Backup, Restore, Volume Shadow Copy Problems

[Elliott@discussions.microsoft.com Sean Elliott]

All

I have Vista Ultimate 64bit.

I get the following 2 errors when trying to create a system restore point or
backup the whole PC: 0x80780035 0x8004231F

It is accompanied by a message about insufficient space on disk drives when
this is definitly not the case. I have tried extending the space used for
shadow copies using the command:

vssadmin resize SHADOWSTORAGE /for=c: /on=c: /maxsize=70GB

but still it claims there is not enough space even though none of the 70GB
is used as displayed by:

vssadmin List ShadowStorage

For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{af42db1f-0867-11dc-aa96-806e6f6e6963}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume:
(C:)\\?\Volume{af42db1f-0867-11dc-aa96-806e6f6e6963}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 75 GB

There is a service called Volume Shadow Copy that I found was set to Manual
start and was not started. I tried setting this to automatic start and
rebooted but this has made no difference at all.

What startup settings should this service have? What is the real problem???

[Jill Zoeller [MSFT]]

Sean, do you know if you have a recovery partition on your computer? You
likely do if the computer is new and came from an OEM (original equipment
manufacturer).

I have a feeling that your recovery partition is full (or almost full) and
therefore the shadow copy for that volume can't be created. Unfortunately
with Complete PC Backup there is no way to exclude that drive because it's
considered essential to the system. As an alternative to Complete PC Backup,
I recommend trying the command-line version wbadmin.exe. Specify only your
Vista drive and see if that works.

Fiddling with the VSS service won't help...it's marked as Manual on my
system as well.

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"Sean Elliott" <Sean Ell...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5E18386B-D7EB-4C99...@microsoft.com...

[Sean Elliott]

Thanks very much for that Jill it was a very helpful workaround - I have now
backed up my PC C: drive and system restore points can be created again. I
used the following command in a "Run as Administrator" command window to
backup my C: drive to my external M: drive:

wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:m: -include:c:

I could then watch progress with:

wbadmin get status

I think this is a full backup. You must be able to do an incremental backup
next time.

But now I am still confused about my "recovery partition". Using Disk
Manager (via Computer/Manager/Disk Managemement) I can see that Disk 0 is
split between the expected C: drive and another partition with no letter
assigned. It has an EISA configuration. You don't seem to be able to do
anything with this partition via Disk Management tools. What is it for? How
do you know how full it is? Shouldn't the Vista GUI backup tool be able to
cope with this and at least allow you to deselect it?

Now that I have done a backup of c: did that release any space in the other
partition? If not how come I couldn't do system restore points before but now
I can?

Is that enough questions?