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I have ~400gb of shadow copies that I can't delete on a 2008r2 server. Steps taken so far:

Disabled all shadow copies in the GUI, 459GB still shown as in use.

Ran vssadmin list shadowstorage, got:

Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 447.245 GB (24%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 449.058 GB (24%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 250 GB (13%)

Ran vssadmin delete shadows /all, got:

Error: Snapshots were found, but they were outside of your allowed context. 
Try removing them with the backup application which created them.

Ran diskshadow, delete shadows all

shadow copies are no longer listed in VSSadmin or diskshadow, however they are still present as files with a GUID filename in c:\system volume information, and taking up space.

  1. Can I safely delete these files?
  2. How can I take ownership of them to delete them, as most I keep getting access denied.

6 Answers 6

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A reboot of this server resulted in the remaining shadow copy files being purged / deleted and and space on the drive being freed up. However I'd still be interested in what caused shadow copy to start using more space than was allocated.

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You should be using "DiskShadow" and not vssadmin on a Windows 2008R2 Server. To delete the shadows copies manually:

run cmd as admin
cmd> Diskshadow
Diskshadow> List shadows all (to see what shadows exist)
Diskshadow> delete shadows all

Hope this helps.

2

You could also use this set of commands to immediate reclaim the space:

vssadmin list shadowstorage
vssadmin delete shadowstorage /for=F: /on=F:

Help on the delete shadowstorage command details the /for and /on options:

Delete ShadowStorage /For=ForVolumeSpec [/On=OnVolumeSpec] [/Quiet]
- Deletes an existing shadow copy storage association between ForVolumeSpec and OnVolumeSpec. If no /On option is given, all shadow copy storage associations will be deleted for the given ForVolumeSpec.

Example Usage: vssadmin Delete ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=D:

Hope that helps!

2
  1. Open a elevated command prompt.
  2. In the elevated command prompt, type wmic and press Enter. After a few seconds wmic:root\cli> will appear.
  3. Type the command shadowcopy delete and press enter.
  4. You will now be asked Y/N for if you wanted to delete the available shadow copies one by one. Type your answer and press Enter after each one.
0

I've run into this, too. Sometimes VSS stores data even if you have it disabled.

What we did to fix it was to set the maximum VSS store to be a very small number. It looks like that's a common solution.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/343771?start=0&tstart=0

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  • It is a common solution and i have already tried it without success. I forgot to mention it in the question. Jul 3, 2013 at 7:25
  • Alas. :( As to what caused it, I was told that it was a bug in VSS. I looked for a link to support that when your question came up but didn't find one. Jul 3, 2013 at 13:35
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As far as I know, Windows will release the VSS data when needed, there is no need for you to delete it manually, this is a typical setup done by Windows Server Backup.

Read here for further information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772523.aspx

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  • Thanks for this pointer. Turns out Windows Server Backup was failing as a result of problems with the target external drive. My guess is that the shadow copies generated during the backup process were not being removed at the end of the failed job. The 'used shadow copy storage space' was actually these shadow copies, not those automatically generated twice a day. Jul 4, 2013 at 14:42

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