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

Anonymous
2013-10-19T14:16:48+00:00

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.

 

  1. initiate the system image backup

  1. both volumes to be backed up

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

 

  1. 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.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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Anonymous
2013-10-20T20:19:10+00:00

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. 

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Delete the 100MB EFI System Partition after the Recovery Partition. 

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

  1. 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. 
  2. 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

  1. Open a cmd prompt with administrator privileges. Press Start Key, Type cmd, right click, select run as administrator. 
  2. Type diskpart to start windows command line disk manager. 
  3. 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
  4. Select that disk by typing the command "select disk" and the disk number.
  5. 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. 
  6. Once you have determined the partition number, type "select partition " and your partition number
  7. 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.
  8. 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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  1. Anonymous
    2013-11-17T20:18:59+00:00

    I tried. It's a 12.6 GB ".wim" file but there are around 75 GB of programs on my C: disk so it looks more like a file to transfer what has been changed since the system was first installed. When I double click it says "Look for an app in the store". I did not restore my system from this file.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-17T20:20:50+00:00

    yes, it's Windows 8.1. I suppose you can see that from the top line.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-17T20:38:17+00:00

    Even the event log snap-in failed ;)

    Or should I stick to Win 8 until I can be sure that all those problems will be solved?

    lol @ event log snap-in :-)

    If you CANT restore and backup in 8.1 then I would recommend either using 3rd party tool like clonezilla to backup or indeed stay with 8.0.

    8.1 is proving difficult for a lot of users (backup and restore) and this simply should not be the case, 8.0 was perfect for me actually but I wanted 8.1 and managed to extend system partition using partwiz.

    I seriously doubt Microsoft are going to address this issue, so if you go back to 8.0 and wait for a fix for 8.1 you could be waiting along time.

    I have to admit, some of the errors could be related to wrong RAM-settings in UEFI...

    Meanwhile I made Microsofts job and managed to repair it myself. MiniTool Partition Wizard actually is easy to use and Jobongos method works quite good. I had some concerns using third-party-software and pushing partitions around but even though the EFI partition now is behind the MSR partition and recovery is 400 MB instead of my intended 350MB big everything is good.

    To avoid any trouble and in order to have a "clean" system afterwards (i.e. without ever having Partition Wizard installed) I chose to use a backup of C: created with this command:

    wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -include:C:(note: shrink the volume before creating the backup so that it is at least 100MB smaller than before. Why, is stated at the end of my post ;) )

    However, the recovery of that single partition backup was not easy. After studying the abadmin documentation and half an hour "try-and-erroring" I got these results: Recovery works out of the Windows recovery environment using the command shell. I used this command:

    **wbadmin start recovery -version:**11/14/2013-09:57 -itemType:Volume -backupTarget:e: -machine:<machineName> -recoveryTarget:c: -items:c:

    The letter behind backupTarget is the one from the drive containing the Backup (can be within recovery environment different from where it was created). recoveryTarget and items should be the drive where you want to recover to (in most cases "c" should be fine). machine is the name of the computer the backup stems from. Version identifies the exact backup that ist stored on the drive. You can get the Version with 

    wbadmin get versions -backupTarget:e: (assuming your backup drive is "e")and the recoverable items withwbadmin get items -version:11/14/2013-09:57 (fill in the version that you learned from the previous step.)

    More info about wbadmin: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742070.aspx

    Only problem was: After expanding the size of the recovery partition to 400MB the space on the harddrive available for restoring the backup was 100 MB to less... -,-

    So it's a good advice to shrink the volume before creating the backup (can be more than 100MB, just to be sure) and expanding it after restoring.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-11-18T08:01:25+00:00

    I apologize but I have been away for a bit. You are correct that it should create an MSR partition in the first available free space, but with my setup for some reason the MSR partition kept getting created at the end of the drive (where I had about 50GB allocate for a Linux installation), so I had to manually set the offset location and the size. After doing this it created the MSR partition in the right location. 

    I would not recommend rebooting without the EFI parition. If you copy the EFI partition to another location, then make sure that the partition is set back to an EFI partition before rebooting. What I did was resize, C: drive first, let Partwiz reboot computer and do its operations, then after the computer rebooted, I manipulated the other partitions. This way, it did not require a reboot for everything to work.

    You could most likely just delete the MSR partition and recreate it in the newly created space that was allocated. I don't know the setup you have but it most instances the MSR partition is not used. Here is a site that covers MSR Partitions http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799232(v=ws.10).aspx#MicrosoftRecoveryPartitions . I would recommend this, because now the only thing that you must do is "shift" everything to the right. This will still maintain the Microsoft recommended partition layout as well.

    Most importantly though, resize the C: drive first, reboot and let PartWiz do its operation, and then configure the EFI and MSR partitions. This way you don't chance having to reboot without an EFI partition.

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