Cannot backup data sources – Volsnap error 39

This week I bumped into a new challenge that I thought I would like to share with the community. A customer reached out to me regarding an error that they couldn’t backup a drive of a server. The D drive was simple not able to be backed up. I looked into the problem and noticed a Volsnap error in the System Log of the DPM server.

The error stated that when DPM tries to create a snapshot of the drive there’s no Shadow Copy Storage available on the drive that DPM protects.

This can easily be solved by using VSSADMIN. Open an elevated commad prompt and use the syntax

Vssadmin add shadowstorage /For=D: /on=D: /maxsize=unbounded 

What VSSADMIN will do is to create a new Shadow Copy Storage for DPM to use.