ou could choose the shadow copies tap then choose Settings and then “use Limit" put in 1024MB, OK and OK, the drive would have plenty of free space.

For more detailed information, please refer to the thread below:

Windows 2008 R2 System Volume Information too large
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/647d350f-f3a0-487d-b885-f2eaa3f029f0/windows-2008-r2-system-volume-information-too-large

If that doesn't work:

One of the servers (running Windows Server 2012 R2) has run out of free disk space on a system drive (C:\). I checked and cleaned all resource-consuming locations (WinSxS, TEMP folders, user profiles, outdated updates, etc.), but it didn’t give a noticeable effect. There was still not enough disk space. At last, I have found that a large part of a system disk has been occupied by System Volume Information folder. In this article I will try to tell you how the System Volume Information folder is used on Windows systems, what is stored in it, and how to clean it up .

How to Gain Access to the System Volume Information Folder?

The System Volume Information folder is located at the root of each disk (be it a local HDD / SSD, or removable USB flash drive). It stores system data related to system recovery service, indexing, File History feature, etc.

By default, the System Volume Information folder is hidden and only the SYSTEM has access to it. Even the administrator cannot open it and view the contents of the folder. If you try to open the System Volume Information folder in Explorer, under any user (even an administrator), you will receive an access denied error:

To view the contents of the folder, you have to assign yourself as the directory owner and grant your account the NTFS permissions to access it (this can be done through the Security tab in the folder properties). But you can grant your account (for example, username) permissions to access the folder much faster with the command:

icacls "C:\System Volume Information" /grant username:F /t

Check in the folder properties on the Security tab that your account has full access permissions to the folder.

To restrict access to the System Volume Information folder, run:

icacls "C:\System Volume Information" /remove username /t

What is System Volume Information Folder Used For?

What is stored in System Volume Information folder? I found information about the following services, which store their files in this folder (the list is not exhaustive):

• System restore points on client systems or System State backups made using Windows Server Backup (wbadmin) in server OSs;
• The contents of Indexing Service database used for fast file search;
• Distributed Link Tracking Service database;
• Disk snapshots made by Volume Shadow Copy, which can be used to recover older versions of files;
• NTFS disk quota settings;
• The database of file deduplication service;
• DFS Replication database (dfsr.db).

If you use shadow copies on your computer or server to roll back to old versions of files / system states, keep in mind: each new VSS snapshot saves data to the System Volume Information directory, increasing its size. The more often shadow copies are created and the more often the files on the disk change, the faster the size of this directory grows.

In the screenshot below, you can see that in the System Volume Information folder there is a system file larger than 160 GB.

How to Clean Up System Files in the System Volume Information Folder?

You can radically clean up the System Volume Information directory by disabling the system restore points and file history. But this is not always permissible.

Firstly, let’s see what is stored in this directory. Display the statistics of using shadow copies:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.
Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (E:)\\?\Volume{5a419164-9eba-11e5-84c5-004046bbefbb}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (E:)\\?\Volume{5a419164-9eba-11e5-84c5-004046bbefbb}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 3.08 MB (0%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 896 MB (1%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 19.0 GB (29%)
Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{843c6330-9866-11e5-80b3-806e6f6e6942}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{843c6330-9866-11e5-80b3-806e6f6e6942}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 912 MB (2%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 1.20 GB (3%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 3.98 GB (10%)

As you can see, 10% of system drive space C:\ is allocated for snapshot files and only 2% of which is occupied. If the value of Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space is set to UNBOUNDED, it means that the limit for shadow copies is not set and they may occupy all free space on the disk. By default, the system gives 10% of the total disk space to store this data.

You can reduce the disk usage limit by VSS to 2 GB using the vssadmin command. The vssadmin command has the following syntax:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive letter]: /For=[drive letter]: /MaxSize=[maximum size]

In our example it will look like this:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=2GB

vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.
Successfully resized the shadow copy storage association

If you create system state backups using Windows Server Backup, the all old system state copies can be deleted as follows (in the Windows Server editions):

wbadmin delete systemstatebackup -keepversions:0

When you run the wbadmin delete systemstatebackup command in Windows 10, an error appears: “The DELETE BACKUP command is not supported in this version of Windows“. The fact is that in client systems (Windows 10/ 8.1/ 7), management of recovery points and limits is possible only from the GUI. Open the System properties and click on the System Protectiontab.

By pressing Configure, we proceed to the settings of quotas for restore point storage. You can delete the existing restore points here.

Select the system drive and click the Configure button. The quota configuration dialog box for storing system restore points will open. You can reduce the size of the disk for storing shadow copies. Here you can either delete all existing restore points (Delete button), or completely disable the creation of recovery points by selecting Disable system protection.

To reduce the size of the System Volume Information catalog you can also:

• Move the VSS data to another NTFS drive (vssadmin add shadowstorage /for=c: /on=d: /maxsize=30%);
• Disable or reconfigure the Windows File History feature;
• Perform system cleanup using the built-in utility – cleanmgr.exe;
• If you use the data deduplication, you must disable deduplication and run the file de-optimization command: Start-DedupJob -Volume D: -Type Unoptimization (the command may take quite a long time, also make sure that the disk has enough free space).