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
    2014-03-30T15:05:38+00:00

    Hi, I have the same problem, not being able to make a system image of my win 8.1 Pro after upgrade (before from win 8.0 to win pro 8.0 Pro and then win 8.0 to win 8.1 pro). So my disk situation is a little bit more complex as you can see here below from diskpart (I could not add the diskmanager picture because the message resulted too long, but the only difference is the partition #3 that did not appear because hidden and I read it is the System Reserved MSR told by HarryTapp above)

    Partition ###        Type                             Dim.              Offset

    ----------------    ---------------------      --------            ----------

    Partition 1            Recovery                     800MB           1024KB

    Partition 2            System                        260MB             801MB

    Partition 3            Reserved                     128MB           1061MB

    Partition 4            Primary                        149GB           1189MB

    Partition 5            Recovery                      350MB             150GB

    Partition 6            Primary                       1711GB             151GB

    The error I receive when trying to create a backup system image refers to system EFI part (# 2), Windows boot part (# 4), recovery partition of 350 MB (# 5) and data primary part (# 6).

    So I think to have to enlarge recovery part #5, but what to do with partitions 1 (useless recovery?). May I delete it?

    My system is an All-in-one ASUS ET2701INTI originally with Win8.

    Thank you in advance if you will reply to my questions, so that I can create my system backup, etc.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-03-28T15:29:55+00:00

    It is simply not practical to perform all this for more than a very few workstations.  The problem seems to be related to UEFI GPT  installations on SSDs.  Accordingly, I have cloned our Win 7 SSD image on to the new SSDs purchased for Win 8.1 and deployed good old Win 7.  Good luck to all struggling with this without any help from Microsoft.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-03-24T17:54:29+00:00

    Yes!!! Setup on UEFI also creates partition (3) "System Reserved" (MSR) 128Mb which is unallocated. Confusion is created between MBR and GPT disk partitions that Setup creates. I noticed if you take a clean drive and create partition (1) choose it for install setup will then create partitions (1,2,3,4) using partition for as the target for the OS (boot) Then even if you format partitions (1,2,3 - Id remains intact)) and choose partition (4) for install setup will again create those partitions (1,2,3 now 4,5,6) again so you would end up with (7) partitions on the drive. I found the easiest way to do this is to let windows create the partitions then delete partitions (2,3) format partition (1) then shrink it to 150Mb, delete what was partition (4) then create it again right next to partition (1)-150Mb) then format it. Setup will create partitions again and install windows. When done run Partition wizard delete partition (1) -150Mb) and extend partition (2)- 300Mb, "System Recovery" towards the beginning of the drive to consume the 150Mb unallocated space so it will now be 450Mb. Might have to use disk part to ensure the 450Mb partition Id is set to "System Recovery" Sorry for the run on sentences. What a pain Microsoft has created by not making the partition sixes big enough to future proof considering the hard drive sizes these days.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-03-24T16:09:52+00:00

    My mistake. Yes it will automatically create the 300 MB partition if there is no recovery or efi partition on the drive. What I ended up doing was preparing the disk before I installed windows on it. I created a 450MB recovery partition and a 100 MB efi partition. You can set the flags for recovery and efi partitions in DISKPART. Microsoft has a pretty good tutorial on how to do it. After this, I had no problems with creating a backup.

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