Server 2019 backup not maintaining correct number of copies

TechQs 1 Reputation point
2021-09-15T14:15:12+00:00

We have two external drives that we backup to and swap daily (one staying offline at all times). We upgraded from 2016 Essentials to 2019 Standard a few months ago. For whatever reason, one of our backup drives will only have at most about 14 copies available... once it hits that it will drop down to about 5 and then back up to about 14.

The other drive has 130+ copies available. We've reset the configurations a few times and they're identical, the drives themselves are identical (NTFS).

Screenshots attached, any ideas would be really appreciated!

132427-backup-1-not-working.png

132417-backup-2-working.png

Windows Server 2019
Windows Server 2019
A Microsoft server operating system that supports enterprise-level management updated to data storage.
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Windows Server
Windows Server
A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.
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Windows Server Backup
Windows Server Backup
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Backup: A duplicate copy of a program, a disk, or data, made either for archiving purposes or for safeguarding valuable files from loss should the active copy be damaged or destroyed.
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  1. Philippe Levesque 5,691 Reputation points MVP
    2021-09-15T14:52:11.587+00:00

    Hi

    At first I would try to reformat and reactivate the disk that fail with wbadmin as it seem related to that disk.

    If you do it via the commandline;

    wbadmin get disks > C:\disks.txt
    -- Find the correct disk ID of the fail disk from inside.
    wbadmin enable backup -addtarget:{xxxx}
    Answer Y to enable it.
    Answer Y to format it.

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  2. Limitless Technology 39,391 Reputation points
    2021-09-16T07:34:33.423+00:00

    Hello TechQs

    That reminds me to something I have experienced. Assuming that you have already checked the drive and the Event Viewer is free from I/O errors, the issue might be that the assigned space for the Volume Shadow Service for the specific drive (in the drive properties) was set way too low. After increasing that amount the backup has created several copies and we could now restore more than just a single day.

    You can check the size by volume with:

    vssadmin List ShadowStorage

    then verify that the bad drive has the same size as the healthy drive. To resize use> vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /On=[drive]: /For=[drive]: /Maxsize=[size]

    Hope this helps in your case too,
    Best regards,