System Volume Information C:\System Volume Information

Protected system folder on each volume: restore points, Volume Shadow Copy data and other metadata. Access is denied, even to administrators.

Updated on 12 November 2026 By AltF4 Formation

What it’s for

Windows creates this hidden, protected folder at the root of NTFS volumes to store data users should not touch: System Restore points, Volume Shadow Copy service data, and the databases of the Distributed Link Tracking and indexing services. The System Restore repository lives in %SYSTEMDRIVE%\System Volume Information.

What it contains

Restore points: _restore{GUID} subfolders on older versions, VSS shadow copies since Windows Vista.
VSS (shadow copy) data, used by backups and “previous versions”.
Link tracking and indexing databases.
On a volume with deduplication enabled, the Dedup folder that holds the chunk store.

Risks and best practices

NTFS permissions block access, administrators included, and bypassing them can destroy restore points. To free space, shrink or delete restore points from the System Protection settings, not inside the folder.
On a data disk, its size depends on System Protection and on the shadow copies enabled for the volume.
“Access denied” on this folder is normal, including on a volume mounted without the right permissions.

Useful commands

# Folder existence (contents remain inaccessible)
Get-Item -Force 'C:\System Volume Information'

# Available restore points
Get-ComputerRestorePoint

# Space reserved for shadow copies (as administrator)
vssadmin list shadowstorage

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