I have a Windows 2008 File Server which we have shadow copies running on 1 volume M-F 8-6 which gives us about a 1 weeks worth. This morning I was shocked to see that all my shadow copies were gone except for the ones created this morning. On the event logs, there are numerous VSS errors:
12294
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine returned E_INVALIDARG. Routine details GetSnapshot({00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},03526740).
12293
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on a Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine details EndPrepareSnapshots({bef82808-c26c-467d-b470-1898a732c8b4}) [hr = 0x8000ffff].
12289
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error Error calling CreateFile on volume '\\?\Volume{1a2d17d4-007c-11e2-866e-1cc1de21b71e}\'. hr = 0x80070037.
12298
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: The I/O writes cannot be held during the shadow copy creation period on volume \\?\Volume{529c5cfa-e61c-11df-9d22-806e6f6e6963}\. The volume index in the shadow copy set is 0. Error details: Open[0x00000000], Flush[0x00000000], Release[0x00000000], OnRun[0x80042314].
12310
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: The shadow copy could not be committed - operation timed out. Error context: DeviceIoControl(\\?\Volume{529c5cfa-e61c-11df-9d22-806e6f6e6963} - 0000021C,0x0053c010,00AFF0D8,0,00AF80A0,4096,[0]).
12340
Volume Shadow Copy Error: VSS waited more than 40 seconds for all voumes to be flushed. This caused volume \\?\Volume{529c5cfa-e61c-11df-9d22-806e6f6e6963}\ to timeout while waiting for the release-writes phase of shadow copy creation. Trying again when disk activity is lower may solve this problem.
20
The shadow copies of volume E: were aborted because of a failed free space computation.
8
The flush and hold writes operation on volume E: timed out while waiting for a release writes command.
The E volume is the one where shadow copies are enabled.