Q. How can I see how much disk space is being used by VSS snapshots on a volume?

A. The command

vssadmin list shadowstorage

gives information for each volume on a system and details the volume used for VSS snapshot storage, the amount of space being used by snapshots, the amount allocated for snapshots, and the maximum space that could be used.

C:>vssadmin list shadowstoragevssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.Shadow Copy Storage associationFor volume: (C:)\?Volume{a488ed41-38e8-11de-abc2-806e6f6e6963}Shadow CopyStorage volume: (C:)\?Volume{a488ed41-38e8-11de-abc2-806e6f6e6963}Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 5.547 MB (0%)Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 1.5 GB (3%)Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: UNBOUNDED (100%)

As you can see, in this example only 5.5MB of space is being used by the snapshot, and there's no maximum to the amount of disk space usable by shadow copies.

Related Reading:

Check out hundreds more useful Q&As like this in John Savill's FAQ for Windows. Also, watch instructional videos made by John at ITTV.net.