VSS behavior clarification

[R4ygen]

Hello, I’m using restic on Windows and I’m trying to understand how the --use-fs-snapshot argument works, mainly to know how my drive storage is getting used.

• The shadow copies it creates, are created on the same drive of the file (system drive) or on the backup drive?
• The shadow copies used are then automatically deleted or you need to purge the repository to clean them up?

I’ve read the microsoft docs about VSS but I’m defnitely still a newbie with it, sorry if the question may seem obvious.
I’ve done a couple of test with it and after the backup, without purging, Windows does not report any shadow copies for the files I’ve backuped up. So I think it does delete them automatically after the backup?

[rawtaz]

@R4ygen

The shadow copies it creates, are created on the same drive of the file (system drive) or on the backup drive?

They are created on the source drive, i.e. the one where you back up from.

@R4ygen

The shadow copies used are then automatically deleted or you need to purge the repository to clean them up?

They should be removed automatically, you shouldn’t have to purge them manually.

Note that the VSS filesystem snapshots is not something that is related to the restic repository, so even if you’d have to prune them manually (which you don’t) this would not be done in the restic repository.

[R4ygen]

Thanks!

@rawtaz

Note that the VSS filesystem snapshots is not something that is related to the restic repository, so even if you’d have to prune them manually (which you don’t) this would not be done in the restic repository.

Yeah, it was more a Windows question than a Restic question