Restore point and ShadowCopy files just vanished.

[Alex5723]

I am checking from time to time the status of storage on my disks (C – SSD, D – HDD, G – HDD).
I have noticed this morning that 8 GB has been just added to the free space on C drive.
Upon checking I found that all restore points and all ShadowCopy files were deleted.
I have 180GB of free space on C drive so Storage Sense shouldn’t have to delete the files.
It never happened with previous versions (1909, 2004).

Cchecking properties for Desktop shows no ShadowCopy file, while Nir Sofer’s ShadowCopyView shows 1 ShadowCopy file from today.

• This topic was modified 6 days, 22 hours ago by Alex5723.

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[GoneToPlaid]

Check your event viewer for VOLSNAP Event ID: 25

[Alex5723]

GoneToPlaid wrote:

VOLSNAP Event ID: 25

No VOLSNAP Event ID: 25.

There is event-id 25 but it is Information – kernel-boot – The boot menu policy was 0x1 .

[anonymous]

Had that occur today on a system with 1909. Really weird problem with a user profile so I was going to try a restore point. Had 3 available this morning. After rebooting prior to restoring, all 3 disappeared! I hate Windows 10!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

[GoneToPlaid]

I did some Googling. The Fast Startup feature can sometimes cause problems with drivers. 0x1 means that Windows rebooted using Fast Startup. You might want to disable Fast Startup. Restore Points (shadow copies) disappear for only one reason. That reason is that the latest shadow copy could not grow in time. Could you check your registry under

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\volsnap]

for a DWORD name called MinDiffAreaFileSize and what its value is?

[Zig]

Alex,

?How long ago did you update to 20H2?? An update erases all restore points (don’t know about ShadowCopy, as I don’t use it).

Zig

 

[Alex5723]

Zig wrote:

?How long ago did you update to 20H2??

Updated on Nov. 3 and had both restore point and daily ShadowCopy files since the upgrade.

[Alex5723]

GoneToPlaid wrote:

The Fast Startup feature can sometimes cause problems with drivers.

Fast Startup is off.

There is no ‘MinDiffAreaFileSize’ entry.

Storage Sense has been configured to run weekly but has never deleted Restore Points and ShadowCopy files in the past/since upgrading to 20H2 on Nov. 3

• This reply was modified 6 days, 9 hours ago by Alex5723.

[GoneToPlaid]

How big is your C partition? How much space do you have allocated for restore points? Also, please check in Event Viewer for any other VOLSNAP error messages.

[Alex5723]

My C partition is 256Gb with 180GB of free space (I works “only” with portable apps which are on D drive).
I have allocated 10% ~25GB for Restore Points.
As I create a full image copy twice a month (1, 16) I clear all 15 days of Restore Points and ShadowCopy (except for the last one) before creating the image.
As I said, never before has Windows 10 deleted all my Restore Points and ShadowCopy files.
There are no VOLSNAP error messages.

[GoneToPlaid]

A highly fragmented pagefile on C can cause Windows (all versions 7 and higher) to lose restore points on reboot. The high fragmentation causes very high I/O to and from the drive partition. Solutions are:

— in Safe Mode, defrag drive C, delete the pagefile, create a new pagefile, and reboot normally; or alternatively

— delete the pagefile on C and create a new pagefile on D.

I/O handles are assigned per drive partition, not per each physical drive. The reason for creating the new pagefile in Safe Mode is that I have seen Windows create an incredibly fragmented pagefiles when in Normal Mode.

I see that you have allocated 25GB for Restore Points. Now you need to a DWORD registry name called MinDiffAreaFileSize. You can easily do this by copying everything below in between the two rows of asterisks

**************************************
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\volsnap]
“MinDiffAreaFileSize”=dword:00000c00
;
; dword:00000c00 = 3072 MB (3 GB)
;
**************************************

into Notepad and then saving it as a file called

Volsnap_MinDiffAreaFileSize_3_GB.reg

and then right-clicking on this regfile in order to merge its contents into the registry. This will cause Windows to pre-allocate 3GB of space for creating new Restore Points instead of Windows trying to grow (enlarge) the space while at the same time Windows is creating a new System Restore point and while at the same time under heavy I/O load as generally is the case when rebooting.

Note that the amount of disk space which you have allocated for System Restore must always be greater than MinDiffAreaFileSize, or in this case 3GB.

The above solution has worked like a champ for me on my Windows 7 computers which occasionally (perhaps twice a year) would mysteriously lose all of their Restore Points.

 

[Paul T]

GoneToPlaid wrote:

A highly fragmented pagefile on C

It’s an M2 SSD so not an issue.

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

Alex5723

[Alex5723]

GoneToPlaid wrote:

Volsnap_MinDiffAreaFileSize_3_GB.reg

and then right-clicking on this regfile in order to merge its contents into the registry. This will cause Windows to pre-allocate 3GB of space for creating new Restore Points instead of Windows trying to grow (enlarge) the space while at the same time Windows is creating a new System Restore point and while at the same time under heavy I/O load as generally is the case when rebooting.

Windows is allocating 10% ~25GB for Restore Points.. The system will never reach, even closely to 25GB in 2 weeks (I manually create a restore point every week), so I don’t see the need for the registry entry (why didn’t Windows 10 create that registry entry ?)

Daily ShadowCopy files are saved on the desktop I don’t think restore points allocated space is used.

• This reply was modified 3 days, 23 hours ago by Alex5723.

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[GoneToPlaid]

Alex5723 wrote:

Windows is allocating 10% ~25GB for Restore Points.

Windows has not allocated 25GB for Restore Points. All this setting does is to tell Windows how much space it can potentially use for Restore Points. Open a command prompt with Administrator privileges. Then type the following and report back.

Vssadmin List ShadowStorage

 

[Alex5723]

C:\WINDOWS\system32>Vssadmin List ShadowStorage
vssadmin 1.1 – Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2013 Microsoft Corp.

Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (D:)\\?\Volume{97dc257c-28a7-447b-b617-808e21693e2d}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (D:)\\?\Volume{97dc257c-28a7-447b-b617-808e21693e2d}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 bytes (0%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 bytes (0%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 9.31 GB (1%)

Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{ed0c65f8-2452-446e-a1cb-e15729f579fa}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{ed0c65f8-2452-446e-a1cb-e15729f579fa}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 5.18 GB (2%)
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 5.60 GB (2%)
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 23.8 GB (10%)

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