The overall cause of buildup of orphan shadows in “System Volume Information” folders, is storage not being able to keep up with demand. If the situation is bad enough, this won’t help much, but it has helped in many instances. It’s three registry entries. Here’s Powershell code to get them in and engaged.
$NewMaxShadowCopies = 8 $NewMinDiffAreaFileSize = 128 # http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/powershell_registry-powershell_command_line,2-152.html function setupDWORD { param( [string]$regPath, [string]$nameForDWORD, [long]$valueForDWORD ) ############## # Error out if cannot touch the registry area at all If ( !(Test-Path $regPath) ) { Try { New-Item $regPath -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue } Catch { Write-Error ("Could not visit or create registry path " + $regPath) Return } } ############# # If an existing registry entry exists, store its value to report later Try { $oldValueProperty = Get-ItemProperty -Path $regPath -Name $nameForDWORD -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue $oldValue = $oldValueProperty.$nameforDWORD } Catch { $oldValue = "" } ############# # Report the changes to make Write-Output ("DWORD to write: " + $nameForDWORD) Write-Output ("at registry path " + $regPath) If ($oldValue -ne "") { Write-Output ("Original value is " + $oldValue) } else { Write-Output "No original present." } Write-Output ("New value is " + $valueforDWORD) ############ # Report no changes to make, set new registry entry, or error out If ($oldValue -eq $valueforDWORD) { Write-Output "No change to make." "" Return } Try { New-ItemProperty -Path $regPath -Name $nameForDWORD -Value $valueForDWORD -PropertyType DWORD -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue > $null } Catch { Write-Error "Failed!" "" Return } "Succeeded!" "" } setupDWORD "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Settings" "MaxShadowCopies" $NewMaxShadowCopies setupDWORD "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VolSnap" "MinDiffAreaFileSize" $NewMinDiffAreaFileSize setupDWORD 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows' 'DeleteStaleTaskCache' 1 "" "Restarting VSS..." Restart-Service -Force -Name "VSS" "" "Complete!" ""