Not Enough Space Error

[olivejr]

I've just discovered this forum while trying to find a solution to a problem I am having after installing a new drive. 

 

I have WHS 2011 and the OS runs off a smaller SSD around 240 gig or so.  I store my data is on a 2TB drive.  I just added a new 2TB drive and set it as the backup drive.  I am only trying to backup about 400 gig or so to the backup.  Most of that come from the 2TB drive but I am also backing up the OS from the SSD.

 

When I try to run the backup it says, "preparing for backup" that last about 10 seconds then it says Unsuccessful.  The Backup details state that there is not enough free space on the disk.  When I look at the disk properties it says I have 1862.9 GB free and my backup would use less than half of that.

 

What am I missing?

[jmwills]

The Server Backup tool reserves that entire drive for the server.  I guess I should say Volume. I think even if you partitioned the 2TB drive into 2x1TB it will still take the whole drive thru a reformat process.

[olivejr]

I'm sorry HSS, I don't understand what you're saying.  The second 2TB drive I put in is dedicated solely to backups.  So far, nothing has been written to it, yet it says that their is not enough space to backup 400 gig of data.  I don't get it.

[Drashna Jaelre]

Check the free space on the disks being backed up.

In some cases, if there isn't enough free space (10-15%, IIRC), the VSS snapshots will fail, which causes the backup to fail.

 

Also, the Event Viewer ("eventvwr.msc") may have more details about what went wrong.

[ikon]

In most cases I agree with Drashna, in that almost always this problem turns out to be not enough space for the Volume Shadow Service to do its job. But Drashna, here's the rub. If he only has 400GB to backup, including the OS drive, how could there not be enough space for VSS to do its job? Could VSS be trying to create the entire shadow copy on the C: partition?

[olivejr]

Here is a complete picture:

 

C: Drive            120 GB, 34 Gig used (Wanting to back this up)

Data Disk:        1863 GB, 680 Used (Maybe backing up 500 gig of this)

Backup Disk:    1863 GB, 0.1 Used  

Edited February 23, 2015 by olivejr

[ikon]

See, it seems to me that you have plenty of free space available. At this point I think you really need to look at the Event Viewer logs.

[Andne]

Depending on how the SSD is formatted, there may be another small boot partition on there that is causing issues.  I've run into problems in the past where that partition can't be backed up and gotten errors about not enough space.  Excluding the partition typically fixed those errors, but it can make restoring a server from the backup more difficult since now some of the boot files may be missing.  I think I always saw that with client backups though, not the server backup.

[ikon]

Thanks Andne. I totally forgot about the 100MB System Reserved partition.

 

olivejr, are you backing up the small System Reserved partition? If so, it's possible that VSS is getting hung up because there isn't enough free space in the System Reserved partition for VSS to create the shadow copy info for that partition. And no, you can't relocate VSS shadow copy files to other drives or partitions.

 

The only answer is to make the partition bigger. There are partition managers available (Acronis, Paragon, EaseUS) that would allow you to resize partitions on the boot drive. A common value, from what I've seen, is to increase the System Reserved partition from 100MB to 300MB.

 

To verify that this is the problem, check out the EventViewer logs, like Drashna said.

[olivejr]

Here is my event log:

 

Log Name:      Application

Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Backup

Date:          2/24/2015 7:16:11 AM

Event ID:      521

Task Category: None

Level:         Error

Keywords:      

User:          SYSTEM

Computer:      Homeserver

Description:

The backup operation that started at '‎2015‎-‎02‎-‎24T12:16:01.307000000Z' has failed because the Volume Shadow Copy Service operation to create a shadow copy of the volumes being backed up failed with following error code '2155348249'. Please review the event details for a solution, and then rerun the backup operation once the issue is resolved.

Event Xml:

<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">

  <System>

    <Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Backup" Guid= 

    <EventID>521</EventID>

    <Version>0</Version>

    <Level>2</Level>

    <Task>0</Task>

    <Opcode>0</Opcode>

    <Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>

    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-02-24T12:16:11.385379200Z" />

    <EventRecordID>262520</EventRecordID>

    <Correlation />

    <Execution ProcessID="3832" ThreadID="4576" />

    <Channel>Application</Channel>

    <Computer>Homeserver</Computer>

    <Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />

  </System>

  <EventData>

    <Data Name="BackupTime">2015-02-24T12:16:01.307000000Z</Data>

    <Data Name="ErrorCode">2155348249</Data>

    <Data Name="ErrorMessage">%%2155348249</Data>

  </EventData>

</Event>