VSS Errors While Formatting Drive

Mark Berry November 2, 2010

In Server 2008 R2, I started a full (not quick) format on an external USB drive. While that was running, I wanted to check the shadow copy setup on some other drives. I right-clicked on a drive in Explorer and selected Configure Shadow Copies…. I got a message telling me it couldn’t display the shadow copy information, and a bunch of nasty messages in the Application event log with discouraging phrases like “catastrophic failure.”

Windows Server Backup: VSS Failure Backing Up Guest VM

Mark Berry September 23, 2010

I’m setting up Windows Server Backup on a Hyper-V host (Windows Server 2008 R2). I want to do an online backup of the guest virtual machine (Windows Server 2003 R2). I’ve already registered the Hyper-V VSS writer per MSKB 958662. So why are my backups failing?

Getting Past VSS Error 80042316 from DriveImage XML

Mark Berry March 24, 2008

I’m using Runtime Software’s free DriveImage XML to back up several XP machines over a network to Windows 2003 server. Scheduled tasks run DriveImage XML in command-line mode and are set to
try VSS before drive locking. Another scheduled task collects logs and emails them to me.

Today I noticed that one of the backups did not complete. When I tried to run the backup interactively, DriveImage XML told me that it “Could not initialize Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)” and that the error code was 80042316. The Volume Shadow Copy service was running. I tried stopping and starting the service and re-running the backup, but it still could not proceed.

Some Google research turned up the meaning of 80042316 as “another snapshot creation is in progress. Please retry later your snapshot creation.” However to the best of my knowledge there are no other backups or other VSS-aware processes running. 

I thought perhaps the recent change from Trend CS 3.6 to NOD 32 2.7 might have caused a problem, but DriveImage XML completed fine on several other machines running NOD32.

Finally I remembered that there is a command-line utility to look into VSS on a machine. I typed

vssadmin list shadows

at a command prompt and it showed that there is a shadow copy on some kind of virtual volume (\\?\Volume{2eb5f062-fd3d-11d8-8bb5-806d6172696f}\). Stopping and starting the Volume Shadow Copy service did not remove the shadow copy.

Maybe this is a remnant from an old backup? I don’t know how to directly delete shadow copies under Windows XP, but let’s see if a reboot helps…

Bingo! After the reboot, the “vssadmin list shadows” command showed “No shadow copies present in the system,” and DriveImage XML was able to create a new shadow copy and do the backup.

Not Fixed

Alas, when DriveImage XML completed and exited, I still had a volume shadow copy on the volume, and the next time I ran DriveImage XML, it  gave me the same message but a slightly different error code:  80042317. Google isn’t so helpful in finding a description for 80042317. But rebooting the machine again killed the shadow copy and let DriveImage XML run, so I’m assuming it’s the same issue.

Bummer! So why can’t DriveImage XML release/delete its shadow copies on this machine? The Microsoft storage team lists three recommended hotfixes for VSS in this blog entry, but they are all for Windows Server 2003, not XP.

Excluding the C:\System Volume Information folder (where volume shadow copies are stored, I believe) from NOD32 didn’t help.

Excluding dixml.exe (the DriveImage XML executable) from NOD32 didn’t help.

I’ll update this if I find a solution (other than rebooting the machine after every backup!). 

Seagate FreeAgent Pro eSATA and Bad Block Errors

Mark Berry June 25, 2007

Background 

I was looking for an external hard drive for a Windows 2003 Server. The drive will be used mostly for backups. My long-range plan is to be able to save workstation backup images to the drive via the network, but to be able to attach the drive directly to a workstation, if necessary, to restore an image. The drive should be reasonably fast when attached to the server, so eSATA seemed to fit the bill. However, since the workstations don't have SATA cards, the drive needed to support USB as well. I chose a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent Pro USB/eSATA version, along with a SIIG eSATA II-150 PCI card for the server.

I should perhaps mention that while the SIIG card is supported under Windows Server 2003, the FreeAgent drive is not. I talked to Seagate sales before I purchased the drive, and the impression I got was that although the drive is not officially supported, it should work. And it fact it does–with one important modification.

Symptoms 

The problem I encountered after connecting the drive to the eSATA card was the following error in the Windows System event log:

Source: Disk
Event ID: 7
Description: The device, \Device\Harddisk2, has a bad block.

At first I thought this indicated a bad disk. But eventually I saw a pattern:  the bad block error only occurred if the drive had entered its “sleep” state, i.e. had spun down. By default, this happens after 15 minutes. If I accessed the drive in Windows explorer after it had spun down, in the few seconds that it took it to spin back up, Windows would get impatient and report a bad block error. Note that the “sleep” mode I'm referring to is an internal feature of the Seagate drive–it is not under the control of Windows Power Options in the Control Panel.

If I attached the Seagate drive via a USB cable, let it spin down, and then accessed it, I did not get a bad block error.

Another symptom, one that I did not at first associate with the FreeAgent disk, was the following message in the Application event log:

Source:  VSS
Event ID:  12289
Description:  Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error DeviceIoControl(\\?\Volume{ba849e07-88fb-11d9-9c6f-806d6172696f} – 0000017C,0×0053c020,00039B48,0,00038B40,4096,[0]).  hr = 0×80070017.

This error occurred when I started an ntbackup job. Apparently during Volume Shadow Services initialization, it couldn't immediately access to the Seagate drive and so logged this error. A bad block error was also logged at exactly the same time. 

Cause

My speculation is that Windows knows that USB drives may spin down, and it will wait for them to become accessible. However, because an eSATA drive runs as a BIOS-attached drive (similar to a SCSI drive), Windows treats it as an internal drive and expects it to be “on” at all times.

Solution

The solution is to attach the drive to a Windows XP or Vista machine, install the FreeAgent Tools software, go to Utilities, and set the Drive Sleep Interval to Never. Then move the drive back to the server. The Sleep Interval setting is maintained even though the drive is powered down when moving it to another machine. Once I did this, both the bad block and the VSS errors stopped.

Conclusion

It's obviously a pain to have to install a 142MB software package just to change the Sleep Interval, but Seagate Support said there is no other way. Too bad they don't make a simple command-line utility for updating the drive settings. (The software has lots of slick backup/restore features, integration with Internet drive access, etc.–all kinds of things that I don't need in this environment.) I tried installing the FreeAgent software under Windows Server 2003, but the installation failed with a message that it only runs under Windows 2000, XP, or Vista. Hence the solution of temporarily installing the software on a desktop machine.

I wonder if others have had similar problems with eSATA drives that like to go to sleep? Eventually Windows may need to add an option to treat eSATA drives like it treats USB drives. Considering that this drive is only used once a day during backups, it would be nice if sleep mode worked without causing errors. In the meantime, I'll hope that keeping the drive out of sleep mode resolves the “bad block” errors.