System Volume Information, Unable to Defrag?

Tsnowflake · Jul 8, 2009

Hey storage people, so I posted here a while back in this thread about some issues I had defragmenting my drive. In the end the solution was just to defrag more often and all was good. However today I ran my weekly defrag but saw no change in the amount or size of fragmented files.

The culprit was once again C:\System Volume Information. So I went to Disk Cleanup and deleted all system restore points. This didn't change anything either.

I tried to defrag only that specific file and got this with no change in the current fragmentation status.

In all my previous defrags it was always able to handle the file and I was left happy with ~50mB of fragmented data (down from 30gB-50gB!!!). Today for whatever reason this was not the case, and I don't know what to do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tsnowflake · Jul 9, 2009

glorp · Jul 9, 2009

A reboot should unlock the file. If you are comfortable nuking your restore points just to defrag the disk then you might want to turn them off entirely or else minimize the number of times they are created. By default Vista creates at least one shadow volume snapshot per day on either of a reboot or at midnight. Apps can also force a snapshot prior to software installation/deinstallation which allows you to roll back. There is a task in Task Scheduler that controls this under "Library->Microsoft->Windows->System Restore". You can modify it to have automatic snapshots run less frequently if you prefer. Not sure it makes sense to do it though.

EDIT: Also if you are low on disk space on the drive you should consider lowering the available shadow storage space on the volume manually. By default, shadow storage (snapshots) will use up to 15% of your total drive space. You can lower that with the only effect being that you will have fewer long-term snapshots available for restore. You use the vssadmin command to do it. Goggle for it.

deathman20 · Jul 9, 2009

The program doesn't look like it will defrag it since its trying to do the whole folder at once. What you to do is disable it all together. The whole folder is in lock down by windows due to its nature.

As for snap shots, it takes it more then 1 time a day. If you install or uninstall software its written to that directory as well. There are a few other cases where it will write to that directory as well.

Would be nice to know that that directory could be defraged.

redduc900 · Jul 9, 2009

Try running Defraggler under the hidden administrator account. Since it's disabled by default, you'll need to enable it by running the following command from an administrative command prompt (Run as administrator)...

net user administrator /active:yes

Log out and you'll now see the Administrator account as a choice on the logon screen. To disable the built-in administrator account, type the following at the prompt...

net user administrator /active:no

deathman20 · Jul 9, 2009

Isn't that the same as running your account as administrator?

redduc900 · Jul 9, 2009

Actually instead of enabling the hidden administrator account, the local administrator account should instead be modified via the Local Users and Groups snap-in or Computer Management for safety reasons. But running a program with elevated privileges is at a lower level of integrity than the built-in admin. account (basically boils down to running w/ UAC disabled). There's also a super hidden account... the TrustedInstaller service (Windows Module Installer service), which can modify everything including system files.

RJARRRPCGP · Jul 9, 2009

You're required to take ownership of that folder.

Tsnowflake · Jul 9, 2009

redduc900 said:
Try running Defraggler under the hidden administrator account. Since it's disabled by default, you'll need to enable it by running the following command from an administrative command prompt (Run as administrator)...

net user administrator /active:yes

Log out and you'll now see the Administrator account as a choice on the logon screen. To disable the built-in administrator account, type the following at the prompt...

net user administrator /active:no

redduc900 said:
Actually instead of enabling the hidden administrator account, the local administrator account should instead be modified via the Local Users and Groups snap-in or Computer Management for safety reasons. But running a program with elevated privileges is at a lower level of integrity than the built-in admin. account (basically boils down to running w/ UAC disabled). There's also a super hidden account... the TrustedInstaller service (Windows Module Installer service), which can modify everything including system files.

i'm the only user on this computer (admin account) and I've had UAC disabled since day 1.

RJARRRPCGP said:
You're required to take ownership of that folder.

how can i do this?

redduc900 · Jul 9, 2009

Regardless of whether you have UAC disabled or not, try using the built-in hidden administrator account instead of the local administrator account that you're using now.

Tsnowflake · Jul 10, 2009

redduc900 said:
Regardless of whether you have UAC disabled or not, try using the built-in hidden administrator account instead of the local administrator account that you're using now.

it worked!

thanks redduc!

Tsnowflake · Jul 15, 2009

glorp said:
EDIT: Also if you are low on disk space on the drive you should consider lowering the available shadow storage space on the volume manually. By default, shadow storage (snapshots) will use up to 15% of your total drive space. You can lower that with the only effect being that you will have fewer long-term snapshots available for restore. You use the vssadmin command to do it. Goggle for it.

Just wanted to follow up on this in case anyone else has/had this problem.

Though the defrag issue was fixed I would still have to defrag fairly often. I took Glorp's advice and found out how to change the maximum space allocated to shadow copies.

the command is

Code:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on="drive letter": /For="drive letter": /Maxsize="x"GB

without the quotation marks

deathman20 · Jul 15, 2009

Oh think I'll have to do that. No need for it to chew up that much memory on the drive im sorry but thats quiet a bit of space.

Tsnowflake · Jul 15, 2009

deathman20 said:
Oh think I'll have to do that. No need for it to chew up that much memory on the drive im sorry but thats quiet a bit of space.

yeah mine was set to use up to 300GB!!! I cut that down to 4 and now I'm a happy camper

System Volume Information, Unable to Defrag?

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