The System Volume Information (SVI) folder is a super hidden system folder,
and for good reason. There will be a SVI folder on each partition or volume
that Windows sees. This includes external drives and some flash or thumb
drives connected to the system. The SVI folder can not be permanently
deleted, if so it will be recreated automatically. If a particular partition
or volume is set to not be monitored by System Restore, the Indexing Service
is turned off, and EFS is not in use, the SVI should be nearly empty or empty.
System Restore uses the SVI folder to store it’s information and hold
restore points.
If the Indexing Service is turned on it will use the SVI folder to store
files. This will be evident by the existence of a folder named catalog.wci
or by typing cmd /k net start in the Start - Run box and looking for
Indexing Service. Keep in mind that having the Indexing Service turned on
can cause the SVI folder to grow very large. It's useful if you have a lot
of Office documents or text files and want to do searches of them based on
Content. Otherwise it's best turned off.
If Encrypting File System (EFS) is in use, it will use the SVI folder to
store the log file that is generated during the encryption and decryption
process.
So the best advise is to re-hide it and forget about it.
Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member:
http://dts-l.org