 and Win 8, it is in Control Panel, System, System Protection.
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Anonymous

2013-04-24T20:17:52+00:00

When I go to Windows Explorer and right click the drive in question, and choose Properties, there is no "Volume Shadow Copies" tab. Can you provide more detailed instructions on where you are finding this tab?
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Anonymous

2013-04-02T16:24:13+00:00
These are the files which are used when volume shadow copies are created. aI tried all the steps mentioned above and still I am unable to delete the files. Here is what I did to remove these files from my disk.
1. Go the drive properties, for which the issue persists.
2. Go to the tab volume shadow copies and check if this is enabled.
3. In my case i found this was disabled. Click on enable, limit maximum size to 300MB and click ok.
4. The file size of Volume shadow copy will be reduced to 300MB.
5. Disable shadow copying and then volume shadow copy size will be reduced to 0 MB!!
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Anonymous

2013-04-02T13:33:05+00:00

In step 4, the W7 slider used to go to ZERO, but my W7 version now stops at 2% or about 320MB. I've got five SVI files, one which has a gazillion fragments that will not go away. Yes it is on the C: drive. Turning protection off and deleting all restore points has no effect on these files.

This system was a Workgroup PC but is now on a Domain. Could these be orphaned files from the old setup? If so, how do we remove them?

Thanks.
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