Shadow copies (you might know it from the backup service) can occupy a lot of disk space, here’s how you can delete them and free up some of that much needed space.
1. Step First of all we have to figure out what shadow copies we have. To do that open up an elevated command prompt. If you’re on Windows 8 you’d better read this tutorial. If you don’t do that you will get the error “You don’t have the correct permissions to run this command. Please run this utility from command windows that has elevated administrator privileges”
2. Step Ok, got an elevated command prompt? Great. Enter vssadmin list shadows
If you are not using the shadow copy feature for anything, it should return: No items found that satisfy the query
Else, if you already have a few shadow copies you will see that they have a ID that looks like this:
{57458548-863-4566-8c455-5455645656}
3. Step To delete a specific shadow copy you can now use the command vssadmin delete shadows /shadow={57458548-863-4566-8c455-5455645656}
As you can see deleting specific shadow copies is quite easy, but doesn’t free up a lot of disk space usually. Check below to find more ways
