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Is it possible to reserve a minimum amount of space used by the volume shadow copies of a given ntfs volume under windows 2008 R2 server?

I know how to set the maximum size, but not the minimum.

For example, right now on a 800 GB drive I have reserved a maximum of 15GB for shadow copies, but the actual current size of shadow copies is only 3.9GB, and the size that is actually reserved/allocated is only 4.6GB (shown when using the command Vssadmin List ShadowStorage). As far as I can tell, the remaining 11GB are not allocated, and nothing stops Windows from using up those 11GB. So when the shadow copies need to grow, the space may not be available.

The drive in question is not the primary drive, and is usually at or near capacity.

Is there a way to reserve this space so that windows will take the reserve into account when displaying the free space, and when adding new files to the disk?

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    A minimum setting makes no sense, if Windows doesn't need the minimum amount, what would it fill the the remainder with precisely? Setting the maximum size actually does reserve that much or its suppose to so your concern isn't warranted.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 13:19
  • I was under the impression that setting the maximum size will only limit the size of the shadow copies to at most this size, not block that size from being used for other things. I may have misinterpreted this, but it seemed to me like additional shadow volume copies are simply not made if less space is available.
    – HugoRune
    Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 13:26
  • The documentation on the subject says otherwise. "Lists the volume shadow storage space currently in use, the space that is reserved for future use (labeled as allocated), and the maximum space that might be dedicated.". It goes on to say that backups might be failing because the reserved space is full, not the volume itself, but Windows by default will continuously monitor the usage and it is supposet to increase the size for you before that happens.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 13:30
  • In that case i appologize for the misleading question. However I am not sure this interpretation is correct. The command you quoted "vssadmin list shadowstorage" returns three distinct amounts: the space currently in use, the space reserved for future use (allocated), and the maximum space. I executed the command on my server, and was shown 15GB as maximum space, but only 4.6GB as reserved space, of which 3.9Gb is currently used. The reserved/allocated space seems to be the one I am concerned with, but I only know how to change the maximum space.
    – HugoRune
    Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 13:38
  • I don't know of a way to change the amount of reserved space, and given my very quick research, it doesn't appeared to be configurable. Which tells me if you want to do that, make an entire partition dedicated for that precise purpose, or migrate to a backup solution that does provide you that capability.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 13:47

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