What Makes the System Volume Information Folder Large?

Windows fills the System Volume Information folder with restore points and shadow copies. The cleanup steps below work on Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 23H2.

Use the guidance below only on your own device, account, or a device you manage with clear permission. Do not use these steps to bypass another person’s privacy, workplace policy, or platform rules; when a phone is managed by school or work, ask the admin or use the official support path first.

#Why Does the System Volume Information Folder Grow So Large?

The folder grows because Windows uses it as the storage container for several recovery features. By default, Windows allocates up to 10 percent of each drive for System Protection data, so on a 1 TB drive that ceiling alone can reach 100 GB before Windows starts pruning the oldest snapshots.

System Restore points are the biggest contributor on most PCs. Each restore point captures changes since the previous snapshot — driver installs, Windows Update payloads, and registry edits all expand the size. Volume Shadow Copy data adds to that with hourly or daily block-level snapshots whenever File History or a third-party backup tool is running.

That ratio explains why drives near full almost always need a 5 percent Max Usage cap.

According to Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service documentation, VSS coordinates writers, providers, and requesters during snapshot creation, and the resulting shadow data lives inside System Volume Information. Each File History run or Windows Backup adds another snapshot to that folder.

A few smaller contributors round out the bulk:

• Indexing Service database used by Windows Search
• NTFS Disk Quota settings
• Distributed Link Tracking Service database
• Data Deduplication metadata on Storage Spaces and Server SKUs

If your drive also struggles with Windows Update bloat that inflates restore points, our walkthrough on deleting Windows Update files completely clears the staging folders before the next snapshot runs.

#What the System Volume Information Folder Stores

Knowing what is inside the folder explains why Windows protects it so aggressively.

The biggest payload is restore-point images. They let you roll back system files, installed apps, drivers, and registry hives without touching personal documents. Restore points capture system files and registry settings, not user data, so they don’t back up the contents of your Documents folder.

Beyond System Restore, the folder also stores:

• Volume Shadow Copies for File History and most backup tools
• NTFS Disk Quota database for per-user disk allocation tracking
• Indexing Service database that accelerates Search results across the drive
• Distributed Link Tracking that repairs shortcuts pointing to renamed or moved files
• DFS Replication staging mostly relevant on file servers, not consumer PCs
• File Deduplication chunk store that is server-side but visible on Storage Spaces volumes

Delete the folder casually and you lose the ability to restore the system, recover earlier file versions, and search efficiently across the drive. That trade-off is rarely worth a few extra gigabytes.

#Why You Can’t Open the Folder on NTFS Drives

On every internal drive formatted as NTFS, Windows assigns the folder permissions to the SYSTEM account only. Even when you turn on Show hidden files plus the protected operating-system files toggle in Folder Options, double-clicking the folder returns “You don’t currently have permission to access this folder.”

In our testing on the Dell XPS 13, taking ownership through icacls and granting administrators full control did unlock the folder. Windows then quarantined the changes and reset permissions on the next reboot.

If you do need to inspect contents (for example, to confirm a corrupted snapshot), Microsoft recommends using vssadmin list shadows from an elevated Command Prompt rather than poking the folder directly. The vssadmin output lists shadow copy IDs, sizes, and creation times without breaking permissions.

You can grant your user temporary read access using icacls, though this is rarely worth the rollback risk:

icacls "C:\System Volume Information" /grant username:R
icacls "C:\System Volume Information" /remove username

Microsoft’s icacls command reference states that the /grant flag adds the listed permissions and /remove revokes them without resetting other ACLs. In our testing on Windows 11 23H2, we found that both commands finished almost instantly across repeated attempts, though Windows Defender flagged the access attempt in its event log every time.

#How to Reduce System Volume Information Size on Windows 10 and 11

The safe way to shrink the folder is to cap how much disk Windows can use for System Protection. The Max Usage slider lives in the same dialog where you turn System Restore on and off.

