Shrink SVI Folder

Description:

I ran into an interesting issue the other day, my C:\ on one of my Server 2008R2 machines was starting to get real full due to the System Volume Information folder found on the root of the C:\. I did the following steps to resolve the issue.

If you want to skip the shrinking and just delete all restore points, run something like:

   "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\vssadmin.exe" Delete Shadows /All /Quiet

NOTE: This did not work on my W10 install, but I don’t use System Restore, I use imaged based backups with Veeam Endpoint free.

To Resolve:

1. Run => cleanmgr.msc => Select System Restore and shadow copies => Clean up. This usually will fix the issue, but what do you do when it’s greyed out?
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2. Open an elevated command prompt and type: vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=1024MB

Update 2018-03

• I used the following method recently:

1. Run => diskmgmt.msc => Select the drive => Properties => Shadow Copies

2. In the list of copies, select those over 10 days old and delete them all.

   • To do it via command line:

   diskshadow
   Delete shadows OLDEST <BackupStorageLocation>
   Exit
   

   • I believe you would have to do this multiple times, so create a loop. Something that collects all restore points and only keeps the latest ten. I just did it via GUI since it was a one off task on one machine.
3. This only works if VSS/ Diskshadow is enabled. Since Windows 8, Shadow Copies is replaced by “File History”:
   • Article
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4. If you really want to enable Shadow copies on Windows 10, you have to do the following:

   • Enable it by following step 1 above. From CMD: wmic shadowcopy call create Volume=c:\

   • Create a scheduled task => Open Task Schedule and create task => name it ShadowCopy_C (or any other name you want) => select the triggers, once it was at 07:00 and 12:00 every day => At the action tab write wmic => at the arguments => shadowcopy call create Volume=C:\

   • Do this for each drive

   • It is highly advised you use a network drive to a file server that is backed up over VSS. You could also use an attached backup HDD per the link in step 3.