VSS Error: Couldn’t take snapshot. The shadow copy provider had an unexpected error while trying ...
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The VSS Error: Couldn’t take snapshot. The shadow copy provider had an unexpected error while trying to process the specified operation has related errors.
Common VSS Related Errors:
0x800423f4: The writer experienced a non-transient error.
0x8004230f: The shadow copy provider had an unexpected error while trying to process the specified operation.
0x80042336: The writer experienced a partial failure. Check the component level error state for more information.
Check the VSS writers' status in an elevated command prompt. If any writer is in a failed state, you may need to restart the service or, reboot the system. From an elevated command prompt or PowerShell run:
This will provide an list of all VSS writers on your PC. You want to check the Last Error and State items.
The value of Last Error should always be No Error, if the status is different you have a problem writer.
The value of State should be show [1] Stable.
A simple reboot of the PC may resolve this problem. If the issue continues after a reboot, it could indicate a larger issue within the PC.
Check for disk space issues: Ensure that there's enough free disk space on the volumes being backed up and the volume where the shadow copies are stored.
Check that you have the VSS writers installed and working. If any provider is causing an issue, try reinstalling or updating the provider. From an elevated command prompt or PowerShell run:
If you have any VSS providers listed other than Microsoft, you should disable them.
Shadow storage on the source drives is not configured or not large enough. The shadow storage size can be checked and manually changed through an elevated command prompt or PowerShell:
To check the current shadow storage limits:
To change the shadow storage limit:
Example Usages: vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=900MB vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=D: /MaxSize=UNBOUNDED vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=20%
Check the Windows Event Logs for error messages or warnings that might be helpful. You can use the Windows Event Viewer or we have provided a PowerShell command below. This command will filter events with the source "VSS" or "VolSnap" and displays those with a level of 'Error' or 'Warning':
Microsoft's VSS is only able to perform one snapshot at a time. If a snapshot is already in progress when your backup job starts, then the backup job could fail. Stopping and restarting the Volume Shadow Copy service can resolve this problem. To do this, open an elevated command prompt or PowerShell window and run the following commands:
If restarting the VSS service with the 'net stop vss & net start vss' shown above does not resolve the issue, a server reboot has also been known to clean up the snapshot manager correctly.
Having multiple backup products installed has been known to cause this error. Many backup solutions have their own proprietary snapshot manager which can cause conflicts with other backup solutions installed on the system.
VSS snapshots have been known to fail because an advanced format drive is connected to the machine. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/support-policy-4k-sector-hard-drives
