Windows Shadow Copies

^{Created: 2018-08-08 03:44:58 | Last modified: 2022-10-06 22:42:59} ^{| By: Nova}
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Commands for listing and deleting shadow copies inside Windows Server/ Windows 7 etc

Commands for listing shadow copies and providers. All commands require the command prompt

#Lists registered Volume Shadow Copy providers. Windows Vista includes Software Shadow Copy Provider 1.0.
vssadmin list providers

#Lists existing volume shadow copies, the time the shadow copy was created, and its location.
vssadmin list shadows

#Example of the listed shadow, highlighted section is the ShadowID for deleting as per the below
C:>vssadmin list shadows
Contents of shadow copy set ID: {0d55acbc-3e04-4184-8c01-9ca1bf72533d}
   Contained 3 shadow copies at creation time: 6/04/2019 4:48:23 a.m.
      Shadow Copy ID: {714cab61-965f-4359-a2a3-865bdd57a740}
         Original Volume: (E:)\\?\Volume{85bbf311-50e7-11e7-bfed-02007d82000b}\
         Shadow Copy Volume: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy3
         Originating Machine: nze1.win.neowebcloud.com
         Service Machine: nze1.win.neowebcloud.com
         Provider: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
         Type: ApplicationRollback
         Attributes: Persistent, No auto release, Differential, Exposed locally, Auto recovered

To delete a shadow copy, you can use either of the following

#Delete a shadow using its ID, you can get the shadow ID by running the above commands
vssadmin delete shadows /shadow=THESHADOWID
vssadmin delete shadows /shadow={714cab61-965f-4359-a2a3-865bdd57a740}

#Delete all shadow copies
vssadmin delete shadows /all

The above won't work if a backup application has created the shadows. To delete them you can use DiskShadow

#To delete the shadows
diskshadow
delete shadows all
exit

#Confirm the shadows are gone
vssadmin list shadows

To set a specific size that shadows can grow to before being deleted where C: is the drive you wish to set and the maxsize is the max size the shadow copies can grow.

# Set as a percentage (e.g. 10%)
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=C: /on=C: /maxsize=10%

# Set as a specific value (e.g. 12GB)
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=C: /on=C: /maxsize=12GB