I am in the process of writing a PowerShell script for backing up a Windows computer using rsync. To this end, I am attempting to use WMI from said script to create a non-persistent Shadow copy with writer participation (as is apparently recommended for backups).

I found out from another question ([Accessing Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) Snapshots from powershell][1]) a way to create a shadow copy in general, but the example given there uses &quot;ClientAccessible&quot; as the context parameter, which results in the creation of a persistent Shadow Copy, without writer participation.

While searching for a solution, I have found that I could use the following command to obtain a list of contexts, which I assume are understood by WMI:

    Get-WmiObject win32_shadowcontext | Out-GridView

It does the list have a context named &quot;Backup&quot;, which is conveniently what I want. I proceeded to attempt creating a non-persistent shadow copy using that context:

    $shadow = (Get-WmiObject -list win32_shadowcopy).Create(&quot;C:\&quot;, &quot;Backup&quot;)

However, this seems to fail and the content of the **$shadow** variable is set to

    ReturnValue      : 5
    ShadowID         : {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

According to the relevant documentation ([Create method of the Win32_ShadowCopy class][2]), the return value means &quot;Unsupported shadow copy context.&quot;

I couldn&#39;t find any relevant documentation as to why this context is unsupported or whether it is possible to use it at all. I have also tried the &quot;FileShareBackup&quot; and &quot;AppRollback&quot; contexts without success.

I assume I am either missing something obvious, or that for some reason, WMI really doesn&#39;t support anything else than &quot;clientAccessible&quot; when creating shadow copies, or that this is OS-dependent (I am testing this on Windows 7, 64-bit)

How can I get this to work?

  [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14207788/accessing-volume-shadow-copy-vss-snapshots-from-powershell
  [2]: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa389391(v=vs.85).aspx

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Creating a shadow copy using the "Backup" context in a PowerShell