TI 2016 error "unable to create volume snapshot"

Hi thomasjk,

Have you been able to confirm that your hard drives (both the one to be backed up and the one where the backups are to be wrriten to) do not have any bad sectors yet (open elevated command prompt and run "chkdks /f /r")?  I would also recommend checking the drives using a third party tool such as the free WD Data Lifeguard Diagnosics Utility for a second, non-Microsoft opinion.

If all checks out there, can you also verify that both your internal drive (the one to be backed up) and your backup source drive (the one where the backups are to be written to) do not have any power settings that would prevent the drives from being available when the system is not actively being used at 2:00AM?  For instance, sleep/hibernation/hybrid-sleep may be preventing the system from being available.  If not, what about in control power power management settings in the advanced options where things like disks and USB can be set to use low power or disabled after a period of time automatically.  Also, in computer management, devices, there are also power saving features turned on by default for hard drives, NICs and USB ports that may be enabled by default, preventing these things from being accessible if there has been no human interaction on the system for awhile. 

If all of that checks out and it is still not working, I agree that the cleanup utility should not be required.  However, there are many avenues that an application, OS, and/or registry can become corrupted (malware, Antivirus blocking or removing legitimate files, third party tools like registry cleaners / system mechanic tools, bad hardware such as corrupted disks or failing memory, etc).  I'm not saying that's theeh case for you, but it could be.  Removing and installing the software and making sure the application is whitelisted in your AV programs may fix the issue and prevent it from happening again.

Bobbo, thanks for suggestions. I did find the power setting for my C: drive, the drive being backed up was set to turn off after 20 minutes. I'll report back tomorrow if that made a difference.

I also ran a quick smartest using the Western Digital utility, both drives passed. I haven't run CHKDSK or the WD extended test. My wife is using the machine in question. Both of the drives in question are internal SATA drives so USB devices being off should not make a difference.

Roger that, let us know how it goes with the changes.  Regarding the internal drives, some of them have their own internal firmware power state saving features as well.  WD Greens are notorious for this and can lead to these types of issues as well. Not sure what kind of internal disks you're using, but may want to check if they have internal power save settings as well through the manufactuer website. 

As for general power setttings too - how often is sleep or hibernation turned on and if so, at what interval?  If there is no physical interaction with the system for that period, the systm will go to sleep or hibernate and then Acronis may not be able to wake the disk to run the scheduled task if it is sleeping/hibernating at 2AM.

The C: drive is WD 1TB and the internal drives are Seagate 2TB Baracuda 6GBPS sata. I have two identical Seagates model ST2000DM001.These drives are not Seagate green drives.

Sleep or hibernation is set to never in the Balanced Power settings and is never used on this machine (desktop).

Last niight's backup ran successfully. I'll continues to monitor the backups each day before taking any other action. It sure would be nice if the logs were easily accessible like they were in TI 2014 and earlier.

You might have a look in Device Manager, locate your drives under Disk Drives, right click on each one and select Properties.  Check for Power saving options there and if enabled, disable them.

There are no power saving options listed in the Porperties for each drive.

Agreed on the logs. This has been brought up in the MVP forums and we are hoping to see the log changes in future releases but we will have to see.  I am hopeful that we wil see the logs brought back in 2017, if not sooner. 

Its nice that it might be added back in 2017 or sooner, but I may not continue using TI. The software has declined substantially in useability and relaibility for me during the last few versions.

That's a personal choice and completely up to you.  I have a feeling (and a hope) that 2017 is going to be the application that we all want it to be again.  If nothing else, when 2017 comes out, grab the trial and test it out for yourself before you make a determiniation though.  Of course, it will be some time before that happens though (I'm guessing), since yearly major version upgrades seem to get released around September/October (based on the last 2 releases).  We'll have to wait and see.  I'm pretty sure there will be at least one more update to 2016 this year as well (also guessing though, but pretty sure), so we might even see some changes this year.  Cant' say though - can only hope for now. 

If the error persists, try disabling the Volume Shadow Copy service to allow Acronis' snapman service to create the snapshot. I have found it to be more reliable than VSS. Set the start type for VSS to "Disabled." If you set it to "Manual", Acronis will start the service prior to the backup. If you have other VSS dependent applications, you can use pre and post commands in TI to stop VSS before the backup and restart it after the backup.

Thanks for the insight Mustang. So far the backups are now working for the last two nights.

Just when things are going well I received a "Backup Failed" message when I opened TI 2016 this morning. I ran a validation and it said the TIB file was good.

Any thoughts? What logs should I attach here for trouble shooting? I would like to do more trouble shooting before I get rid of 2016. I plan to run WD diagnositcs on the C: drive being backed up.

If you're comfortable posting a system report, we can probably check through it to see if anything stands out.  You may also want to check the last few backup logs inC:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs with names like "service_2016-01-27-21-09-32.log" to see if any errors stand out there too.  Probably a good idea to check your Windows "System" and "Applicaiton" logs to see if any errors or warnings stand out around the time the backup was scheduled to run.

I recently found a forum post in the 11.7 Backup section that recommended disabling VSS if no local databases (SQL, Exchange, etc) were being used.  I tried it on a problematic laptop that would always fail at just about 1GB and continue to fail from that point over and over no matter how many times I removed the backup locally and/or from the cloud.  To my suprise, with VSS turned off, the backup chugged right along without any issues so now I am trying to figure out why that is and what impact disabling VSS will have to other things like Windows System Protection (if any at all).

VSS usually fails due to a list writer issue such as the writer created an error or there is not enough reserved space on the disk for the shadow copy to be created.  That scenario can be attributed to to many restore points being saved but can be other issues as well.

Enchantech wrote:

VSS usually fails due to a list writer issue such as the writer created an error or there is not enough reserved space on the disk for the shadow copy to be created.  That scenario can be attributed to to many restore points being saved but can be other issues as well.

Thanks.  I'm guessing the reserved space may be the issue.  It's a 64Gb eMMC flash hard drive, and although there is roughtly 30GB free, there are other qwerks with these small hard drives I've run into as well.  ATIH 2016 (in Windows) even shows this as a "network" drive in list view instead of a local drive and WinPE is required for offline backups (which I'm suprised since eMMC flash hard drives have been around a few years now and relatively common in tablets and low-end hybrid laptop/tablets).  

I did open a support case for this a few weeks ago, but response has been pretty slow.  Even after advising them that disabling VSS has resolved the issue, I have yet to hear anything back after several days, which is pretty disappointing.

My backups have run without error for the last 6 nights. I set up an email as part of the task to send me the log so I can verify that it worked as expected. I will continue to monitor this issue for now.

Thomas,

You may find the link below of benefit in troubleshooting VSS errors if your issue reappears:

http://backupchain.com/en/vss-troubleshooting-guide/

Thanks.