Issue after running Macrium...

Before I begin with the issue, please do not attempt this if you are not really advanced and know your stuff as I do not want to be responsible for borking your computer....

I was reading on another forum about a user having Macrium backups running on a schedule. He posted a picture of his System Volume Information folder showing there was multiple older VSS Shadow copies still lurking around.

I decided to take a look at mine since I use Macrium. I had to take ownership of the SVI folder to look in there of course. After I gained access and looked, there were quite a few VSS "snapshots" totalling over 11GB to my shock. I did a bit of digging on this and ran this command:

Code:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=2GB

This reduced the size to just under 2GB. I have since rebooted and see no issues at all. This is not a request for help, but rather to see if anyone else using Macrium can confirm the same. Like I said please do not run any commands or do anything WITHOUT FIRST HAVING A BACKUP and knowing what you are doing.

My main drive is over 9GB lighter now.

EDIT: I was able to tie together the exact date and time of the files in the System Volume Information folder to my logs in Macrium. Exact dates and times. Also upon reboot Windows took permission back of the SVI.

Any ideas, comments?

Shadow copy is created and store in SVI by backup software and once completed, it should remove it. If you have a bunch of those, that means the backup software did not do a good job cleaning up or the backup failed at some point in the past.

Second, you should not take ownership of SVI, the special permission was set so that even Adminstrator can access it. Change it back does not really behave the same.

To delete all the orphan shadow copy, use: vssadmin delete shadows /all so there's no need to look into SVI.
Nirsoft has a tool for you to explore these shadows:
ShadowCopyView - Shadow copy viewer for Windows 10/8/7/Vista

Use Device Cleanup from: Uwe Sieber's Homepage
to remove the orphan drivers from Device Manager too:

On reboot Windows restored the permissions back the way they were automatically. I cannot even read the folder now. It says "You must have Read permissions to view the properties of this object".

Sure you can if you click on OK. This is the message you should have seen .:

Access Denied said:

It went back that way right after I rebooted when I last looked after turning off System Restore. Right when I posted the 2nd message in the thread :)
Attachment 184244

OK. May be when you turn off System Restore, it also reset the permission back to default. Just a guess because I never use System Restore.