Message "Disk Recovery is running low on free space"

[tfelice]

What is the significance of the message "Disk Recovery is running low on free space" in the status of a completed job in the UI? I ran an initial backup on Windows 7 workstation which has a single local drive, which is an SSD with 131 GB free of 229 GB. The backup was written to a network share, which is a Samba server using an iSCSI SAN back end. The backup location has several terabytes of free space. The backup appears to have completed normally.

[Dima P.]

Hi Tony,
This warning indicates that you have a system (hidden) partition Disk Recovery which might be a factory volume and it is filled. There is nothing to worry about, as it will be backed up too.

[Gostev]

Dima, it's a bug - we should not be reporting this warning for system partitions.

[tfelice]

Just FYI, 1.0.0.1954 still reports this warning.

[Dima P.]

Hello Tony,
Could you please open windows disk management and tell me the size of the partition called Disk Recovery? Thank you in advance

[jayadams]

Hello Dima, I've found this same problem and search lead me to this post. My factory recovery volume (labled "RECOVERY") is 16GB and only 1.84GB is free. This is a bug becasue all of my backups complete with a "Warning"

[Mike Resseler]

Jay,

Thanks for the update. I will pass this to the teams and see if we can fix this in further updates!

Thanks

Mike

[jayadams]

Hello Dima,

I upgraded to 1.1.0.110 and I still see that all backups report as ending in a "Warning" on the B&R server job status window. Was this supposed to be fixed in the latest release? We really should be able to backup our small recovery partitions without having to have the backup report a "warning".

[Dima P.]

jayadams,
Need to know the exact size of the partitions in the question and the original error wording from the backup log.

[indigomike]

I currently have a case open about this (00996090). I was told the following. Neither of these worked and I am still waiting to hear back on what else can be done to resolve this. I LIKE ME EMAILS GREEN!!

"I`d like you to update your Veaam EndPoint Backup version. You can download it here: http://www.veeam.com/endpoint-backup-free.html
Or at first you can remove the letter of HP_Tools disk via disk management and try the backup job once again"

[Dima P.]

Mike,
From your post, I got the partition’s name but what is size of this partition? Thanks.

[indigomike]

If you mean you got the name (HP_RECOVERY) from the CASE, The size is 9.61 GB, which was also included in the picture I sent in the email for the case.

If you are looking at logs that were uploaded for my case, please ignore those as I had to give the user back their PC and therefore I used the agent on my PC just to get the case open. I did not realize it would also upload logs.

[Dima P.]

Since logs and the screenshots do not contain any info can you clarify the free/used space metrics of this volume? Thanks.

[indigomike]

Here you go.

Total Size: 9.6 GB
Free Space: 1.17 GB

DeviceID : D:
FreeSpace : 1266122752
Size : 10317983744
VolumeName : HP_RECOVERY

[Dima P.]

Thanks Mike.

DeviceID : D:

Are you sure, it does not have a mount point? Can you double-check that by opening the CMD and running the mountvol /l ?

[indigomike]

I have rolled this out to about 10 PCs now and it does not matter whether the recovery partition has a mount point or not. It always warned me about free space. The info I gave you on my last post was from one that did have a mount point. Some of our others do not and they still warn. The other interesting thing is one user's PC did not have a recovery partition and their C drive only had 3 GB available out of 230 GB. When the backup completed it DID NOT produce a warning.

However, the case I opened provided me with a solution as I honestly do not need to know if an end user PC is low on space. I just wanted to see that the backup was successful without all the recovery partition warnings. Here is what was provided:

1. Go to 'HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Endpoint Backup
2. Create the following registry entry:

Type: DWORD
Name: DisableVolumeFreeSpaceCheckWarning
Value: 1

3. Restart the Veeam Endpoint Backup service.

This took care of warning about free space.

[jayadams]

jayadams,
Need to know the exact size of the partitions in the question and the original error wording from the backup log.

Dima,

From my earlier post,

My factory recovery volume (labled "RECOVERY") is 16GB and only 1.84GB is free

The warning is "Disk Recovery (D:) is running low on disk space"

[Dima P.]

Jay,

The warning is "Disk Recovery (D:) is running low on disk space"

It seems that the warning message does not refer the recovery partition. Take a look at this explanation why NTFS volumes still should have a low free space warning. If you want, indeed, there is a registry key described above – you can use it to disable the low space warnings.

