Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data in Windows 7 / 8 / 10

SUMMARY

Error: Job terminated, error creating VSS snapshot. VSS snapshot fails with error: (VSS_E_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE) Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data.

ISSUE

Backups fail with:

----- Error Messages -----
DoVssSnapshotSet: USNAPError! Status after DoSnapshotSet
(VSS_E_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE) Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data.
Please check Windows Events Log that Volume Shadow Copy Service and VSS Writers are operating properly.
Failed to create Volume Shadow Copy.
To resolve this issue review the Event logs for any potential VSS and System Writers failures.
Windows Instant Recovery is not possible for this back

• NOTE: This article applies to Workstation OS's (Window 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10) as VSS storage is configurable on server class OS's.

RESOLUTION

This is resolved by shrinking the Recovery Partition.

Follow this article to resize the partitions which do not meet the minimum requirements for VSS snapshots.

CAUSE

This error indicates that the protected asset has one or more partitions which do not have enough space for the VSS snapshot to be created.  These partitions may be hidden partitions, system recovery partitions or partitions which contain recovery tools.

Minimum requirement:

• For volumes less than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 50 megabytes of free space.
• For volumes more than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 320 megabytes of free space.

Recommended:

• At least 1 gigabyte of free disk space on each volume if volume size is more than 1 gigabyte.