Well...
Worth re-iterating that this is Vista HP and AFAIK it does not have the
"Restore" functionality from shadowstorage - certainly never seen a Restore
option and I have just double-checked a recently changed folder... it's not
there (Business/Ultimate I should expect)
Testing hypotheses I tried the following
1. Set a tag on a large number of photos... 210 MB... shadowstorage
consumption went up by 45MB
2. Copied a 400MB folder on a Removable drive that is in fact a mounted
TrueCrypt volume residing in a 10GB file... shadowstorage went up by
7MB,
not much of a change when I deleted it again either.
3. Then created a Restore point via the System Protection Tab of System
Properties... shadowstorage went up by 35 MB [NB no event in the event
log
yet!]
4. Then I had Outlook do a Send and Receive (hopefully to cause a change to
the PST file... didn't make any difference at all)
5. Then looked again after I had written up 1-3 above and it had shot up by
486MB!
6. Later created another restore point, and although "creation" seems to be
quick I suspect that stuff has been flagged for writing to shadow
storage as
I have been watching the disk light and shadowstorage since and it has gone
up by about 250MBish...
But if restore points aren't eating GB each, where's the storage space
going?
Is there a scheduled clean up task? Not that I know of... though having
inspected the Task Scheduler I see a regular DeFrag for 01:00 on Wednesdays
(the 27th was a Wednesday... there were several volsnap cleanups early that
morning). The triggers for the System Restore point creation are System
Startup and 00:00 daily...
Must confess I was hoping you would look at the list of Writers and say
"Hey! That shouldn't be there...!" to at least one of them.
Something is eating my shadowstorage when I don't think it should be!
You are right about vssadmin not having a create command. (Apparently
that's
only in 2003 and 2008 Server.)
But, you can create several restore points from control panel to test that
they are actually visible under vssadmin list.
(I thought I would be keeping you in the same window.)
Well the good Max allocated = 12.533GB (/15*100 = 83.5GB, which is your c: partition
size)
You have plenty of room to make new points.
The 136 years only applies to restore points assuming you never remove
a
restore point due to insufficient space.
So, you are either running out of space, or you have some routine
"cleaning
up" for you.
So what shadows are you filling 8.0 GB with?
Do you keep lots of photos or multimedia on this drive and edit them?
Select a folder that has lots of big files and right-click it. You should
have an option to Retore previous version.
Does the list make sense based on what you've been doing with your
computer?
My suspicion:
Is there a task scheduled to perform daily cleanup which may be
deleting
all
but the most recent restore point?
Disk cleanup options or some proprietary software from the builder?
If you want to keep all those shadow copies, make a complete backup of
your
system and then try turning off System Restore to wipe the stored
information. Reboot, then turn it back on. (NOTE: This may now set
your
default percentage to 30% instead of 15%. It can only be reset to 15%
in
the
registry.)
Or, use vssadmin to resize your storage to 300MB. When done, reset it
to
the
original value. (This will basically wipe it also.)
Try to store several restore points.
They should remain and the allocated space should grow appropriately.
Check
them again in the morning. If they are all still there, you've been
running
out of space with the shadow copy feature. Don't know what you do with the
computer. But, if you fill up 8GB in one day, something is going on.
Thanks Mark! Look forward to your further input.
Happy to provide the xtra (I didn't do it before because it seems
that
Enough Info is in fact Too Much Info at first - seems to put people
off
reading...)
A restore point of 300MB sounds much more reasonable to me (XP's history
used to go back 1-2 months)...but as to how much should be allocated (or
max), Help says "To store restore points, you need at least 300 megabytes
(MB) of free space on each hard disk that has System Protection
turned
on.
System Restore might use up to 15 percent of the space on each
disk." -
key
point being "up to 15%" - though why it should be less when I have
more
free
space I don't know.
BTW - after collecting the information below I tried your suggested
commands - to no avail unfortunately... this is a direct copy/paste from
the
Cmd window (running as Admin of course) just so you know I didn't mistype
C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin create shadow /for=c:
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line
tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.
Error: Invalid command.
...Wasn't expecting it to work as vssadmin /? didn't list a Create
command -
does this work for other versions of Vista than HP (which is what I
have)?
But - here's the rest of the promised info
This is a Rock Xtreme latop with a ~93.16GB hard disk (that's what
Disk
Mamagement says - odd figure!) partitioned by the OEM with a 9.61GB
Restore
partition, leaving 83.5GB for the C drive, of which 12.1GB is still free.
(At home there is also a 40GB iSCSI device attached but I checked and it
is
not marked for System Restore - besides which it *is* a separate disk...)
Further info as follows:
C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin List ShadowStorage
Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C
\\?\Volume{70b18d2e-c8de-11db-ae44-806e6f6e6963}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume:
(C
\\?\Volume{70b18d2e-c8de-11db-ae44-806e6f6e6963}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 7.657 GB
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 8.059 GB
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 12.533 GB
[NB that max does equate to 15% of C, and I have seen the allocated
as
high
as 11GB+]
C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin List Shadows
Contents of shadow copy set ID:
{a870dd4f-e9c6-405d-86be-49bba3e9011d}
Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 28/02/2008 00:01:19
Shadow Copy ID: {caf4d6cd-27b6-45fb-a366-7876970d491d}
Original Volume:
(C
\\?\Volume{70b18d2e-c8de-11db-ae44-806e6f6e6963}\
Shadow Copy Volume:
\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy11
Originating Machine: mymachine
Service Machine: mymachine
Provider: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
Type: ClientAccessibleWriters
Attributes: Persistent, Client-accessible, No auto release,
Differential, Auto recovered
Contents of shadow copy set ID:
{c252dc8d-2681-4a3d-897b-f974b972d8be}
Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 28/02/2008 14:12:23
Shadow Copy ID: {781034dc-c5b1-4226-b1b0-61b16a2e5a1f}
Original Volume:
(C
\\?\Volume{70b18d2e-c8de-11db-ae44-806e6f6e6963}\
Shadow Copy Volume:
\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy12
Originating Machine: mymachine
Service Machine: mymachine
Provider: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
Type: ClientAccessibleWriters
Attributes: Persistent, Client-accessible, No auto release,
Differential, Auto recovered
And FWIW...
