How to clean up System Reserved area?

Win7obfuscation · 20 Mar 2015

I have recently tried to do a backup... the first one after having the computer for 1 and 1/2 years.
Win 7 Pro. and got the 0x81000033 error!

After reading a lot of forums I have tracked it down to the System Reserved area being too full.

How to clean up System Reserved area?-discmanagement1.png

Now. My question. how do I make the contents smaller? i.e. get rid of unnecessary stuff? How do I see what is in there... I did assign it a drive number but using Explorer shows nothing... maybe they are hidden? How do I unhide them?

As You can see the name of the System Reserved area is now DATA since I migrated to a Samsung 840 evo using their Magician program.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

ignatzatsonic · 20 Mar 2015

Rather than make the contents smaller, I'd try to make System Reserved larger, say 200 or 300 MB total.

Any decent Partition Manager should be able to do that. You may have to rob a bit from some other partition. Try Partition Wizard. I think Aomei has a free partition tool as well.

System Reserved should not have a drive letter.

Not sure why it's named "data" in your case. Are you saying that Samsung Magician forced that name on you?

Win7obfuscation · 20 Mar 2015

Yes I have seen suggestions as to how to increase this.
However I have also read posts where users have done this and then encountered the same porblem when they approached the limit of 500Mb.

When I migrated to the SSD I did not set anything it was all automatic and I have only gleaned this from posts with others
having the same issue. They like me did not find a "system Reserved area" but an area labelled DATA
Since it had the same size and was hidden, the assumption was that it was renamed from the OLD system Reserved area.

I can increase this but fear that it may come back to haunt me.

any thoughts?

ignatzatsonic · 20 Mar 2015

While researching your first post, I saw a thread elsewhere that indicated you need at least 40 MB of free space in System Reserved. You've got 5 free.

If that's anywhere near true, you certainly don't need to make it 500 MB. Try 200 MB.

It's quite common for System Reserved to be larger than 100. I'm not sure how large it can be safely or even if there is a limit.

I don't have a System Reserved at all. You need what's in it to be somewhere, but that somewhere can be on C just as easily. It's all in how you do the original install. I chose to avoid System Reserved.

You can copy the contents of System Reserved to C. I think Easy BCD is the tool to do that. Then you could delete System Reserved.

Or just enlarge it a bit, say to 200.

Arc · 20 Mar 2015

If possible, try to post by TORETTO69 in https://social.technet.microsoft.com...=windowsbackup .....

Offline follow up revealed that an app, suspected to be Acronis, was turning on the USN journal on the system reserved 100mb partition. The USN journal ate up space that was required during backup to create a shadow copy of the volume. This caused a backup failure.

Deleting the USN journal on the volume solved the issue. Here are the steps
(assuming the 100mb partition is F:) *

1. Launch cmd --> run as admin
2. fsutil usn queryjournal F:
The output will be USN journal settings which also includes its size (in hex bytes). If it is anything around 30mb, the backup will fail due to snapshot creation failure because of lack of space.
3. fsutil usn deletejournal /D F:
This will delete the journal. Retry backup.

Later, if the journal is again found to be taking up space, it will be useful to try and locate the app that turns the journal on. Applications using USN to track file changes are likely to be responsible.

* You may need to add a drive letter to the hidden 100 MB partition for this purpose. Later remove the drive letter.

Win7obfuscation · 20 Mar 2015

Thanks ignatzatsonic and Arc.

I think I will make a system repair disc first so that I can recover if I mess something up.

was going to to use Arconis but read some threads that this may increase the size of the System reserved area.

Arc · 20 Mar 2015

By the way, deleting the journal is not a permanent solution IMHO. It will work for once, but not forever.

The content of your system reserved is somehow bigger. So increasing the size of the 100 MB partition will be the real solution, undoubtedly. This will give you an idea: Increase partition size for Windows 7 by using partition manager.

Layback Bear · 20 Mar 2015

I did this just a few days ago using Partition Mini Tool.. I added and remove the Reserve partition letter from both Reserves using Disk Management.
It was quite simple to the best of my memory.

How to clean up System Reserved area?-new-disc-management.png

Now I have this.

How to clean up System Reserved area?-new-disk-management.png

Win7obfuscation · 20 Mar 2015

Hi ARC.
I have read a number of threads that support your suggestion. I agree that the answer may lie in increasing the size of the System reserve. Right now I am stuck trying to make a system repair disc if it all goes wrong and i need to recover.
(see my other post on in this area)

Thanks Layback Bear. I will get to that ... as soon as I have a recovery disc.

Maybe the 2 of you could help me out on that problem?

Win7obfuscation · 20 Mar 2015

A comment in general... about the increasing size of the "stuff" in this area.

What programs are doing this? I surely am not the only one having this happen... I seems to me that changing the size of the partition is a task not easily undertaken by the "average" user.