Solved not enough free space in system reserved partition

[whs]

It would be interesting to know how the Z letter got there. As far as I know, disk management would not do it. And if you used Partition Wizard, it may have been corrupted (happened to me with an EFI partition).

 

[fr0zensphere]

You have the system reserved partition named Z, it`s not supposed to have a letter.

That way no information can be written to it.

Please post the shot, as Greg has asked.

Oh, come on....... Sorry to sound exasperated, but give me some faith here. I assigned it a drive letter temporarily (via disk management) so that I could access it in explorer. How else should I look at it?

***

Greg, as you asked:






The $RECYCLE.BIN is 4KB. Boot is 13.9 MB. System Volume Information is 0. And bootmgr is 374 KB.

 

[gregrocker]

It's really not worth trying to sort out what's clogged System Reserved since it is not needed and can be an unnecessary pain that's best abandoned once it causes problems.

So what I'd do is follow this simple automated procedure to move Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Forums to cut out the System Reserved partition.

Once you reboot and C is marked System Active, you can delete System Reserved in Disk Mgmt. But wait until everything is complete first. Partition or Volume - Delete

While you're at it I'd also Extend C into the 23.29 gb Unallocated space so you have it available if needed. Partition or Volume - Extend

 

[fr0zensphere]

move the boot manager to c: and remove the system partition (but then I lose recovery tools)

What does this mean? If I remove the system partition will I no longer be able to use Windows's Backup & Restore?

 

[fr0zensphere]

Also,

It's really not worth trying to sort out what's clogged System Reserved

Haven't we already figured this out? The OP, acernetbook, pointed out what was clogging it in post #16.

 

[gregrocker]

This is an old thread at that point. EasyBCD was updated last year by its author Mahmoud to include the hotlink to F8 System Recovery Options in the auto-repair it does to move the Bootmgr.

Until then I recommended the Manual repair by marking C Active to run Startup Repair 3 separate times which completes all repairs but requires several passes to do them all. However once EasyBCD was at our request updated by its author then this is no longer a concern.

We have helped with this repair here thousands of times since Win7 beta.

 

[AddRAM]

Well excuse me for trying to help.

Another new member with a problem with windows and an attitude

Good luck to you :sarc:

 

[gregrocker]

The clue that he assigned a SysReserved letter was Z which is often used by someone to temporarily assign a drive letter. Sometimes we need to read between the lines. OP is doing research which is how he ended up in this old thread. But if he found it then we can be assured that hundreds of others have, too, so it needs the record completed. There are literally hundreds of threads here about this very subject but it depends on how the search is phrased which one someone will find.

There was a time when we tried to figure out what was clogging SysReserved if no letter was assigned previously. It is complicated by Win7 not always wanting to show the System Volume Information file size even if unhidden. What it always came down to is that it is totally disposable and not worth wasting much more time than to move the BootMgr.

It is possible to reconstruct the System Reserved partition by deleting it and then creating a Primary NTFS Partition Marked Active, to run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times. But there is no reason to do this except as an experiment. Most who have done so first made it larger 200+mb by borrowing from C which is itself a somewhat risky operation and should only be done with Partition Wizard boot disk to Partition Wizard Resize Partition - Video Help.

 

[AddRAM]

And it`s often done by people who don`t have a clue.

"What does this mean? If I remove the system partition will I no longer be able to use Windows's Backup & Restore?"

But he is a Windows 7 expert, Good Luck Greg

 

[whs]

Please don't fight guys. Just ignore the smartypants.

 

[fr0zensphere]

Hey guys,

Sorry I dropped out for a few days -- I got a bit overwhelmed with some grad school stuff.

I apologize to AddRAM and anyone else for my attitude.

Anyway, just for the record, I investigated this log file thing a little more. See below:

As you can see, this log file is ~55 MB. Interesting? So that confirms what the OP of this thread experienced. I'm still curious about how/why this happened.

But I'm open to doing the method of simply moving the bootmgr via the program, as Greg suggested. I'll go for that next, and hopefully I can move beyond this. It's been a somewhat annoying time drain.

