WSB Filling Drive C:

[cpjitservices]

Hi all,

 

Something puzzling me today!

 

I have a backup scheduled in WSB - it basically backs up everything to our SAN, This includes Bare Metal, System State, Drive C: and so on. I've got plenty of Backup space left on the SAN a whole 3 TB not a problem... However - The main drive on the server (C:) has this morning got 123MB left... this is not good as you can imagine, so I've deleted some stuff we didnt need on there now I have 508 MB remaining. So as a bit of daft I ran a system backup and now I have 99MB free.

 

It seems that every time a backup runs it fills drive C:!

 

Any ideas ?

 

TIA.

[Steve21]

What are you using to back it up? If it's volume shadow copy, won't it make a local copy to backup from?

 

Steve

[cpjitservices]

I think it is making Volume Shadow copies but cannot find a way of disabling it.....

[Steve21]

There should be an option on the individual drives, on how much space can be used for that drive. But not sure if that's linked to the Windows backup, or if that's just for it's own copy.

 

Steve

[cpjitservices]

I think that must be for its own copy, because its actually disabled but on running WSB and running a backup it says "creating volume shadow copy...."

 

Cannot find any options anywhere to disable VSS in WSB, only to change the options from full to copy.

 

Ill try copy and see what happens.

[cpjitservices]

Nope that option didnt work...... Still created shadow copy... does anyone know where the copies are held on the drive ?

[Steve21]

I think that must be for its own copy, because its actually disabled but on running WSB and running a backup it says "creating volume shadow copy...."

 

Cannot find any options anywhere to disable VSS in WSB, only to change the options from full to copy.

 

Ill try copy and see what happens.

 

Don't think you really want to disable it to be honest... It needs that to do the backup of locked/used files etc, else it'll break on every one as it can't access them

 

Not sure if there's a way to recall that space after though...

 

Steve

[cpjitservices]

Well TBH theres not a lot on the drive that needs backup up, theres only WDS deployment stuff and system state thats all I want - profiles etc are on a different drive and are backed up using Cobian.

 

Looks like i'm stuck at 507MB now!!!

 

its looking like I may have to shutdown after hours, attach a new drive in VMWare and extend the volume - If it'll let me!

[Steve21]

Could always try running:

 

vssadmin list shadowstorage
or
vssadmin list shadows

 

Should show the cache, and/or actual stored items if it is VSS.

 

Steve

[cpjitservices]

tried those commands, they show nothing! I think it's because its not its own shadow copy but the ones generated by WSB don't show up in those commands

 

Arrrgggghhhh! I wont be able to extend Drive C: because its system drive so that wont work either! Needs to be offline to extend in Server Manager

[netadmin]

I've found that if you set the Volume Shadow Copies limit on the specific drive to a really low level (like 320MB, the minimum possible) and then set it back to whatever it was set to previously, it will clear all the old volume shadow copies from WSB. One one of my servers, this freed up over 20GB of space.

[cpjitservices]

I've found that if you set the Volume Shadow Copies limit on the specific drive to a really low level (like 320MB, the minimum possible) and then set it back to whatever it was set to previously, it will clear all the old volume shadow copies from WSB. One one of my servers, this freed up over 20GB of space.

 

Tried it. Zilch.

[SYNACK]

Arrrgggghhhh! I wont be able to extend Drive C: because its system drive so that wont work either! Needs to be offline to extend in Server Manager

 

Boot it with a 2k8r2 disk or 7 or whatever and use the command prompt in the repair bit of that to do the extend.

[SYNACK]

last resort How to Rebuild the Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider (SWPRV) Service | Spas Kaloferov's Blog

[cpjitservices]

yeah I'd thought of that, however known my luck it'll render the DC unbootable!

[cpjitservices]

ok I might try and do the rebuild, and I'll boot the server later with Hirens and extend the drive.

[bart21]

Gparted has never let me down for c drive extension. Or if you want to try it on the fly look at extpart from dell.

 

Nick

[SYNACK]

I'd use the native diskpart for disk expantion, gparted can do it but requires a full chkdsk afterwards and can take hours as opposed to seconds.