How To Remove "System Volume Information"

[aka7918]

The patch not working

http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/SVI_Eliminator.html

[Ctrl-X]

How to gain access to the System Volume Information folder

After applying the correct NTFS permissions you should be able to delete it.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Why does Windows 2000 create this folder despite the fact that Windows 2000 don't have System Restore?

[Ctrl-X]

IIRC the folder holds the Indexing Service indexes in Windows 2000.

[jftuga]

If you turn off system restore and indexing, I think this folder will be empty.

-John

[Zartach]

There is more information stored in that folder than just indexing and file restore, it however depends on the role the server has.

The sysvol folder on a DC for instance holds the full replica of the AD database in ldf files deleting the folder would be 'unhandy' in that situation.

[tim]

Oh dear that's not a good idea.

The "System Volume Information" folder also holds the hidden NTFS journal file.

You seriously don't want to mess with that!

[Delprat]

The "System Volume Information" folder also holds the hidden NTFS journal file.

You seriously don't want to mess with that!

The NTFS log is $LogFile, like $Mft it's a metafile not stored in any folder (but represented as being in the root) :

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs-system-files.htm

System Volume Information is also used by EFS :

http://www.ntfs.com/internals-encrypted-files.htm

...and the 8th day, God created Google...

++

[tim]

My apologies, I was thinking of this:

The DLT Client service monitors activity on NTFS volumes and stores maintenance information in a file called Tracking.log, which is located in a hidden folder called System Volume Information at the root of each volume. This folder is protected by permissions that allow only the system to have access to it. The folder is also used by other Windows services, such as Indexing Service.

[kitaec]

I deleted this folder multiple times on Windows 2000 Professional with a batch file found in these Forums. Nothing bad happened to my system or my data. The folder recreats itself in a minute or so.

But of course you should carry such experiments on a backuped systems just in case.

[aka7918]

applying NTFS permissions can del the folder,but it can create itself soon.

@kitaec,can you share your method?thx

[kitaec]

As I said - I am able to delete the folder but it recreates in a minute.

There was a discussion about this folder some time ago. Search for this. There was a person who solved this by editing some system files.

I copied this from the discussion:

for %%i in (C: D: E: F: G: H: I: J: K: L: M: N: O: P: Q: R: S: T: U: V: W: X: Y: Z:) do if exist "%%i\system volume information" cacls "%%i\system volume information" /e /g "kitaec":f
for %%i in (C: D: E: F: G: H: I: J: K: L: M: N: O: P: Q: R: S: T: U: V: W: X: Y: Z:) do if exist "%%i\system volume information" attrib -s -r -h "%%i\system volume information"
for %%i in (C: D: E: F: G: H: I: J: K: L: M: N: O: P: Q: R: S: T: U: V: W: X: Y: Z:) do if exist "%%i\system volume information" rd /s /q "%%i\system volume information"

Change kitaec to the name of current user.

[grundthal]

The SVI Eliminator patch referenced in post #1 works great for me under XP SP3, haven't tried Vista yet. Not only are the SVI folders protected by ridiculous security permissions, they're recreated at boot by ntoskrnl.exe, and this patch fixes both issues by rewriting permissions, deleting the folders, and editing ntoskrnl. Although ntoskrnl is protected by SFC, the patch circumvents that by deleting the copy in dllcache. You must be logged in (or at least run the program) as an administrator. Next step, figuring out how to make this into a RyanVM addon...

As far as I can tell, the System Volume Information folder is used by System Restore, Distributed Link Tracking Service, Indexing Service, Volume Shadow Copy, NTFS EFS and supposedly by Vista's WinFS databases. There may be a couple of other disk-related OS functions or MS server applications that use it too but I haven't been able to find reference to them yet. I am using none of these services/functions and with a couple of desktops running 8 hard drives between the two I have had no problems running a hacked ntoskrnl without SVI folders.

Call it picky, stupid, or whatever, but I hate when an OS tries to keep secrets from me, not to mention making pointless extra writes to my precious (and occasionally noisy...) hard drives, so I am glad to have finally found an option delete and disable these folders. I do directory listings a lot (always rearranging my folders...) and it's annoying to have to filter out some useless folder from some garbage XP feature hacks. System restore doesn't back up the data I want and with nLite+RyanVM's updates it's not that bad to reinstall the OS if something does go wrong, which rarely seems to happen to me anyway. Indexing service is a useless joke that wears out my hard drives and lags down my other programs, and I have no use for the other "features" that use this folder.