How to clean up System Reserved area?

[Win7obfuscation]

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.



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]

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]

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]

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]

If possible, try to post by TORETTO69 in https://social.technet.microsoft.co...f-acronis-true-image-2010?forum=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]

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]

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]

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.




Now I have this.

 

[Win7obfuscation]

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]

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.

 

[Layback Bear]

If I remember correctly this is the tutorial i use.
I do this type of thing so seldom it hard for me to remember.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html

Read my post #8 again. I have corrected it.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

What programs? I'd use Partition Wizard or maybe a similar tool from Aomei or EaseUS--free programs.

PW is the common choice here. Sane interface, quite reliable. Not 100 percent guaranteed, so back up your data before you start. PW has some good tutorials on their website.

It may be that your problem is unrelated to the size of System Restore. I have no idea.

 

[Win7obfuscation]

Thanks to ignatzatsonic and Layback Bear. I will get to these as soon as I have a way to recover.
Your thoughts as to why I can't seem to make a system repair disc?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Your thoughts as to why I can't seem to make a system repair disc?

Can't help you there. I have a Windows 7 installation disc, which also functions as a repair disc.

 

[gregrocker]

The only way System Reserved can be clogged is if it is given a drive letter so programs can write to it. Why is it labeled Data, anyway? Makes me think you had a drive letter on it for some reason.

I think since there is nonsense going on there I would delete it entirely by moving the Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Forums.

Once the System Active flags are on C then you can delete SysReserved in Disk Mgmt.

Problem solved.

 

[Win7obfuscation]

Hi greg.

it has never had a drive letter until now. I simply followed another thread and I started computer management and selected disk management and went to properties and assigned it a drive letter so that i could see the contents in explorer.

I migrated to an SSD 840 EVO and used the Samsung migration tool .. it did all of this AUTOMATICALLY when i switched over to the SSD a year ago. I had no knowledge of this until now. I read on other threads of others having similar problems and noted that they suggested that the "DATA" label was created by the migration software. Deduced from the size of 100 MB.

I think that I will have to move the system files in this directory.



I see that they are system files... BTW how does one copy these and any "hidden" files?

I am presently stuck trying to make a system repair disc.. getting an 080070057 error when I load a DVD to be burned. see another post in this forum. (any help here would be appreciated)

 

[Win7obfuscation]

I have another question.... If i do move the system files to C: and change the system active flags.... whatever they are? to the c: partition then I will be OK... I hope this is not complicated by the fact that I have an SSD... does this make any difference?

 

[gregrocker]

Please read my post again as that is not at all what I suggested. C must be made bootable in addition to System files moved and set Active - all of which is automated in Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Forums

 

[AK6DN]

Under control panel SYSTEM => Advanced System Settings => System Protection tab, check if you have protection enabled on your SYSTEM_DRV (you probably do). Highlight it and check the 'configure' button. You probably have a large percentage of disk space enabled to be used (the slider on the bottom half). Reduce that to a smaller size.

 

[Win7obfuscation]

thanks... does an SSD complicate things...
I noticed that any HD attached to the computer via USB causes the boot sequence to hang. I suspect that it is looking to the USB drive for the system files.. and returns a "not system disc" error... remove the HD and it boots OK... I then have to reattach it later to use it... I found this out when attaching an outboard HD to copy files to.

I still need to try and make a recovery disk...ho hum..