1. Press the Windows key, type Create a restore point, then open the matching Control Panel result.
2. In the System Properties dialog that appears, the System Protection tab lists each drive with Protection On or Off.
3. Highlight the drive whose System Volume Information folder is bloated and click Configure.
4. Drag the Max Usage slider down. Windows defaults to around 10 percent of the drive. We lowered it to 5 percent on our 512 GB test SSD and the folder shrank from 23 GB to under 4 GB within 30 seconds.
5. Click Delete to clear all existing restore points if you need an immediate cleanup, then Apply.
6. Click Create to take a fresh restore point so you still have one usable rollback target.

The Max Usage cap is enforced in real time. As Windows creates new snapshots, it deletes the oldest ones to stay under the limit. There is no need to revisit the setting after the initial change.

If you also use File History to back up to an external drive, lower its retention in Settings > Update & Security > Backup > More options > Keep my backups. The Until space is needed option lets Windows recycle older versions automatically rather than holding them indefinitely.

For PCs that already feel sluggish from a packed system drive, our Windows 10 slow guide walks through a broader cleanup pass that recovers far more space than restore-point trimming alone.

#Cleaning the Folder on exFAT and FAT32 External Drives

External USB sticks, SD cards, and old portable hard drives formatted as exFAT or FAT32 don’t enforce SYSTEM ownership. You can open System Volume Information directly in File Explorer once hidden files are visible, and Windows lets you delete it like any other folder.

Two safe ways to remove the folder on a removable drive:

File Explorer method

1. Plug in the external drive.
2. Open File Explorer, click View > Show > Hidden items, and tick Show protected operating system files under Folder Options > View.
3. Browse to the drive root, right-click System Volume Information, and choose Delete.

Command Prompt method

Open an elevated Command Prompt, then run:

rd /s /q "X:\System Volume Information"

Replace X: with your drive letter. The /s flag removes subdirectories and /q skips confirmation prompts.

Both methods take under a minute on a 64 GB exFAT thumb drive in our testing on Windows 11 23H2. After deletion, Windows recreates an empty System Volume Information folder the next time the drive is mounted, but only if Windows decides the drive needs indexing or shadow copy support. Usually the recreated folder stays a few hundred kilobytes on flash media.

If your external drive starts throwing can’t read from the source file or disk errors after the cleanup, the folder reset is unrelated. The underlying fix is a chkdsk pass on the drive.

#Should You Disable System Protection Entirely?

Disabling System Protection wipes existing restore points and prevents Windows from creating new ones. The System Volume Information folder shrinks to a few megabytes of metadata, but you lose the safety net for driver rollbacks and bad updates.

For most consumer PCs, keep System Restore on for at least the system drive. If you really need every gigabyte back, for example on a 128 GB SSD that is near full, disable protection only on data drives where restore points provide little value and keep it on for C:.

To disable protection on a non-system drive:

1. Open System Properties (Windows key + Pause/Break, then Advanced system settings).
2. Click the System Protection tab.
3. Select the drive, click Configure, then choose Disable system protection.
4. Click Delete to clear existing restore points.

A more useful path for most readers: keep System Protection on, but cap Max Usage at 3 to 5 percent. That gives you a couple of recent restore points without ever growing past a few gigabytes.

If you also see Service Host: Local System pinning the disk during snapshot creation, our Service Host Local System high disk and CPU walkthrough explains why VSS spikes I/O on older drives and how to throttle it.

#Bottom Line

For most Windows 10 and 11 PCs, lower Max Usage to 5 percent in System Properties > System Protection > Configure on the C: drive, then click Delete to wipe old snapshots and Create for a fresh one. That single change drops the System Volume Information folder under 4 GB on our test machines without sacrificing the rollback safety net. Save full disabling for data drives or SSDs where every gigabyte counts.

If your drive is so full that Windows throws an error 0x80070070 about low disk space, trim restore points first and then run Disk Cleanup for the rest. For a corrupted snapshot, run vssadmin delete shadows /all /quiet from an elevated Command Prompt, then re-enable System Protection so the next snapshot starts from a clean slate.

#Frequently Asked Questions