ppgrainbow Posted February 5, 2017 Posted February 5, 2017 Does anyone have any idea on how to stop File Explorer from automatically creating the "\System Volume Information" on VHD hard disk images that are mounted as a drive? I have a MS-DOS FAT formatted VHD that were created in Virtual PC 2007 when I was on Windows Vista for nearly three years. MS-DOS 6.22 and below only supports the FAT partition and has no support for long file names at all. If I try to attach the VHDs with one click using File Explorer, the "\System Volume Information" gets automatically written to the attached VHD and it ends up corrupting the volume label when running MS-DOS on VPC 2007 or Hyper-V! Here's an example screenshot of what it looks like: The "\System Volume Information" is only used for System Restore points and in my opinion, it shouldn't be created when another internal hard drive doesn't have a System Restore point enabled. Is there a way to stop File Explorer from automatically creating the "System Volume Information" folder to the attached VHD?
jaclaz Posted February 5, 2017 Posted February 5, 2017 Check also for $RecycleBin (hidden). See if these work (though they are about "removable" disk drives): http://www.thewindowsclub.com/prevent-system-volume-information-folder-usb https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/44a54eee-7e11-4fed-a043-8db90439666c/prevent-system-volume-information-from-being-written-to-an-external-drive-on-windows-10?forum=win10itprogeneral jaclaz
ppgrainbow Posted February 5, 2017 Author Posted February 5, 2017 59 minutes ago, jaclaz said: Check also for $RecycleBin (hidden). See if these work (though they are about "removable" disk drives): http://www.thewindowsclub.com/prevent-system-volume-information-folder-usb https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/44a54eee-7e11-4fed-a043-8db90439666c/prevent-system-volume-information-from-being-written-to-an-external-drive-on-windows-10?forum=win10itprogeneral jaclaz I already prevented the System Volume Information folder from being written to a USB drive. It had nothing to do with preventing the System Volume Information folder to being automatically written to an attached VHD. What I did was to disable Windows Search in Administrative Tools under Services. That way whenever I attach a VHD, the "\System Volume Information" folder won't be written anymore.
jaclaz Posted February 5, 2017 Posted February 5, 2017 38 minutes ago, ppgrainbow said: What I did was to disable Windows Search in Administrative Tools under Services. That way whenever I attach a VHD, the "\System Volume Information" folder won't be written anymore. Good. jaclaz
ppgrainbow Posted February 5, 2017 Author Posted February 5, 2017 (edited) ^_^ By the way, if I want to open individual participants rather than mounting the whole virtual hard disk image (VHD), I can always use ImDisk. I got Windows Search disabled before on Vista and I did it again on Windows 8.1. Edited February 5, 2017 by ppgrainbow
jaclaz Posted February 5, 2017 Posted February 5, 2017 (edited) 56 minutes ago, ppgrainbow said: ^_^ By the way, if I want to open individual participants rather than mounting the whole virtual hard disk image (VHD), I can always use ImDisk. Well, not really-really, through IMDISK you are still mounting a volume (as opposed to the "whole disk" and possibly multiple volumes) only you are doing it at a different level of integration to the OS, if you want to actually "open" a volume (without mounting and read only), 7-zip is better suited (limited to RAW files or fixed size .vhd's) or Winimage (R/W, with some hiccups, if I remember correctly). jaclaz Edited February 5, 2017 by jaclaz
ppgrainbow Posted February 6, 2017 Author Posted February 6, 2017 3 hours ago, jaclaz said: Well, not really-really, through IMDISK you are still mounting a volume (as opposed to the "whole disk" and possibly multiple volumes) only you are doing it at a different level of integration to the OS, if you want to actually "open" a volume (without mounting and read only), 7-zip is better suited (limited to RAW files or fixed size .vhd's) or Winimage (R/W, with some hiccups, if I remember correctly). jaclaz The VHD are actually dynamic to conserve disk space. Speaking of WinImage, why does the software have some hiccups when it comes to read/write operations? It hasn't been updated since April 2013.
jaclaz Posted February 6, 2017 Posted February 6, 2017 8 hours ago, ppgrainbow said: The VHD are actually dynamic to conserve disk space. Speaking of WinImage, why does the software have some hiccups when it comes to read/write operations? It hasn't been updated since April 2013. Well, the fact that Winimage hasn't been updated means nothing, the software dates back to 1993 or 1994 originally, and it's not like anything actually happened in the meantime since 2013, except - maybe - the coming of the .vhdx format. I seem to remember I had some issues in particular setups (non-standard "sectors before"), but a lot of time have passed so I am not too sure. To save space do yourself a favour and use a sparse file (on NTFS of course) instead of a dynamic .vhd. jaclaz
ppgrainbow Posted February 6, 2017 Author Posted February 6, 2017 1 hour ago, jaclaz said: Well, the fact that Winimage hasn't been updated means nothing, the software dates back to 1993 or 1994 originally, and it's not like anything actually happened in the meantime since 2013, except - maybe - the coming of the .vhdx format. I seem to remember I had some issues in particular setups (non-standard "sectors before"), but a lot of time have passed so I am not too sure. To save space do yourself a favour and use a sparse file (on NTFS of course) instead of a dynamic .vhd. jaclaz That sounds like a giid idea. Any idea how can a sparse file on a NTFS volume can be created?
jaclaz Posted February 6, 2017 Posted February 6, 2017 Check this first thing: http://www.opalapps.com/sparse_checker/sparse_checker.html Here you can find a "collection" of more related tools: http://reboot.pro/topic/20487-any-tut-on-expanding-c-partition-on-many-ramdisk/http://reboot.pro/topic/20487-any-tut-on-expanding-c-partition-on-many-ramdisk/?p=192898 There is also a built-in command in fsutil: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc788025(v=ws.11).aspx but it cannot - I believe - create sparse files directly. jaclaz
ppgrainbow Posted February 11, 2017 Author Posted February 11, 2017 (edited) Thank you for pointing that out. I'll take a look at these articles. Edited February 11, 2017 by ppgrainbow
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