Windows 10: What is resizing maximum shadow copy storage space?

On my laptop, drive C: is a small solid state drive with only about 50G of free space. I noticed that a little bit of this free space is disappearing every day until only a few gigs of free space was remaining. Turned out, shadow storage was eating up all the free space. The size of used shadow copy storage space was about 45GB. The maximum shadow copy storage space was set to unbounded.

I resized the maximum shadow copy storage space and set the size to 20GB using 'vssadmin resize shadowstorage' command. A few days later, I noticed the maximum shadow copy storage space was set back to unbounded. I tried setting maximum size through the GUI (system protection settings) but that did not last either.


Is there any way to find out what application resizes the maximum storage space? Any ideas why something would want storage space to be unbounded?


Thanks,

Igor

:)

 

Shadow Copy With Storage Spaces?

1 Create shadow storage

1.1 The System protection tab in System Properties

• this GUI only lists NTFS volumes, so you can't create shadow storage for ReFS volume there
  
• instead try one of:
  
  • vssadmin add shadowstorage /for=D: /on=D: /maxsize=100GB (Windows Server only)
    
    • alternatively for non-server Windows editions try vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=D: /on=D: /maxsize=10% that will add shadow storage if it does not exist and thus is comparable to vssadmin add
      
  • wmic shadowstorage call create Volume=D:\ DiffVolume=D:\ MaxSpace=20
    
    • if this command returns ReturnValue = 10 (which is Unknown error) workaround follows
      
  • wmic shadowcopy call create Volume=D:\
    
    • creating shadow copy on disk without shadow storage will create one automatically
      
    • you can resize the shadow storage with vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=D: /on=D: /maxsize=10%
      

1.2 List shadow storages

• make sure the shadow storage is there and configured using one of:
  
  • vssadmin list shadowstorage
    
  • wmic shadowstorage list
    

2 Create shadow copy

2.1 Create shadow copy

• you want to use scheduled system protection feature, but for now just take a snapshot manually:
  
  • wmic shadowcopy call create Volume=D:\
    

2.2 List shadow copies

• verify the snapshot was created:
  
  • vssadmin list shadows /for=D:
    

3 Mount shadow copy

• since you are using Storage Spaces, you won't see snapshots in Previous versions tab in disk/file properties
  
• but the snapshots exists and can be mounted as a folder
  
• this shortage apply for both NTFS and ReFS Storage Spaces
  
• to mount a snapshot you will need shadow ID, shadow path and temporary folder
  

3.1 Get shadow copy ID

• vssadmin list shadows /for=D:
  
  • look for something like this Shadow Copy ID: {5cc29315-0379-415e-8496-69923618e3de}
    

3.2 Get shadow copy path

• wmic shadowcopy where "ID='{5cc29315-0379-415e-8496-69923618e3de}'" get DeviceObject
  
• or vssadmin list shadows /for=D:
  
  • look for Shadow Copy Volume: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy624
    

3.3 Mount shadow copy as folder

• mklink /j %tmp%\shadow \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy624\
  
  • note the extra \ at the end
    
  • the shadow copy is now available in %tmp%\shadow
    

 

lost hard drive space after defrag

I've typed in command prompt (admin): vssadmin list shadowstorage.

After i pressed enter it showed the following: Used Shadow Copy Storage Space: 7.12 GB ( 1%)

Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space:7.42 GB ( 1%)

Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space 10 GB ( 2%)

My question is, what do i next?

Please help.

 

system image backup fails with error "not enough shadow space "

When I try to create a system image backup it fails with a message telling me there is not enough shadow space and I should run VSSADMIN to increase it.

My C drive has 100G free space. The target drive, F, has over 600G free space. When I use the VSSADMIN command to list shadow storage it shows only the F drive, not the C drive.

Do I need to create shadow storage on the C drive using the resize shadow storage command? If so, how big should it be for a 256G drive?