How To: Reclaim disk space from "system volume information"

Is your computer getting up in its years and running slower than when you first purchased it? Your problem may lie in the machine's System Volume Information. Watch this video to see how to reclaim or resize disk space from SVI.

Commands that you could use in the Command Prompt console in administrator mode in order to view and resize the space allocated for SVI:

1. To see the space allocated and used for SVI:

- Open Command Prompt with Run as Administrator option

- Type in: vssadmin list shadowstorage

- You will see Used Space, Allocated Space and Maximum Space for SVI

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 point 3 to set the max-size t, say, 1GB

- If you check now, most likely youll 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!