Vista Ultimate Shadow copy going insane

michal1980

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2003
8,019
43
91
Trying to play BF3 beta, but shadow copy is going nuts. two days aago I deleted alot of files off my harddrive that were just taking up space (iso, etc). I also did a disk clean up and removed all the system restore and shadow copies.

Now the system volume information foler is 135GB!!!!!!!!!!!!! in two freaking days. I cannot play bf3 because the hard drive keeps spinning.

wtf?!

its up to a 139 gbs. started the folder on 10/3/11. 140 gbs is nearly a 2:1 copy of all the data on this drive. I just want to game.

141gb
 
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corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
27,370
240
106
I recall when I had Vista Ultimate installed - one of the first things I did was disable shadow copies.
 

michal1980

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2003
8,019
43
91
No viruis. I just did scans with both mse, and malware. The initial shadow copy is ~80gb, then there are 3 roughly 20gb in size

PS. I normally have no problems with shadow copy. it saved me a handfull of time from bad software updates, bad driver installs. For some reason it went nuts this week. Because I never noticed it before.
 
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paul878

Senior member
Jul 31, 2010
874
1
0
I remember having Vista problem like that, hard drive was buzzing for 1/2 a day doing god know what. Why don't you just upgrade to windows 7?
 

michal1980

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2003
8,019
43
91
I remember having Vista problem like that, hard drive was buzzing for 1/2 a day doing god know what. Why don't you just upgrade to windows 7?

I am in the next few weeks. but this was new, and just insane. This morning it started another shadow copy back up, adding another few gigs. the shadow copies were now bigger then the actual data on the drive. So I turned off shadow copy, it was making the pc unuseable.

When i went to the cmd console, the limit was set to 'unbound'. when I get home I'm going to try to delete all the copies, and restart it, hopefully it gets a sane limit, or it will be off till I go to win7.
 

Gooberlx2

Lifer
May 4, 2001
15,381
6
91
Maybe a problem where the indexing service is actually altering files.

indexed-->altered-->shadow copy-->re-indexed-->altered-->shadow copy-->re-indexed-->altered-->shadow copy-->ad infinitum

Additionally, perhaps shadow copy isn't only storing deltas, but whole copies of the files. ...It's a theory anyway.
 

michal1980

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2003
8,019
43
91
Maybe a problem where the indexing service is actually altering files.

indexed-->altered-->shadow copy-->re-indexed-->altered-->shadow copy-->re-indexed-->altered-->shadow copy-->ad infinitum

Additionally, perhaps shadow copy isn't only storing deltas, but whole copies of the files. ...It's a theory anyway.

I deleted all my copies, and restarted system restore. As soon as I start BF3 it goes nuts and wakes back up.

I started looking at the resourse monitor while attempting to play Bf3 and sure enough the disk is writing to c:\System Volume Information\

right now I'm not playing, its reading the MP_subway.sb map @ 700,xxx,xxx b/min while writing a similar number to the shadow copy folder. somethings just wrong.

Just going to reformt and go to win 7 this weekend. disable shadow copy for now.

which is where the shadow copies go. Most \ all of the reads are from different bf3 folders.

now its going nuts on both Battlefile3, steam, and starcraft 2 (which is on a different drive).

Its amazing because before I start playing BF3, there are almost zero reads, and zero writes. its like shadow copy is working backwards - instead of in the background it goes to the front of the line as soon as it sense the pc is 'working'.
 
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