Cannot enable shadow copies on D: drive (Windows Server 2025 Essentials)

Question

Cannot enable shadow copies on D: drive (Windows Server 2025 Essentials)

Geoff Anderson 0

Hi All,

We've deployed two identical Lenovo ThinkSystem ST250v3 servers to clients recently, and encountered a problem on both of them where we cannot enable Shadow Copies on the D: drive.... it sees the disk but not the volume/drive.

The server has a Lenovo RAID 940-8i 4GB controller and the D: drive is on a RAID 5 array using 3x 4TB SATA disks.

We started digging into this and noticed other problems -

Cannot enable Shadow Copies - it does not show the D: drive in the options for storage and defaults to the system partitions (using GUIDs not drive letters) and of course they're too small.
Cannot resize the volume/partition - it gives an error that it doesn't contain a recognized file system (despite the Disk Management app showing it as NTFS).
Cannot rename drive D: - no error but it never applies the change.

This situation is also affecting our backup provider's agent, which can see Disk 0 but not any volumes/drives on it, and therefore cannot back it up properly.

Anyone come across this before? Thanks in advance.

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2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Hi Geoff Anderson,

Based on your description, the issue seems tied to how Windows Server 2025 Essentials interacts with the Lenovo RAID controller and presents the RAID 5 array to the operating system. Even though Disk Management shows the D: drive as NTFS, the system APIs that shadow copies rely on may not be properly enumerating the volume.

A good first step is to confirm that the Lenovo RAID 940-8i controller drivers and firmware are fully up to date, since outdated storage drivers often cause VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) to misidentify volumes. Next, check the VSS writers by running vssadmin list writers and vssadmin list volumes to see if the D: drive is being registered correctly. If it’s missing, that points to a driver or filter issue rather than a file system problem.

You should also verify that the partition is marked as a basic NTFS volume without dynamic disk conversion, as shadow copies don’t support certain disk types. If resizing or renaming fails, that’s another sign the OS isn’t fully recognizing the volume metadata. In some cases, reinitializing the RAID array with the latest Lenovo tools and then reformatting the partition resolves the mismatch, though I’d recommend testing this in a non-production environment first.

For the backup agent, ensure it’s using the latest VSS provider and that it can enumerate non-system volumes. If the agent only sees Disk 0, it may be limited by how the RAID controller exposes logical disks to Windows.

Please give these steps a try and let me know how it goes. If you find this answer helpful, kindly hit “accept answer”.

Jason.

Geoff Anderson 0 Reputation points

2026-06-23T04:10:57.4933333+00:00

Hi Jason,

Thanks for your input on this situation.

We checked and all system firmware and drivers (incl RAID) are up to date on this server.

For "vss list writers" all the writers show no errors.

And here's the output for vss list volumes which also looks fine to us.

As this is a production system we are really trying to avoid having to delete and redo the RAID config as that is a lot of after-hours work at the client site (or via BMC/ILO).

I appreciate any help you can give.

Thank you!

Answer 2

This behavior matches known issues where volumes or disks go offline or appear with invalid mount points, which then prevents Shadow Copies and backup tools from correctly enumerating them.

Use the following steps to verify and correct the disk/volume state before configuring Shadow Copies again:

Confirm the volume is online with DiskPart
1. Open an elevated Command Prompt.
2. Run:
```
      diskpart
      list volume
```
3. Identify the volume that corresponds to the D: drive.
4. If it shows as offline, bring it online:
```
      select volume <N>
      online volume
```
5. Exit DiskPart.
This is the supported way to bring a system or data partition that has gone offline back online so that Windows and higher‑level tools (including VSS and backup agents) can see it.
Verify the partition table and file system
1. Open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc).
2. Check that the disk and the D: partition are shown as Healthy and that the file system is NTFS.
3. If the volume ever appears as RAW or unformatted, or if there are partition boundary issues, use either:
  - Disk Management (right‑click the disk/volume and inspect properties), or
  - diskpart again to review the partition layout (list disk, select disk, list partition).
If corruption is suspected (for example, backup failures, copy failures, or checksum/bad block messages), back up the data and run chkdsk /f on the D: volume to repair NTFS issues before retrying Shadow Copies.
Check for cluster or mount‑point issues (if applicable) If this server is part of a cluster and the disk is a cluster disk, verify in Failover Cluster Manager that:
- The disk resource is online.
- There are no messages such as “Cluster Disk X contains an invalid mount point.”
Cluster disks that are offline or have invalid mount points can prevent VSS from exposing the volume correctly to Shadow Copies and backup agents.
Reconfigure Shadow Copies after the volume is healthy and online Once the D: volume is confirmed online, healthy, and correctly mounted:
1. Open Computer Management → Disk Management.
2. Right‑click the D: drive → Properties → Shadow Copies tab.
3. Configure Shadow Copies, ensuring the storage area is on a volume that is online and has sufficient free space.
If Shadow Copies still cannot be enabled and the storage area cannot grow due to limits, increase the shadow storage allocation using vssadmin:
```
   vssadmin list shadowstorage /for=D:
   vssadmin resize shadowstorage /for=D: /on=D: /maxsize=<NewSize>mb
```
If issues persist
- If the disk repeatedly goes offline or volumes intermittently appear as RAW or missing, follow the iSCSI/storage troubleshooting guidance to check for controller or disk issues, verify partition tables, and run vendor diagnostics.
- If necessary, attach the disk to a later Windows Server version or another system to validate the volume and recover data.

These steps ensure the D: volume is online, correctly mounted, and healthy so that Shadow Copies and backup agents can enumerate and use it.

References: