Windows Server Deduplication runs and does nothing on a dedup enabled volume.

Question

Been testing Winserver (2022) deduplication, sometimes it just gives up an refuses to function. Any ideas on how to fix this. Couldn't find anything in the documentation.

Start-DedupJob runs as advertised most of the time but sometimes when a new set of test data is loaded into a volume has been formatted and dedupe enabled it fails to do anything. Running a Start-DedupJob runs and finishes very quickly and does absolutely nothing. The only way to get it to be responsive is to format the drive again and load new test data - you shouldn't have to do that and it very time consuming.

Nothing in the Deduplication section of the event log indicates any errors.

Its quicker to format the volume rather than delete the test data and followed by a very slow garbage-collection.

Answer 1

Hi Bob,

Hope you're doing well.

Here are some steps you can try:

1. Ensure that all deduplication jobs are launched at the same time to run parallelly if there are enough resources.
2. Disable and re-enable deduplication on the affected volume and attempt garbage collection.
3. Use the Start-DedupJob -Type Unoptimization -Volume xcommand to undo volume optimization and then re-enable deduplication.

If these steps do not resolve the issue, you might need to consider removing and reinstalling the deduplication feature. Let me know if you need any more information or help!

Best Regards