Veeam Agent issues spurious disk space warnings

[tgsbn]

I installed Veeam Agent for Windows on a relative's Windows 10 computer as a simple way of having her do regular backups.
She is a user without much computer knowledge.
The function to run a backup automatically whenever one of the prepared backup drives is connected is perfect for her.

There is just one irritating thing.
Every backup run ends with a warning: "Disk RECOVERY (D:) is running low on free space"
The warning is of course spurious as the amount of free space on a system recovery partition is completely irrelevant.
There is ample free space on the system partition (C:) which is all that counts.
This is a real problem, because of course my relative is incapable of interpreting such a message.
Consequently she now ignores all messages produced by her backup runs and risks not noticing if there ever is a real problem.

Is there a way of turning off these warnings?

Btw I wonder why Veeam Agent would check the free space on the source drive at all.
It is neither necessary nor expected or helpful for a backup program to do that.

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

Btw I wonder why Veeam Agent would check the free space on the source drive at all.

that's not "by the way" - that's the key point we use Microsoft volume shadow copy services (VSS) for backup. VSS creates a snapshot on each volume. If you do too many changes during backup, then the "snapshot space" will grow. It can comletly fill the disk. Well, that's not good and the computer will crash in the end...

We give a warning at 10% free disk space. That's the official Microsoft recommendation. I recommend to create "enough space". If you just want to get rid of the warning and taking the risk I described earlier, then you can disable the check by setting this reg key

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Endpoint Backup
Create the following registry entry:

Type: DWORD
Name: DisableVolumeFreeSpaceCheckWarning
Value: 1

Best regards,
Hannes

[tgsbn]

Hello Hannes,

thanks for your reply and explanation.
On the recovery partition I do no changes at all, ever. Not during backup and not between backups. It was created by the computer manufacturer when the system installed and just sits there passively waiting for the eventuality that a system recovery might become necessary. Neither do I see a way to "create" space on it. I will most definitely not delete anything from it and risk that recovery might not work in an emergency.
On the C: (system) partition there is ample free space. (about 80% free) So I might go for the solution to disable the warning completely, because it's still better than training the user to ignore warnings. But in the light of your dire warnings I would prefer a solution that just disables the warning for the recovery partition only.

Best regards,
Tilman

[Dima P.]

Hello Tilman,

Thank you for sharing your issue, I've noted an improvement request based on your post. Cheers!

[MadsDaniel]

What is the status regarding this?
Have there been a »improvement request« feedback?

Agree, that disabling this entirely isn't a solution.
Need to toggle it for each volume.

:: Mads Daniel

[tgsbn]

No update or feedback from Veeam on this since Dima P.'s post.
I'm now looking for alternative software which is more suited for a lay user.
Simple requirements:
* Whenever one out of a set of prepared USB storage devices is connected, do a full backup to that storage device, ideally without any additional user interaction.
* Notify the user when the backup is done, ideally automatically ejecting the storage device so that the user can just unplug it.
* Emit a warning/error message if and only if there is an actual problem warranting contacting the voluntary sysadmin (/me).

If anyone knows of such a beast I'll be glad to hear about it.

[Dima P.]

Tilman,

The warning notification is displayed in the job log, all other tasks you've mentioned can be executed by Veeam Agent for Windows. Ability to disable warning notification remains planned but I cant provide an ETA when it's going to be implemented. Cheers!

[tgsbn]

Dima,

thanks for your reply.
I'm painfully aware that Veeam Agent for Windows fulfils all my other requirements and would really be perfect for this use case, were it not for those spurious warnings.
Unfortunately, those are a real killer in this scenario.

My user needs a clear indication whether the backup ran correctly or she needs to call me.
Veeam Agent for Windows currently doesn't provide that.
It always displays completion status "Warning" whether there's a problem or not.
It is not an option to tell my user to ignore warnings, because guess whose fault it will be if she loses a file and it turns out it can't be recovered from the backup because there was a problem which got ignored.
Neither is it an option to teach her to inspect the job log and verify that there is no other warning besides that "Recovery partition running low on free space" message, because she does not have the skills to do that.
And it is definitely not an option to have her call me after every backup so that I check the log.

So to my deep regret, I see no other way out but to look for an alternative, quite probably inferior backup software, which is a real pity as I have otherwise been quite satisfied with Veeam wherever I used it.
I'll happily return to Veeam Agent if and when that issue is fixed.

Best regards
Tilman

[edison5000]

Any update on this? We're getting bunches of them, same issue as others have reported. It's been a few years so maybe there's a non-registry way to adjust this now?

Thx!

[tgsbn]

Nope. Nothing. Complete silence. It seems Veeam has more important things to do than to occupy themselves with our petty complaints.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Ability to disable \ configure low disk space notifications is still on track. It just a matter of priorities in a list with other requests.
Anyhow, Recovery Partition should not trigger the disk space warning anyway, I will check with QA tomorrow.

/Thanks!

[tgsbn]

That's great. Getting rid of the warning for the recovery partition is all I need. Looking forward to the reply from your QA!

[edison5000]

To clarify if necessary (though I suspect this is still the same issue): completely brand new Win Server 2022 build, single Veeam B&R Server with Veeam One. Production has been up only a few weeks. The warning from agents is:

"Agent backup policy session state
Warning
7/3/2022 10:22:29 PM
Job "Svc - Wks / Mgmt by Agent - C: only Backup Policy(Agent machine121pc.arlut.utexas.edu)" finished with warning
Processing finished with warnings at 7/3/2022 10:20:53 PM
Disk Recovery is running low on free space"

[Dima P.]

edison5000,

Please clarify B&R version you are running? Thanks!

[edison5000]

It is 11a, thanks.

So far I think I have seen it recurring on about 15 systems over our first month. I am pretty sure they are all older boxes (so likely have smaller partitions relative to smaller disks, if that's how win 10 determines it).

[Egor Yakovlev]

QA is also positive that low disk space warnings should not pop for correctly configured recovery partitions - agent does have a detection logic and suppresses alerts on those.
It is worth giving a shot to troubleshoot with support why recovery partition is being treated as a basic one.

/Thanks!