Windows 10 – Remove System Volume Information Folder from External Drive

disk-spaceexternal hard drivewindows 10

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.

IMPORTANT:

  • External hard drive has 1TB capacity and was previously used for backups and creating restore images (not anymore).
  • It's connected via USB 3.0 port.
  • System protected files are displayed.
  • All operations are performed on the clean install of Windows 10 Pro x64.
  • Formatted in NTFS
  • I only have one 1TB drive so moving files to another drive will not be an option.

So, what I have tried for now:

All the instructions provided here, meaning:

  1. takeown /f "F:\System Volume information" /a /r /d y
  2. icacls "F:\System Volume information" /t /c /grant administrators:F System:F everyone:F
    ("Are you sure?") y
  3. rd /s /q "F:\System Volume information"

This only helped me to delete one of the folders with a bunch of .db files in System Volume information folder. And I get Access denied as previously.

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.

I have gone though following posts:

How to delete "System Volume Information" folder from external drives?

How to delete a folder from external drives if names are too long (like System Volume Information/content…)?

Any suggestions guys?

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.

Best Answer

In my experience the answer to limiting the space used by System Volume Info on an external drive is NOT to delete it, as it returns again. Here's what worked for me (Windows 10 X64).

  1. Tell Windows not to index that drive.

    (a) In My Computer (or This PC) right-click the external drive, on General tab clear the "Allow files to have contents indexed" checkbox.

    (b) Search Windows for "Indexing Options" & run. Click Modify and clear the checkbox next to your external drive. (Say yes to "folders and sub-folders as well" & click Apply, then be patient.)

  2. 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.

  3. Limit Windows' "Shadow Copy" feature on the external drive [without disabling the service, which would affect all drives]. Open an elevated command prompt.

    To list the space currently used by shadow copies: vssadmin list shadowstorage

    To limit the space used by shadow copies on Drive F to 1gb: vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=F: /For=F: /Maxsize=1GB

    To validate changes: vssadmin list shadowstorage

Note: the source of the vssadmin commands: http://lifeofageekadmin.com/disappearing-space-on-windows-2008-r2-caused-by-system-volume-information/

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