Cant backup 8.1 using system image backup! Error 0x80780119, Cant optimise system partition, (this is why i cant backup) please read. . .

Anonymous

I am having this issue, cant optimise the system partition 350mb. 8.1 official release,

This is also causing a huge problem, the optimise option in windows 8.1 allows me to optimise the c: drive but not the system partition this prevents a system image backup...!!

Due to the system partition being out of space for a shadow copy to be placed onto it the backup fails every time with this error code, -- 0x80780119 --.

Backups are a huge factor in operating systems and since upgrading I cant backup my system using windows image backup, if I could optimise the system partition and straighten out the file structure within it (free up some space) for the shadow copy then the volume shadow copy could be placed onto the drive but it cant...

This all worked fine in 8.0 but not now...please fix this problem!?

Not being able to backup your system is not good enough...

here is my my issue again in pictures...

1.system volume needs optimising

but pressing the optimise for this does nothing at all.. current status remains "Needs optimisation".

The way an ssd reclaims drive space is to use the optimise function, this not working prevents the reclaim for files/data to be written to space where files have been deleted previously. Giving the impression the drive/partition is full when really its not full just needs optimising/trimmed.

initiate the system image backup

both volumes to be backed up

error message due to insufficient space on the system partition for shadow copy.

finally here is a capture of the current disk setup on my system, notice the system partition only has 17mb free space and according to the above error message I need atleast 50mb free for the volume shadow copy !? Due to this I cant create a backup of my system using windows 8.1 !

(system partition has no drive letter assigned to it 350mb)

PLEASE HELP !! Thanks for reading.

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Anonymous

I have found a way around this getting Windows System Image Backup working again. I did this on my laptop and desktop confirming that I could recover from the images. It is actually pretty easy but should not be necessary. The reason that the backup would not work was because the recovery partition was using 284MB of the 300MB available. There was not 50MB available for shadow copy. Here are the steps I took on an EUFI GPT disk:

Note: All commands are without quotes.

Disclaimer: I would recommend backing up all of you important data as any time you mess with partitions, there is the possibility to lose data. This process was done one both my laptop (Win8.1 Home) and desktop (Win8.1 Pro). I cannot take responsibility if this causes any damage. With that being said, I hope this helps.

Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html Note that none of the changes will take effect until you hit apply. I am sure others may work but this is the one that I used and it is free.

You should have 3 Windows partitions; Recovery - 300 MB, EFI System - 100 MB, and your system Volume to start off with.

Once installed, Open Partition Wizard and Shrink your system volume, C: in my case, by 101MB at the beginning of the partition. (I had to put 101MB as when I tried 100 it said that the space was too small when doing the next step) To do this, Right Click the C: Drive, select, Move/Resize, and the put 101 in box named "Unallocated Space Before:" and click OK.
Copy the EFI System partition (100 MB FAT32) to this new Free Space by right clicking, selecting copy, and then selecting the unallocated space. Then next the OK.
Delete the 100MB EFI System Partition after the Recovery Partition.

After this is done, you will see 100MB unallocated space after the Recovery Partition.

Right click on Recovery partition and select Extend. Drag the bar to take up all of the extra free space. This will change the recovery partition from 300MB to 400MB allowing for enough space (50MB) for the shadow copy. Click OK.
Next Click Apply. I received an error stating that it could not make changes due to C: being in use. I clicked restart.

When the computer restarts, Partition Wizard will do its thing. Once it is done you should boot into Windows again.

This next part is essential, because, windows now does not recognize the partition that was moved before as an EFI System Partition. If you try and do a backup image now, only the system partition will show and not the Recovery or EFI System

Open a cmd prompt with administrator privileges. Press Start Key, Type cmd, right click, select run as administrator.
Type diskpart to start windows command line disk manager.
Find the disk that Windows is installed on by typing List disk. This will be different on each machine but for illustration mine was disk 0
Select that disk by typing the command "select disk" and the disk number.
Next, determine the EFI partition that was moved earlier. This is the partition that was moved earlier and should be 100MB. Type in the command "list part" to see a list of the partitions on the disk. Mine was Partition 3. This may be different on your system.
Once you have determined the partition number, type "select partition " and your partition number
Next you have to set this partition as an EFI System volume. Type in this command - "set id = c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b" This changes the partition type to an EFI system volume.
After all of this is done, restart your computer and you should now be able to back up you system using the System Image Backup in File History.

I know some of this may seem a little elementary to some but you never know who needs help and their technical knowledge.

I hope that this helps and let me know if you have any questions.