 

[fr0zensphere]

Okay, actually, another question. Why would the step of moving the bootmgr by itself solve my issue? The system reserved partition would still be too full. Wouldn't that still be a problem when I run Backup & Restore? (Which requires at least 50MB to be free on a partition less than 500MB) Apparently that problem went away for the OP (quoted below). But I'm confused about the details. If that bloated partition is still present on the drive being backed up, shouldn't the issue be encountered regardless?

Hi guys,

I did what whs said, which was enough to get windows to stop complaining about the dumb system reserved partition, and make an image backup. My understanding is that the system reserved partition is still there, but just not marked as active, so windows doesn't try to boot from there. As long as it is not active, I don't need care about the 100MB, and am happy not to bother with having to scoot the whole c: over, and having to run windows repair to fix it.

[...]

As for that bloated system reserved partition, my description of what is there in the first post is with those boxes unchecked. I also, while using gparted in a linux environment, ran the df and du commands on that partition, and saw the same files and same space consumption issues. e.g. du showed 14 MB of files (if I remember right), and df showed 90% usage. I can post the screenshot if you like, but what are you looking for beyond what I already said? I am still interested in figuring out what is taking up all the space.

 

[whs]

Okay, actually, another question. Why would the step of moving the bootmgr by itself solve my issue? The system reserved partition would still be too full.

Yes, that would not change anything in the system reserved partition. But that partition would not be used (required) any more because from now on the system would boot from C where the bootmgr was copied to.

You could just get rid of the 100MB system reserved partition, but it is not worth the bother since it is so small.

 

[gregrocker]

As I wrote before I would delete System Reserved in Disk Mgmt after C is made System Active.

The whole point is that you're cutting it out.

The log file likely became corrupted. Did you use Win7 backup imaging?

 

[fr0zensphere]

Yes, that would not change anything in the system reserved partition. But that partition would not be used (required) any more because from now on the system would boot from C where the bootmgr was copied to.

As I wrote before I would delete System Reserved in Disk Mgmt after C is made System Active.

The whole point is that you're cutting it out.

The log file likely became corrupted. Did you use Win7 backup imaging?

Thanks for clarifying. I guess I missed (or forgot) the part where you said to delete it. I just re-read your earlier post, and I see it now. Sorry about that. It sounded like the OP simply moved the bootmgr without actually deleting the partition. But whatever.

PS Sorry about the dumb question haha

 

[gregrocker]

It's not dumb at all. Some people don't delete it but I wouldn't want it around at all once you know C can boot itself. As soon as a Startup Repair is run Bootmgr could easily revert back to SysReserved.

As a rule of thumb you want no Primary partitions preceding the System Active partition lest there is a chance Startup Repair will move the Bootmgr there. This is an even more frequent problem we see here.

 

[fr0zensphere]

Alright, I am back in business! Deleted the 100MB partition, and now I can run Backup & Restore without problems again. Thank you so much, guys!


For anyone else out there who might be googling, some additional key phrases that could lead here:

There is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy of the storage location (0x80780119)
files present on system reserved partition
invisible file filling system reserved partition
ntfs log file system reserved

 

[jdrobinson]

the solution is easy and fast

Sure, moving the BCD and abandoning the recovery partition will work, but that's more avoiding the problem than solving it.

edit: had to fix the image url. Also, for the sake of searching: "chkdsk z: /l:2048" will fix it right up for you, OP.

 

[pokey]

Sure, moving the BCD and abandoning the recovery partition will work, but that's more avoiding the problem than solving it.
Thanks jdrobinson

I've had exactly the same problem as frOzensphere & this fix was super easy

edit: had to fix the image url. Also, for the sake of searching: "chkdsk z: /l:2048" will fix it right up for you, OP.

Thanks jd

Had exactly the same problem as frOzen, this fixed it quick & easy

Cheers pokey

 

[EMPtea]

I ran into the same issue as the OP after installing a Samsung SSD and using their included Data Migration tool. The logfile was responsible for taking up 50MB on the partition, but after resizing it with chkdsk I can now backup again.

Thanks, jdrobinson!