[jayadams]

Thanks Dima,

I have a few follow-up points.

1) I'm not sure why you say that this message does not refer to the recovery partition. I have a new HP laptop, that shipped with a 16GB recovery partition, with 1.84GB of free space. It came factory configured as a visible drive with letter D, and labeled RECOVERY. I've replicated this behavior on more than one machine.

2) I am waiting to deploy endpoint backup to the computers in my network when I know that it Endpoint Backup will be robust. I don't want the backup issuing warnings on all recovery partitions and I don't want to have to apply registry hacks to stop them from occurring. I understand its a free tool at this point, so take my demands as more of a suggestion.

3) I'm not a backup tool expert, but I don't think other tools I have used flag warnings on these partitions. I understand what the article indicates for suggested free space on a partition, but what are end users supposed to do about that? I'm sure that we are not expected to resize the factory partition.

4) If there is no way around this via a fix in Endpoint Backup, I think the only viable solution is to backup only the partitions that we care about and not backup the recovery. Not preferred but it has the least issues.

[Dima P.]

I'm not sure why you say that this message does not refer to the recovery partition.

Sorry, my bad. I was referencing the error message, where the label is not displayed. May I ask what it is the real use for a recovery partition that has a mount point where “typical end user” can simply delete all the recovery files?

I don't want the backup issuing warnings on all recovery partitions and I don't want to have to apply registry hacks to stop them from occurring.

Noted as an improvement request.

I understand what the article indicates for suggested free space on a partition, but what are end users supposed to do about that?

I would perform a native disk cleanup in similar situation. By the way, I do remember that Windows regularly throws the not enough disk space messages in case the system volume is messed up with data (same value – lower than 10%) – its annoying but it helps to improve the OS perforce. Same here – clean up the volume and be sure that next backup fits and wont fail

I think the only viable solution is to backup only the partitions that we care about and not backup the recovery.

I see two options here. First is to deploy the regkey described above via GPO or script across all your endpoints. Second is to backup the recovery partition once via standalone full backup and keep it separately from rotated backup (moreover, if you have similar machines and similar recovery partitions – you can back it up only once)

[MrSpock]

Is there a way to change the limit for this warning? I have more than 300 GB free on the backup disk, which seems to be more than enough for the incremental backups.

Additionally, the Veeam icon in the system tray does still show an exclamation mark if I dismiss this warning.

Best regards,

Johan

[PTide]

Hi,

Do you use a B&R-managed repository as a repo for your Endpoint jobs? If so, then you can change notification settings on your B&R server - please check this article.

Thank you.

[MrSpock]

Hi,

No, I use local storage.

Best regards,

Johan

[Dima P.]

Live long and prosper Mr. Spock!

Take a look at the corresponding regkey discussed above (I’ve merged your posts to the similar discussions).

[MrSpock]

I did see this thread, but decided to create my own thread as this thread was about another error message.

Adding the registry key and restarting the service didn't help regarding "Backup location [E:\Backup\] is getting low on free disk space (365,9 GB free of 3,6 TB).".

Johan

[Dima P.]

It seems suppressing works only for the source volume – my bad. Here is another key that works for the backup destination check, note that it does not disable the check completely, but set the desired threshold instead: BackupRepositoryFreeSpaceThresholdPercent key. Kindly check and let me know if that helps. Thanks

[MrSpock]

Here is another key that works for the backup destination check, note that it does not disable the check completely, but set the desired threshold instead: BackupRepositoryFreeSpaceThresholdPercent key.

That's what I was looking for. Thank you, it worked!

Johan

[Dima P.]

I am glad it worked. If other questions arise, don't hesitate asking. Thanks!

[wolliden]

Hi,

I'll get always "backup finished with errors" messages, because Endpoint Backup detects "HP_RECOVERY partition nearly full" - yeah, that's what recovery partitions usually are. What can I do to prevent this error message, apart from deleting this partition? This small exclamation mark sitting in the tray makes me nervous.

Regards,
Wolli

Veeam Endpoint Backup 1.1.1.212 (Aug 21, 2015), W10 Pro.

[Dima P.]

Hello Wolli,

Please check the workarounds described above – we have two regkeys available to adjust or turn off this warning, of course, if you want to.