Windows 10: Shadow Copy, uses ? Get rid of it ?

I was just looking around and run into this program: Access Hard Drive Snapshots with ShadowCopyView - MajorGeeks

After examining part of my system with it I noticed that some folders tend to be huge and taking a lot of space. Now, I'm not cramped for space but looks like shadow copy of just windows folder has almost 40GB.
It seems to be dependent on System restore, would turning it off make all shadow copies disappear ?

:)

 

How do I get rid of temporary files and shadow files on Windows 10?

Use Disk Cleanup to get rid of these files.



Use this screen to eliminate Temporary file (amongst others); for Shadow copies click Clean up system files. Then select the More Options tab.



Here, use the Clean up button under System Restore and Shadow Copies.

 

How do I get rid of temporary files and shadow files on Windows 10?

Temporary files in use will not be deleted. Some files will be in use by system components and can only be deleted after a restart, but then new temporary files will be created.

If you really need to get rid of shadow copies, open an elevated command prompt and enter the following command: vssadmin delete shadows

This will also eliminate any system restore points you have created.

 

For information about VSS chech this out: Volume Shadow Copy Service

 

You can go to System Properties ----> System Protection. On that tab click on the Configure button and then on the Delete button. It will delete all the VSS snapshots.

PS - These are restore points. Only delete them if you are absolutely sure you want to recover that hard disk space.

 

Yeah, i know that, question was more if to keep so much although it works some crazy way.
When I extracted windows folder using that utility to another disk it practically copied whole windows folder of ~40GB. My system restore was set at 5GB to start with and that's good enough for about 3 restore points.

 

After deleting all restore points I found the System Vol. Information folder on Drive C had about 20 GB of what seemed to be useless data. I just deleted it and have seen no adverse effects on W10. I keep System Protection switched off on all drives, instead preferring to do multiple scheduled incremental backups using Macrium Reflect.

 

After cleaning up restore points my System Vol. Information folder on Drive C: is now only 20MB.
Going to keep SR off for now, it's loosing it's usefulness. Regular MR backup, although much larger, can be stored on external disks and provides full protection to the system.

 

That seems absurdly large. My Windows directory is under 4GB and even uncompressed it would only be 14GB. I don't know the program you are using but you could try treesize to see the size in case it is reported incorrectly. I have 5GB assigned for restorepoints and can normally fit about 10 snapshots before the old ones start dropping off. As they are differentials it depends what you do of course.

I upgraded to 1611 on 28 July and just made a restore point - it 320MB but then I've only had one update since then and upgrades always turns off system restore.

There are various bugs that can cause it to grow to ridiculous size (see here and here and so on).

If you mean disabling the service - no it doesn't delete restore points. It stops the system making any more though and if you try make one manually it fails (as the service is disabled) and the get-computerrestorepoint commandlet also fails. You set it back to manual and you can see they are still all there.

Conversely if you turn of system protection it deletes all restore points (as happens when you do an upgrade). In that case you would lose not only the ability to do system restore but also the previous versions functionality which I find handy.

If you are happy with how your system is I'd turn system protection off (which will delete the contents of the C:\System Volume Information directory and then turn it on again and set a limit of 3% or whatever. Then keep an eye on it with treesize.

Do bare (bear?) in mind that Macrium (and other backup solutions) use VSS to make the snapshot (assuming you are running them from within Windows) so they will not work either if you disable the service.

 

No, I didn't disable service, just stopped automatic creation of SR point on all disks. Once I disabled it I just restarted and all the points were gone. Now still have to check if some programs like Revo uninstaller that make restore points before uninstalling a program those restore points are kept.
Macrium reflect, if set so, makes complete copy of all partitions/disks and doesn't use restore points or shadow copy although it includes it in .mrimg file.

 

You can be much more specific with PoSh. For example to delete restore points older than 14 days... Code: Get-ComputerRestorePoint | Where*{*$_.ConvertToDateTime($_.CreationTime) -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-14) } | Delete-ComputerRestorePoint[/quote] The Delete-Computer-RestorePoint is from TechNet here: Script to delete System Restore Points

EDIT: Sorry if I'm going off on a tangent again Mike.

I would suggest not stopping the service as it will break Macrium. Whether you find system protection useful is up to you - I do for the previous versions functionality but this is only really useful if you schedule restore points. If you don't the system makes them at random (when you install things etc).

However if you schedule restore points to be made daily then it is handy - if you want an old version of a Word document or jpg you were working on yesterday you can get it just by right clicking on the file. At least I think this is useful..

 

Sounds good to me. I was not initially sure if you meant the service or enable/disable system protection. Keep an eye on the size incase it is growing too fast.

Macrium (which I use) definitely does use the VSS service if you are running it from within Windows.

Source

I had a big problem as some driver I was using broke Macrium as it (an Apple HFS driver) crashed the VSS service.

I'm not sure about Revo does but I doubt it would rely on System Volume Information as it would make it too unreliable if it relied on snapshots which may be deleted at any time - I think it stores its own info.

 

SR does not exceed its preset size, it will fail to create a restore point, if it is too big. Sounds more like File History.

How to Set Up and Configure File History in Windows 10

File History - Turn On or Off in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

Could be. Where are File History changes backed up when your File History drive is disconnected though? I thought it was in %TEMP% but I can't find any definitive answer... Definitely it should not be in C:\Windows (but perhaps it is).

 

Interesting because I have had system restore off for months, and my Macrium Reflect runs just fine from my desktop.