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778 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-09-19T18:01:31+00:00
With Microsoft there is usually more than one way to skin a cat. The goal of any desired outcome is to keep it as simple as possible and more importantly the least possible chance for error. Jobongo's method is to copy and paste partitions which requires the resetting of partition ID's. With partition wizard we can see the size and free space on every partition, following the table I provided you are then able to see which partition is deficient for volume shadow creation and subsequent image backup failure. My method is to find out how much space is need on all deficient partitions combined. Boot off line with a usb preferably and use partition wizard...
1. Shrink the boot partition (C:\windows) to create the needed free space and slide it down. (partition wizard lets you slide partitions within adjacent unallocated space :-) )
2. slide the 128 Mb MSR Reserved "other" down against c:\ (MSR Reserved "other" is simply a partition that is empty and is used by windows to take space from so that EFI System can grow as needed)
3. Resize EFI System and then slide it down to the MSR Reserved. (EFI System is usually the culprit in image backup failure)
4. Resize System Recovery if any so that there is no unallocated space is left on the drive.
This method does not have you messing with any partition type's (Fat 32 or NTFS ect.) or ID's

It does not hurt to make the EFI System 495Mb and the System Recovery 300Mb but leave the MSR Reserved "other" at 128MB.

These days factory machines put their OEM Recovery usually around 12Gb in size at the end of the drive. later within windows using disk management you can shrink C:\ drive to 250 GB and create a partition and label it Storage assigning it the drive letter "D" The reason for this is the smaller living space you give windows the faster it will run.

I will give you a treat if Microsoft will allow a link to app box to stand. This a bootable ISO disk image you can burn to a usb or dvd. It is a win 8 PE mini windows that I custom built from Hirens tools which will boot on EFI systems. It has at least a hundred tools for working with a off line windows on the C:\ drive to keep you occupied for hours. Yes partition wizard is in there too :-) Just click on the Hirens Tools icon on the desktop after it boots. There is Trerabyte Image for Windows in the root of the image and you must set the clock back to July 1 2013 before using it. There may be a newer version out there that is an updated trial version but I haven bothered to check it out. This program lets you take raw images of partitions including boot sectors if present and you just save them to an external hard drive. A cool feature about it is you can apply any image to any partition as long as the original quantity of data will fit. This means you can capture a 500Gb partition that has 40GB data on it and then apply the image to a 100Gb partition. Or a 60 Gb partition with 40Gb data and apply it to a 150Gb partition, but since the original partition was 60GB when done you will have 90Gb unallocated space at the end which you can extend. Enough of Terabyte. App box has a file size upload limit so I had to break it up into a multi part WinRAR file set. Just download all the parts into the same folder and then open part 01, then drag the ISO to a location to save. I included a Rufus usb tool to easily make a bootable usb drive out of it. I will only keep the link active until tomorrow morning because they have a monthly bandwidth allocation, preferably give a reply as soon as you are finished do I can shut the link off sooner. Here is the link...

https://app.box.com/s/09h5etwofq07jtm6r30a
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Anonymous

2014-09-19T20:14:44+00:00

Gads, this sounds awfully complex. Ive decided I don't need the bootable usb drive - ever. If I ever do I'll just reinstall win 8 from recovery dvds up to the point where I can restore a good win 8.1 image.
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Anonymous

2014-09-19T20:27:58+00:00

The bootable usb drive is not for re installing windows, although it could be used for that using the Terabyte program. It is an in disposable tool box that took hours and substantial technical knowledge to create.

Fixing the Microsoft backup problem is constrained to 4 steps. I must admit that because you have already shuffled your partitions around destroying original partition ID's it gets complex to repair that damage.
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Anonymous

2014-09-19T20:43:52+00:00

No I have not reshuffled my partitions. I reinstalled all the windows from scratch and the current partitions are those that are supposed to be there according to the original oem. The problem is that if I try to use a win 8 bootable drive it does reshuffle the partitions, incorrectly. This is because installing win 8.1 on top of win 8 initial install did not repartition the drive. There is something wrong with the bootable usb drive. The bootable usb drive is used to boot up the pc first and then from a pocket drive install the image of a good win 8.1 system. The Microsoft or Sony oem process is corrupted somewhere. It might even be a virus planted in the creation of the usb drive. Why would I think this? Well the other day I noticed that after visiting a web site, I saw that my devices and printers gave an error on my pc and that error was that the usb driver was not working properly although it seemed to be working fine. I then thought to test the use of the image of win 8.1 restoration from inside a perfectly good win 8.1 working system. Lo and behold the image restoration wanted to repartition my c drive disk. I reinstalled the intel blue tooth driver which also installs the usb driver and that fixed the problem by fixing the usb port driver that had become corrupted. All the while avast never detected anything wrong. But I tell you that a hacker must have modified the usb driver on my pc. It shows up as an error in the devices and printers for my pc, a corrupted usb port. I think there is a virus at work behind the scenes on the usb port no one has noticed. I know how to get around it but just think how many pcs out there are probably corrupted. In searching for problems I see many references that look just like what I am describing but no one suspects that a virus is behind the problems. Take care my friends, I'm 90% sure its a virus that affects the usb port.
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