In today’s post, we will explore the cause and then provide possible remediations for the issue of usability limit for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) errors 0x0000007E, 0x80042306, 0x80070057 in Windows 11/10.
The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is a set of COM APIs that implements a framework to allow volume backups to be performed while applications on a system continue to write to the volumes. VSS provides a consistent interface that allows coordination between user applications that update data on disk (writers) and those that back up applications (requesters).
VSS errors 0x0000007E, 0x80042306, 0x80070057
You may encounter any of the error messages or notice a failure based on the following scenario.
You enable the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) on a volume that is larger than 64 terabytes (TB) and then create writable snapshots or snapshots that are larger than 64 TB. You also enable VSS for a shared folder on a volume that is larger than 64 TB and you run a backup operation on a volume that is larger than 64 TB that has a shadow copy enabled. You then run chkdsk.exe on a volume that is larger than 64 TB.
The error message may include one of the following:
Error message 1
STOP: 0x0000007E
Error message 2
Failed to create a shadow copy of volume <Drive_letter>.
Error message 3
Error 0x80042306: The shadow copy provider had an error. Check the System and Application event logs for more information.
Error message 4
Event ID: 12289. Error: 0x80070057. The parameter is incorrect.
Cause of VSS errors 0x0000007E, 0x80042306, 0x80070057
This issue occurs because Microsoft does not support VSS on volumes larger than 64 TB. Also, writable snapshots or snapshots larger than 64 TB are not supported.
To work around this issue, Microsoft prescribes not to perform any of the operations that are described in the case-scenario above, on a volume that is larger than 64 TB.
I hope this post explains why these VSS errors occur.
