Background: I have a test machine with Windows Server 2012 R2 installed on a single 500GB partition. I want to shrink this system partition and create another one. I followed Technet's Shrink a Basic Volume, but I only got ~150GB of available shrink space (see screenshot below). The article points me to eventlog 259 by defrag, which says:
The last unmovable file appears to be: \System Volume Information\FVE2.{e40ad34d-dae9-4bc7-95bd-b16218c10f72}.3::$DATA
. This file appears to be a System Restore file (ref), so I want to turn off System Restore.
My Questions:
- How do I turn off System Restore in Windows Server 2012R2?
- Failing that, how do I shrink partitions without being blocked by unmovable files in
System Volume Information
?
To disable System Restore, I tried:
- Many articles (example) tell me to go to system properties => System Protection, but I don't have that (see screenshot below).
- One article suggests adding a DisableSR registry value using
Reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore" /v DisableSR /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
. I did that and restarted the machine - no difference. - Same article suggests stopping and disabling the service
srservice
. I tried, but this service doesn't exist on my machine. - The article links to Another article which suggests running
%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe
, but that restore folder doesn't exist either.
To defrag, I tried:
- SysInternal's PageDefrag - failed to load driver
- UltimateDefrag - its boot-time defragger says "failed to detect keyboard"
- Boot from Windows installation USB, hit
F10
and runE:\Windows\System32\defrag.exe E: /U /V
- worked, but didn't move those files.
System Volume Information
? I'll try to runvssadmin
and update in the OP