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

2013-11-02T18:43:44+00:00

On my third 8.1, Windows surprisingly granted 74 unused MB!

Very interesting, almost exactly 50MB free space has materialised from somewhere?? exactly the amount required for the volume shadow service for the system/recovery partition

Have Microsoft silently rolled out a patch in the 8.1 upgrade procedure??

well, I just installed 3.1 and did not get the 50 MB of free space. It's still

300 MB Recovery

100 EFI

128 MB Reserved

followed by the partition with the system files.

No way to extend/enlarge the recovery partition beyond the allocated 300 MB to give the for the system image backup required shadow copy sufficient space - unless using the work around described earlier in the thread.

Why isn't MS coming up with a fix for this?

It seems like MS has not done anything to intercept new 8.1 install using dvd to create a 350mb RE partition, yet. The layout you listed is exactly what I got each time I tried a new install using dvd. I finally gave up and did the 8.0 > 8.1 update route.

I did all the partition shifting/resizing work under 8.0. After expanding the RE partition to the desired size, update/change the partition types to RE/EFI/MSR accordingly.

If somehow the RE partition type created/expanded is kept as ‘data partition’, the 8.1 update process will ignore it and creates a new Recovery partition (350mb) at the end following the C: system partition. Under this situation, recovery would fail.

I tested the 8.1 backup/recovery process several cycles yesterday and they all completed successfully.

There are a few diskpart comments I gathered from reading forum discussions and articles the last few days. I list them here so they can be available conveniently in one place. (Use them at your own risks.)

The commands are:

Change partition type to RE:       set id = de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac

Change partition type to EFI:      set id = c12a7382-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b

Create MSR partition:                create partition msr size = 128

Note: When creating the MSR partition, leave 128 mb at the exact place where you want to create the MSR partition, and keep all other spaces on the disk allocated (at least at the moment when you execute the command).

Hope this helps.
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Anonymous

2013-11-02T14:04:48+00:00

On my third 8.1, Windows surprisingly granted 74 unused MB!

Very interesting, almost exactly 50MB free space has materialised from somewhere?? exactly the amount required for the volume shadow service for the system/recovery partition

Have Microsoft silently rolled out a patch in the 8.1 upgrade procedure??

well, I just installed 3.1 and did not get the 50 MB of free space. It's still

300 MB Recovery

100 EFI

128 MB Reserved

followed by the partition with the system files.

No way to extend/enlarge the recovery partition beyond the allocated 300 MB to give the for the system image backup required shadow copy sufficient space - unless using the work around described earlier in the thread.

Why isn't MS coming up with a fix for this?

Hi Chainbolt, I am glad you pointed this out as I was considering rolling back to 8.0, then upgrading again to check for myself !
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Anonymous

2013-11-02T13:58:02+00:00

On my third 8.1, Windows surprisingly granted 74 unused MB!

Very interesting, almost exactly 50MB free space has materialised from somewhere?? exactly the amount required for the volume shadow service for the system/recovery partition

Have Microsoft silently rolled out a patch in the 8.1 upgrade procedure??

well, I just installed 3.1 and did not get the 50 MB of free space. It's still

300 MB Recovery

100 EFI

128 MB Reserved

followed by the partition with the system files.

No way to extend/enlarge the recovery partition beyond the allocated 300 MB to give the for the system image backup required shadow copy sufficient space - unless using the work around described earlier in the thread.

Why isn't MS coming up with a fix for this?
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Anonymous

2013-11-01T16:06:04+00:00

Question, does anyone know how to delete these files from the system partition highlighted in this picture?, (the times on the files are the times I backedup the image then restored)

I think I have answered my own question and have come back to the original heading in this thread regarding the optimise function (or lack of being able to optimise the system partition), I preformed a partition optimise from the command line,

I assigned the system partition a letter (k) then from command line:-

defrag /o k:

then

defrag /l k:

I also switched off file history.

suddenly my free space has shot back up again !! I had preformed this before but I did not take any notice of whether it was clearing space on the system partition. **worthy of note I feel

I honestly feel that if I were able to optimise the system partition in the first place (following the 8.1 upgrade on the 19th Oct) non of this would have happened or been an issue, the system partition would perhaps have been straightened out freeing up space for the volume shadow service, I literally have come full circle here. Regrettably I did not attempt to optimise on or around the 19th via the command line (I over looked this as it was not working via the GUI) and instead went into figuring out how to extend the system partition instead of optimising it, I have a feeling it may have worked?? just a hunch??

Both the 32mb files have been removed following a partition optimise from the Command line, see my previous picture on previous page to see what I mean.

I suspect these are restore points although I am not entirely sure?
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