What is this "system volume information"

I know its suppose to be for a system restore, but in on Vista Prem 32bit, and i dont know what it does. Everytime i delete a file/installer the system volume information seems to get bigger and you cant even delete it!

Its taking up 11gigs of my harddrive :/

 

yes, it is your restore points created by the volume shadow copy service.

You should leave it alone. It will max out at about 15 percent of your drive.

But, I can sense this about you...you won't...I just know you're going to do something dangerous

So, in the interest of saving a post later that starts with -- I SCREWED UP MY COMPUTER!, here's what you should do if you absolutely refuse to leave it alone.

Press the WINDOW key + R to bring up the run dialog, type CMD <ENTER>

type chkdsk /r
say yes, reboot
let it run

manually defrag your computer

Now, type
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=6GB
<enter>

This will resize your shadowstorage to no more than 6gb---I strongly--STRONGLY -- recommend you go no smaller than 6gb--in fact, I think you should leave it as it is, but anything less than 6gb and you are asking for trouble later on.

Now--HUGE CAVEAT HERE

If you ever disable system restore, and turn it back on again, system restore will restore to the default value.

Here is why I think changing it at all is a bad idea...when you get a new system, and system restore runs for the first time, it sets a volume shadow storage size of about 15 percent of your drive. This is based on the size of Windows Vista at a fresh install.

When you turn off and turn restore back on later, after Vista has run for a while and after many programs have been installled, windows will make a calculation based on the size of Windows then, and that could result in system restore taking up anywhere between 15 and 30 percent of your drive.

 

This is insane.
An OS occupying a third of a hard disk, no matter how big.
Instead of making it more stable, MS chose to eat up the users' resources.
Madness.

Actually, it is now taking nearly half of my 136 GB partition (out of a 160 GB hard disk), since I can't shrink it to be smaller than 63 GB (that's because of the inexing or the paging or the... whatever).
How I wish I had the time to nuke it right now.
I wish I had had the time to get the refund when my laptop arrived.

 

yea... system restore is useful for wen you first get ur new comp and ur installing and uninstalling and playing with alotta of the stuff. I had to use it like 3 times already... but now that its been a few days and everything is settled in.. i may just shut it myself... it depends on if u kno ull ever actually use the thing

 

the insane part is that MS took the slider out....that said, its taking up a third?

That is....odd.

That said, I suspect that if you were to install a bunch of stuff, the shadow volume would shrink due to the settings you have....I have not really tried it.

But, it should ahve stopped between 15 and 30 percent