CHKDSK Logs

[Nil]

CCleaner should get them gone.

But it doesn't. CCleander doesn't touch anything in the System Volume
Information folder.

 

[Char Jackson]

But it doesn't. CCleander doesn't touch anything in the System Volume
Information folder.

And neither should the average user touch anything in there.

 

[Nil]

And neither should the average user touch anything in there.

True, that.

 

[Jeff Layman]

True, that.

Indeed. But out of interest does Disk Cleanup remove these logs in the
SVI folder? If so, that would be a safe way of doing it.

 

[Paul]

Indeed. But out of interest does Disk Cleanup remove these logs in the
SVI folder? If so, that would be a safe way of doing it.

There is a way of doing it, without changing anything permission wise, by mounting
the volume in Linux and doing it from there, but I can't say how safe that is.

They seem to be ordinary files, with respect to the file system. Using
nfi.exe, this is a listing for one. Based on the date, this may have been
created during SP1 install.

File 18

\System Volume Information\Chkdsk\Chkdsk20110513121854.log
$STANDARD_INFORMATION (resident)
$FILE_NAME (resident)
$SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR (resident)
$DATA (nonresident)
logical sectors 14429288-14429303 (0xdc2c68-0xdc2c77)

Other files in SVI, such as VSSCache files, nfi.exe won't even
list them, which shows how touchy those are. Virtually everything
on a partition, with the exception of the VSSCache files in SVI, are
listed by nfi, even the $METADATA type files.

(nfi.exe is in this download - the missing "file numbers" in the log, would
seem to be equal to the number of open VSScache files)

http://download.microsoft.com/download/win2000srv/utility/3.0/nt45/en-us/oem3sr2.zip

If anything is going to prevent a cleaner from getting in there,
it's the permissions on SVI that is going to stop it.

I believe I could probably delete it from Linux, but then again,
I could also delete the VSSCache files while I was there. For me,
currently, Linux is the way I can see the VSSCache files and their
"claimed" size. But if I were to delete them, I'm sure there would be
some serious damage.

If you want to experiment, make a "system image" backup (the one that
makes .vhd files for SYSTEM RESERVED and C: partitions), and if your
file system is apparently trashed, you'll have something to restore from.
That's what I used, after letting WinXP touch my laptop drive, and mess
up something on it (presumably in the SVI folder, or one of the metadata
files which doesn't exist in the WinXP version of NTFS).

Paul

 

[Char Jackson]

Indeed. But out of interest does Disk Cleanup remove these logs in the
SVI folder? If so, that would be a safe way of doing it.

I think the point is that there's no need to be messing around in
there.

 

[Jeff Layman]

I think the point is that there's no need to be messing around in
there.

What has running Disk Cleanup got to do with messing around in the SVI
folder? It's a built-in MS utility in Win7 designed for cleaning out
unnecessary and temporary junk which builds up on the hard disk. You
just fire it up, select what you want it to remove, and let it do its
job.- safely. It will only remove what MS deems safe to remove. If
that happens to include files in the SVI folder, then it will clear
those out. I do not know if it removes them or not, hence my question.

I ran it recently and it removed over 3 gigs of files which had built up
on the HD over a year. It is very useful and really something MS should
make Win7 users more aware of.