What is VSS Backup and How to Create One?
What is VSS backup?
VSS allows manual or automatic backup copies or snapshots of computer files or volumes, even when they are in use.
The VSS backup, also known as Volume Shadow Copy Service-based backup or shadow copies, is a Windows service that captures and creates snapshots at a specific time point.
How does Microsoft VSS Backup work?
The Microsoft VSS backup requires the Volume Shadow Copy Service, which is composed of four basic parts. This service is crucial for creating backups, but its inner workings can be complex. To simplify, it's essential to understand that VSS involves four key components that work together seamlessly to ensure successful backups.
- VSS service: The Windows API is used to help other components in the Windows operating system to communicate with each other and work together.
- VSS requester: The Backup and Restore (Windows 7) program is a backup utility that can create shadow copies, import, or delete them.
- VSS writer: The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) writers for various Windows components, including the registry, are included with Windows operating systems to ensure data consistency during the backup process.
- VSS provider: Creating and maintaining shadow copies, also known as snapshots, can be done through software, such as Backup and Restore (Windows 7), or hardware, like storage area networks (SANs). Software-based snapshots typically use copy-on-write techniques, offloading the task from the host operating system, while hardware-based snapshots, found in SANs, also handle this task, further reducing the host's workload.
For more details, please refers to the Microsoft document.
Process a VSS copy backup with Backup and Restore (Windows 7)
The Volume Shadow Copy service, a Windows service, manages and implements Volume Shadow Copies used for backup and other purposes. This service is enabled by default, so no extra steps are required, but you can check its status in the Service if unsure.
To resolve the issue, open the Services window by typing "services" in the Start menu, then locate the "Volume Shadow Copy" service. If its startup type is set to "Manual", right-click it and select "Start" to start the service. This should resolve the issue.
To create a backup under VSS with Backup and Restore (Windows 7), ensure the Volume Shadow Copy Service is running, then follow the steps below to create a backup.
1. Open Backup and Restore (Windows 7) by clicking Start, then Control Panel, System and Maintenance, and Backup and restore (Windows 7).
2. Click Set up backup.
3. Click "Next" after selecting the desired location to save your backup.
4. After selecting "Let Windows choose" or "Let me choose", click "Next". The system image will be included by default, but you can uncheck the checkbox below to exclude it.
5. Here you can review your backup settings, confirm them, and click Save settings and run backup.
Note: To enable Shadow Copy technology, the file system must be converted to NTFS if it is currently FAT/FAT32, as Shadow Copy requires NTFS to create and store shadow copies.
Create a VSS full backup with Qiling Disk Master Standard🔥
When Windows' built-in backup tool fails, you may encounter a "Windows backup failed to read from the shadow copy" or "VSS insufficient storage" error. In such cases, consider creating a VSS full backup using professional third-party shadow copy backup software.
Qiling Disk Master Standard is a software that uses both Microsoft VSS technology and a self-developed backup service, Qiling Backup Service, to ensure backup tasks are completed even if VSS fails. It's free and flexible.
- This software enables you to create system, disk, partition, file, or cloud backups. The cloud backup feature allows you to store files on Qiling Cloud, offering 1TB of free storage for 15 days after registering a Qiling account.
- This software helps you schedule a daily, weekly, or monthly backup task, and by default, it enables incremental backup, which only backs up changed files since the last backup, allowing for either full or incremental backups.
- The software supports multiple backup destinations, including external hard drives, USB drives, network drives, NAS, cloud drives, and more.
To create a Microsoft VSS backup, download Qiling Disk Master Standard and follow the steps below, or use Qiling Backup Service. For server users, Qiling Disk Master Server may be a better option.
Take hard drive backup as an example.
1. Install and launch Qiling Disk Master Standard. Click Disk Backup under the Backup tab.
2. To back up a disk, click on "Disks" to choose the disk you want to back up, then select a location to save the backup, such as an external disk, USB network drive, or NAS.
3. To enable backup mode, go to Options > Backup Mode > Backup Service and select either Use Microsoft VSS or Qiling Backup Service, then click OK to confirm. This allows the software to use Microsoft VSS by default, but automatically switches to Qiling Backup Service if Microsoft VSS is not working, ensuring consistent data.
You can also set other backup settings:
- Options: You can enable encryption for backups, email notifications, and select compression level for a backup.
- Schedule Backup: The backup task can be run automatically with various frequencies, such as daily, weekly, or monthly, and features like Event triggers and USB plug-in are available in Qiling Disk Master Professional.
- Backup Scheme: You can choose between incremental and differential backups, with differential backups being relatively independent and easy to manage. Additionally, you can enable cleanup methods to utomatically delete old backups and free up space for new ones.automatically delete old backups and free up space for new ones.
4. After completing the tasks, click on "Proceed" to create a shadow copy backup in Windows systems.
Qiling Disk Master can also be used to restore or deploy images, allowing for easy system, disk, partition, or file restoration to a new hard drive or partition.
If it's a system disk, you can even use it to perform dissimilar hardware restore or deploy image to multiple computers over network. This feature is available on the advanced edition, which also offers other advanced features. Please see the edition comparison page for more details and select the appropriate edition.
Set up a VSS backup with Qiling Disk Backup👍
Qiling Disk Master and Qiling Disk Backup offer a reliable solution for centralized backup management of Windows operating systems, also providing VSS backup capabilities.
- A software that allows you to create system/disk/partition backup for multiple Windows PCs and Servers, supporting various versions of Windows and Windows Server.
- You can save backup images on a local disk, external hard drive, network share, or NAS device.
- You can schedule a backup task to run daily, weekly, or monthly using the full, incremental, or differential backup method.
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Conclusion
With a basic understanding of VSS backup, you can easily create a backup to ensure data consistency. The built-in software is worth trying if the Volume Shadow Copy Service is running well, and you can also use third-party VSS backup software like Qiling Disk Master Standard or Qiling Backup.
This feature adds an extra layer of backup task security by automatically using Qiling Backup Service to ensure the backup task runs without interruption when Microsoft VSS fails. It also provides a Disk Clone feature for creating an exact copy of a hard drive, useful for migrating systems from HDD to SSD.
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