I have a Windows 2008 File Server which we have shadow copies running on 1 volume M-F 8-6 which gives us about a 1 weeks worth. This morning I was shocked to see that all my shadow copies were gone except for the ones created this morning. On the event logs, there are numerous VSS errors:
12294
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine returned E_INVALIDARG. Routine details GetSnapshot({00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},03526740).
12293
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on a Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine details EndPrepareSnapshots({bef82808-c26c-467d-b470-1898a732c8b4}) [hr = 0x8000ffff].
12289
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error Error calling CreateFile on volume '\\?\Volume{1a2d17d4-007c-11e2-866e-1cc1de21b71e}\'. hr = 0x80070037.
12298
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: The I/O writes cannot be held during the shadow copy creation period on volume \\?\Volume{529c5cfa-e61c-11df-9d22-806e6f6e6963}\. The volume index in the shadow copy set is 0. Error details: Open[0x00000000], Flush[0x00000000], Release[0x00000000], OnRun[0x80042314].
12310
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: The shadow copy could not be committed - operation timed out. Error context: DeviceIoControl(\\?\Volume{529c5cfa-e61c-11df-9d22-806e6f6e6963} - 0000021C,0x0053c010,00AFF0D8,0,00AF80A0,4096,[0]).
12340
Volume Shadow Copy Error: VSS waited more than 40 seconds for all voumes to be flushed. This caused volume \\?\Volume{529c5cfa-e61c-11df-9d22-806e6f6e6963}\ to timeout while waiting for the release-writes phase of shadow copy creation. Trying again when disk activity is lower may solve this problem.
20
The shadow copies of volume E: were aborted because of a failed free space computation.
8
The flush and hold writes operation on volume E: timed out while waiting for a release writes command.
The E volume is the one where shadow copies are enabled. There's plenty of free space on the volume dedicated for shadow copies. Running vssadmin list writers reports no errors. We're currently backing up the server with Backup Exec and Crashplan Pro.