A couple of days ago I had a problem with an Exchange Server running out of space. I controlled database and logfile partitions and could not detect anything suspicious.
After some researches I figured out Volume Shadow Copies require much space because a backup job didn’t finish succesful and leave the VSS data on disk.
In my case vssadmin deleteshadows didn’t work, too. After some investigation I found a way to delete the Shadow Copies with the command line for WMI – WMIC
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc787035%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
In summary you have to do the following
- Start an elevated commandline window
- Type in wmic and press enter
- wmic:root\cli is shown
- Type in shadowcopy which will list the current shadow copies
- Type in shadowcopy delete and confirm to delete the copies one after the other
- To leave the WMI commandline type exit
Cheers,
Chris