VSS Error: 0x8004231f - Failed to Create Volume Snapshot

Error

0x8004231f - Failed to Create Volume Snapshot

Solution 1 - Remove drive letters allocated unnecessarily to small partitions

Solution 2 - Increase shadow storage space

Solution 3 - Remove old VSS snapshots

Description

Error code 0x8004231f indicates VSS_E_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE (Insufficient storage space for the Shadowcopy). Shadow storage space is used for system restore points and by Macrium Reflect. You may have inadvertently allocated a drive letter to the Microsoft System Reserved partition (MSR) or you may have too many restore points on your system.

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Solution 1 - Remove drive letters allocated unnecessarily to small partitions

The Microsoft System Reserved (MSR) partition is required to boot Windows 7 and later operating systems. Ordinarily, this partition does not have a drive letter assigned to it. If a drive letter is assigned then this can cause problems with Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS).

Note: The same is also true of OEM utility partitions such as DELL utility partitions. It is not required for these partitions to have drive letter associations and allocating a drive letter can cause VSS to fail..

For more information on correcting this please see this article:

"How to remove a drive letter from the - MS System Reserved partition" 
http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50162.aspx

To see the amount ofstorage space allocated and used for Volume Shadow Copies run thefollowing command from a command prompt with elevated privileges:

Vssadmin list shadowstorage

To allocate more storage (e.g. 50GB) run the following command:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=50GB

Solution 3 - Remove old VSS snapshots

During normal Windows operation, restore points will be created during software installation and other day to day operational tasks.  These restore points create snapshots that reside in an area of the disk and consume disk space.

This disk space can be reclaimed by using the vssadmin command in an elevated MS-DOS command prompt.  The following KB article will help with launching an elevated command prompt.  Once the command prompt is loaded, enter the following command:

vssadmin delete shadows /all

This will remove all VSS snapshots on the system, prompting you first for confirmation. Running the command 'vssadmin list shadows' will display a list of snapshots on your system along with associated ID.  Deletion by ID must specify a valid snapshot ID, deletion by volume must specify a valid Windows volume (e.g.: C:) and deletion of oldest snapshot simply removes the single, oldest snapshot on the system.  An example of deleting by ID follows:

C:\Users\Dev>vssadmin delete shadows /shadow={42bb9090-723c-4107-8954-92006026defd}

To not be prompted by any of the commands use the /quiet flag.

The following Microsoft KB article will provide further information regarding vssadmin delete shadows.