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I've got a Server 2012 R2 VM running as an SMB file host (VHDx on Host side.) Recently, I noticed that both the system disk and the data disk have duplicates showing in "My PC":

duplicate disks

I: is a clone of C:, and J: is a clone of D:. They both appear to be some kind of read-only snapshot. i.e. if I add/delete data to/from C: it doesn't show up in I:.

The SUBST command shows nothing.

Shadow copies are disabled for the disks (and was never turned on by me.)

I did recently enable the Data Deduplication service for D:, but this may be a coincidence.

Internet searches have not revealed any info about this situation (searching for "duplicate disks" is filled with unrelated problems.)

kasperd
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korylprince
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1 Answers1

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I eventually tracked it down to being a shadow copy of the disks. How, if I never enabled it?

My only guess is that the shadow copy set was created when I installed the Data Deduplication service, though I can find no evidence of this elsewhere on the internet.

Attempting to remove the shadows with vssadmin failed with error Snapshots were found, but they were outside of your allowed context. Try removing them with the backup application which created them. (As a note, no backup software was or ever has been running on this server.)

Eventually this led here which has the solution:

Launch an elevated command prompt on the Agent machine(s) involved and type the following:

diskshadow <enter>

list shadows all <enter>

delete shadows set {id of shadow to be deleted if selective deletion is to be performed}<enter>

OR

delete shadows all {if all shadows are to be deleted}

This will delete the corrupted shadow copies.

korylprince
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