Identifying how much disk space is used for restore points in Windows Vista

Vista: Shadow Copies

This is Vista - Time to get Vistafied... — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:31:23 GMT

Whenever I demo Vista to Partners and Customers, one of the areas I talk about is around Shadow Copies,

System Restore on Windows Vista

Strategic Developer — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 17:05:06 GMT

A week ago I wrote about my investigations into System Restore on Windows XP and Windows Vista. I have since heard back from a program manager at Microsoft, who said of the Vista default disk allocation: We believe that the...

re: Identifying how much disk space is used for restore points in Windows Vista

ScottO — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:32:51 GMT

A while back I performed a Complete PC backup of my C:\ drive to my D:\ drive; just to see what it was like.

Afterwards, I wanted to get rid of the old backup, and since there was no immediately obvious way to do this within the Backup & Restore Centre, I tried running Disk Cleanup on the D:\ drive.

I chose to cleanup "files for all users", and on the More Options tab clicked the "Clean up..." button under 'System Restore and Shadow Copies'. Of course, this only cleans up older Complete PC backup images, leaving the most recent one; so that was no use.

After searching around for any other ways that I could list/delete backup images, I figured that the only way to do it must be to delete the WindowsImageBackup folder (is that really the only way?).

So I did this, however the Backup & Restore Centre is still showing the "last backup" date there (as if it thinks the image still exists); and "vssadmin list shadows" reports a DataVolumeRollback type shadow copy on the D:\ drive, which has ~139Gb allocated to it (this is a 500Gb drive, which means ~465Gb formatted...so the size of the shadow copy is 30% of the volume, as expected).

How do I tell Vista that my backup image no longer exists? Was I wrong to delete the WindowsImageBackup folder as a means of getting rid of the unwanted image?

I'm really looking forward to that "Power Users Guide to Complete PC Backup" blog post that you were planning.....is this still in the works?

re: Identifying how much disk space is used for restore points in Windows Vista

ScottO — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:43:11 GMT

I think I may have found what I was looking for:

C:\wbadmin delete catalog

Interestingly, when you run "wbadmin -?" to get a list of commands, the DELETE verb isn't listed (ie. Vista only START BACKUP, STOP JOB and three GET * commands). A quick search on TechNet for "wbadmin DELETE" suggests that "this command applies only to Windows Server 2008".

However, if you run "wbadmin delete -help", Vista does report this as a supported command. Go figure.

re: Identifying how much disk space is used for restore points in Windows Vista

ScottO — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:44:51 GMT

Nope, that wasn't it.

Running "wbadmin delete catalog" did report that the catalog was deleted, but I still see the "last backup" date showing in the Backup & Restore Centre; and vssadmin still finds the DataVolumeRollback shadow copy that should no longer exist.

I'll try resizing the shadow storage using vssadmin, but surely this is not what MS are expecting users to have to do? Is it really that difficult to put button in the Backup & Restore centre labelled "Delete"?

re: Identifying how much disk space is used for restore points in Windows Vista

ieuro — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:42:32 GMT

I cannot find any newsgroup or forum which is discussing VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) SDK development. Therefore, I decide to post my question in here. So far I have implemented a backup program by using VSS SDK as Complete PC backup application. At present I can create a snapshot, XML files, VHD file, and display created history in disk property page in Windows Vista. However, it doesn't appear in “System Restore Program”, because I want restoring to early restore point. My question is as follows,

- How to display my snapshot history in System Restore Wizard?

- How to create VHD file by using VSS technology?

- How to display my VHD file in Complete PC Restore Wizard?

re: Identifying how much disk space is used for restore points in Windows Vista

ieuro — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:54:11 GMT

Is any VSS API can access previous versions of files when type of shadow copies is ClientAccessibleWriters?

Also, I cannot use ExposeSnapshots() for assigning driver letter to shadow copies when type is ClientAccessibleWriters. Therefore, is anyone can give me some suggestion?

Contents of shadow copy set ID: {4096039a-fab7-46b2-8f79-1c919394f120}

Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 2007/09/21 12:16:12 PM

Shadow Copy ID: {bd64f5b2-efe6-4c12-ad8a-cc8bcdd26315}

Original Volume:

(C:)\\?\Volume{847bd207-ed15-1242-9ada-806e6f6e6963}\

Shadow Copy Volume: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy1

Originating Machine: IEURO-PC

Service Machine: IEURO-PC

Provider: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'

Type: ClientAccessibleWriters

Attributes: Persistent, Client-accessible, No auto release, Differential, Auto recovered

How to delete old System Restore Points in Vista

Malu Menezes blahg — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:14:21 GMT

There are cases when you run out of disk space in your system drive, and you desperately need to increase