Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of tiptechs
tiptechs

asked on

enabling volume shadow copy

We need to enable VSS on a windows 2003 box so that we can backup open files.  We have a 260 GB drive and there is only about 30 GB free.  My question is what effect will enabling VSS have on the system as far as performance and drive space.  How much space is required for VSS?

Thanks.
Avatar of Geodash
Geodash
Flag of United States of America image

It depends on your amount of data and how much you want to keep and how many timers a day to run VSS. The big question, how many days do you want to retain? I keep short amounts for VSS, like 2 days. It should not have any performance drawbacks. You can set 1 or 2 days 1 or 2 times a day, come back in 2 days and see how much data is consumed. It should be relatively small with only a couple days worth.
Avatar of tiptechs
tiptechs

ASKER

When you first set it up.  Does it take a snapshot of all the files or is it only related to files that are open?

Thanks.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Geodash
Geodash
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
It takes a snapshot of everything the first time ran. If you have other drives, you can set VSS to take the snapshots of one drive and put them on another.
You can also set a maximum you want the VSS's to consume. It will delete previous VSS's as it creates new ones.
Thanks Geodash.
Any time, good luck and let me know how it goes.
Geodash.   How do you set it to only hold 2 days worth of shadow copies ?    Also, will it create a folder to store the shadow copies in?   I enabled VSS and specified an external drive as the storage location.  I didn't notice any new folders or the drive space decreasing when I started the VSS.  

Thanks again.
It creates a folder but it is hidden. You have to show all hidden folders to see it. You will notice the diskspace going down if you leave the folder hidden. Also, did you manually create the first copy?

To just hold 2 days worth, I shrunk the maximum size that VSS could use on the drive until it worked for my amount of data. You may need to increase or shrink your allocated VSS space to allocate for only keeping 2 days worth. If it hits its limit, it will delete the oldest copies first.
Thanks again.    Appreciate all the help.
No Problem! Always here to help