VSS Error 0x8004231F

Question

I'm trying to convert my powered-on Win7 Ultimate SP1 to a VMWare Virtual Machine using Converter Standalone. Problem is, the conversion fails because of a VSS error:

FAILED: The VSS snapshots cannot be stored because there is not enough space on the source volumes or because the source machine does not have any NTFS volumes. Error code: 2147754783 (0x8004231F).

After hours of research, it's clear that there isn't enough space on the C: drive for VSS do do its job. But I have plenty of free space on other drives (all NTFS). Is there any way I can force VSS to use another drive for its work? My vssadmin doesn't seem to have the add command used in some posts to fix a similar problem affecting servers, so I'm really lost.

Thanks Chris

Answer 1

Apparently there is truly no solution to the above. The only suggestion Microsoft could come up with was to make some more space in the drive...

To solve the initial problem I did the following:

1. Create an image with True Image 2013;
2. Converted it with the free StarWind Converter (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/download-starwind-converter) to wmdk;
3. Create a new virtual machine (custom settings) and use the above vmdk file as the hard disk.

Answer 2

Take a look at the recovery partition. If it says 0 bytes free, then assign it a drive letter, open it and see what is taking the space. If you don't see anything, google how to delete journal files because that might be the problem. In my case, the problem was a 73 mb folder from Kaspersky, which left 0 bytes free. Deleted that, removed the assigned drive letter and the VSS shadow copy error vanished. I'm 70 percent through the backup.