I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 RTM and I'm trying to a backup but it keeps failing, complaining: A shadow copy could not be created. Please check "VSS" and "SPP" application event logs for more information. Details: Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data. I finally tried trouble shooting until I got to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd364715%28WS.10%29.aspx but when I ran the command prompt and tried "wbadmin enable backup" I got "Warning: The ENABLE BACKUP command is not supported in this version of Windows." Ok, what gives? Why does something as simple as a backup not work? Cheers, Eric

Creating a backup is easy if you have an external hard drive connected via USB connection. Exactly how are you configuring your backup?Carey Frisch

Eric, is that Ultimate x64 install one which has been installed clean or one which has been upgrade installed?

I got "Warning: The ENABLE BACKUP command is not supported in this version of Windows." Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2, not Windows 7.Carey Frisch

Creating a backup is easy if you have an external hard drive connected via USB connection. Exactly how are you configuring your backup? Carey Frisch I have an internal RAID array for my system with two volumes (C: 500GB & D: 6.8 TB), and I have an external USB drive (F: 1.8 TB) I am trying to backup C: to F: Cheers, Eric

Eric, is that Ultimate x64 install one which has been installed clean or one which has been upgrade installed? This is a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate RTM. Cheers, Eric

I got "Warning: The ENABLE BACKUP command is not supported in this version of Windows." Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2, not Windows 7. Carey Frisch As I told Techwrighter, this is a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit RTM, and that's the message I get when I type "wbadmin enable backup" in a command window. Just for the heck of it I tried starting a backup from the command window (in admin mode) C:\Windows\system32>wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:f: -include:c: -vssFull -allCritical wbadmin 1.0 - Backup command-line tool (C) Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corp. Retrieving volume information... This will back up volume System Reserved (100.00 MB),Local Disk(C:) to f:. Do you want to start the backup operation? [Y] Yes [N] No y The backup operation to F: is starting. Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup... The backup operation stopped before completing. Summary of the backup operation: ------------------ The backup operation stopped before completing. Detailed error: ERROR - A Volume Shadow Copy Service operation error has occurred: (0x8004231f) Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data. There is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy on the storage location. Make sure that, for all volumes to be backup up, the minimum required disk space for shadow copy creation is available. This applies to both the backup storage destination and volumes included in the backup. Minimum requirement: For volumes less than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 50 megabytes of free space. For volumes more than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 320 megabytes of free space. Recommended: At least 1 gigabyte of free disk space on each volume if volume size is more than 1 gigabyte. ERROR - A Volume Shadow Copy Service operation error has occurred: (0x8004231f) Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data. _____________ Windows is just taunting me when it says "There is not enough disk space" right ;-) Cheers, Eric

It may simply be a situation of not enough space being allocated to Volume Shadow Copy Service to cope with the operations you are trying to perform. As described in this article, you could try increasing the maximum space made available for it.

It may simply be a situation of not enough space being allocated to Volume Shadow Copy Service to cope with the operations you are trying to perform. As described in this article , you could try increasing the maximum space made available for it. Thanks for the referral. I checked out the article, but it does not address my problem. I tried increasing the "Maximum Shadow Copy Storage Space" from 10 GB to 128 GB, but I still get the same error messages. Any other ideas? Cheers, Eric

Just had a reread of the topic, and from the info provided above it seems that Backup is trying to operate in relation to the 100Mb 'system Reserved' partition as well as the C: partition. Can that be excluded from the scheduled backup job? The "not enough room" message in relation to volume shadow copy probably relates to that partition. Logic would seem to suggest so, anyway.

Just had a reread of the topic, and from the info provided above it seems that Backup is trying to operate in relation to the 100Mb 'system Reserved' partition as well as the C: partition. Can that be excluded from the scheduled backup job? The "not enough room" message in relation to volume shadow copy probably relates to that partition. Logic would seem to suggest so, anyway. If I use the command "wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:f: -include:c: -vssFull" then Windows complains that the system reserved partition is not included and that it cannot create a system image that can be restored. Sort of defeats the purpose of creating a restorable system image. Also, when I initiate backup from Control Panel I get basically the same error messages as before, so the default backup is probably doing "wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:f: -include:c: -vssFull -allCritical" Frankly I'm a little surprised - I would have thought Microsoft would have tested Windows 7 a little better so that something this basic would "just work." Cheers, Eric

Hi Eric,I suspect that your System reserved (100 MB) partition does not have enough space. As indicated in the error message, for volumes less than 500 megabytes,a minimumof 50 megabytes of free space is required for backup to be successful. Can you check if this is the issue in your case? If so, you can find the solution here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/fce6950d-c06d-4dd0-a850-67022db4fe04. Hope it helps.Thanks,Sneha[MSFT]

Hi Eric, I suspect that your System reserved (100 MB) partition does not have enough space. As indicated in the error message, for volumes less than 500 megabytes,a minimumof 50 megabytes of free space is required for backup to be successful. Can you check if this is the issue in your case? If so, you can find the solution here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/fce6950d-c06d-4dd0-a850-67022db4fe04 . Hope it helps. Thanks, Sneha [MSFT] My System Reserved partition only has 39,587,840 bytes free, and the article says it needs 40 MB free. I think this sounds like the answer, but I may choose a different solution. I'm planning on reinstalling Windows 7 anyway, so I'll probably create my partitions manual as Setup obviously cannot be trusted to create them properly, and I'll make my System Reserved partition 200 MB. I'll let everyone know how this goes. Thanks Sneha! Cheers, Eric

OK - I reinstalled Windows 7, and while I was doing it I increased the size of the "System Reserved" partition from 100 MB to 200 MB. Backup works fine now, simple, no problems, just as it should. Verdict: the Windows 7 RTM Setup is flawed in that it creates a 100 MB "System Reserved" partition when it should create something larger. Remedy: Microsoft testing needs to test the RTM versions (and earlier) versions of Windows on a greater variety of systems and system configurations. Comment: this never should have happened on a production release of Windows. - Eric

Well it looks like we know what the solution was. Thanks everyone for helping to figure this out. Now my question is: why can't Windows 7 Setup correctly compute the correct size of the System Reserved partition? This seems like a major oversight on Microsoft's part. Cheers, Eric