C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list writers
Writer name: 'System Writer'
Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
Writer Instance Id: {1f05d78e-68f7-4183-a8b5-4cda0adc5cc8}
State: [5] Waiting for completion
Last error: No error
Writer name: 'ASR Writer'
Writer Id: {be000cbe-11fe-4426-9c58-531aa6355fc4}
Writer Instance Id: {476931d0-a53d-4a28-8f51-85a37ec03645}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error
Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer'
Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
Writer Instance Id: {890f7958-7d8d-48cb-841e-45dbae0b3b96}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error
Writer name: 'Shadow Copy Optimization Writer'
Writer Id: {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
Writer Instance Id: {57eb3dec-4196-482d-86a1-03601774fecf}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error
Writer name: 'Registry Writer'
Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
Writer Instance Id: {bf7c57c9-b720-4219-be9a-07f21198d577}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error
Writer name: 'MSSearch Service Writer'
Writer Id: {cd3f2362-8bef-46c7-9181-d62844cdc0b2}
Writer Instance Id: {76c6eb0a-98be-4371-ade9-666e88a8476f}
State: [5] Waiting for completion
Last error: No error
Writer name: 'BITS Writer'
Writer Id: {4969d978-be47-48b0-b100-f328f07ac1e0}
Writer Instance Id: {de5e5c24-de13-49ea-82d0-c353c84e0e4e}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error
Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
Writer Instance Id: {bc066c88-80c5-45fc-8004-643019f7b041}
State: [5] Waiting for completion
Last error: No error
What do you think?
Julian
A restore point is about 300MB, I find it difficult to imagine you have
7.4
GB of shadow copied files.
(Five restore points would be 1.5 GB.)
Restore/shadow copy by default uses 15% percent of your drive. You
stated
that your system is allocating 7.9 GB for storage. This would imply
a
hard
drive of 52GB. Since I've never heard of that size, sharing some
hardware
info might help. (Ex. You've got a bigger drive, but you've partitioned
your
Windows drive to some smaller value.)
The command:
vssadmin list shadowstorage
should tell you:
1. How much space of that allocated is actually being used.
2. The amount currently allocated.
3. The maximum amount that can be allocated.
The command:
vssadmin list shadows
should tell you:
1. How many and what restore points are currently being
retained.
The commands:
(NOTE: With your current problem, you may be erasing some prior restore
points.)
vssadmin create shadow /for=c:
vssadmin list shadows
You can use these commands to test your storage ability.
Just enter it a few times in a row to verify that it is keeping
each
restore
point.
Let us know what results you get.
There's quite a lot about limited restore point history around,
but
just
to
add some more info of my own and to plead again for assistance!
Since recently posting about how woefully few restore points I
have
I've
been watching them... I think I racked up 5 or 6 (spanning a
magnificent
4-5
days) and then all but one disappeared.
Yesterday (27 Feb) 2 new restore points were created (between midnight
and
1am) - one scheduled and then one as a result of a Windows Update.
Then,
between 03:20 and 05:00 I find 4 instance of volsnap helpfully
reporting
that "The oldest shadow copy of volume C: was deleted to keep disk
space
usage for shadow copies of volume C: below the user defined limit." -
and
then another two deletions at 16:45 and 23:28...
Why??? All I've done is use the machine - nothing installed,
uninstalled,
reconfigured... what is there to stuff into shadow storage? (My
differential Acronis System State Backup is only 30MB, that's an
indication
of how little has changed since Saturday when I took the full backup).
And this is Vista HP so there's no "version" facility; I hope the
Vista
isn't making shadow copies of stuff I cant' use.
Last night a new restore point was created automatically ... and then
a
further 3 "oldest shadow copies" were deleted... which is why I
had
only
a
single 10hr old restore point this morning.
Using vssadmin I find today 7.4GB used of the allocated 7.9B
shadow
storage,
in which I have 2 restore points (the one created automatically
just
after
midnight and one I just created as a test), which looks
suspicously
like
2x
full system state images judging by the size of my Acronis System
State
backups. Somehow the space requirement for a restore point just
doesn't
seem
right. Never mind lasting 136 years I'd be happy if a restore
point
stuck
around for a week!
This is seriously, seriously annoying now as it is utterly useless the
way
it stands. Can anyone help out? Have looked at BertK's stuff and
checked
around but there's a bit of a fact famine on this topic when it comes
to
specifics...
TIA
--
Julian I-Do-Stuff
Some Vista stuff, but mostly just Stuff at
http://berossus,blogspot.com
--
Julian I-Do-Stuff
Some Vista stuff, but mostly just Stuff at
http://berossus,blogspot.com
