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

I really wouldn't be putting my faith in Windows System Image. Especially now that they seem to have slowly abandoned it.

There are too many good and free third party options available to bother with it.

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. 

4. 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. 
5. 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

 

6. Open a cmd prompt with administrator privileges. Press Start Key, Type cmd, right click, select run as administrator. 

 

7. Type diskpart to start windows command line disk manager. 

 

8. 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

 

9. Select that disk by typing the command "select disk" and the disk number.

 

10. 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. 

 

11. Once you have determined the partition number, type "select partition " and your partition number

 

12. 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.

 

13. 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. 

 

     First, I'd like to preface my amendment by saying that I used Jobongo's instructions on three different systems, which were a desktop, a laptop and a notebook, and it worked perfectly.  I bought a new SSD for the notebook and had to reinstall Windows 8 and the upgrade to 8.1 as the SSD was half the size of the HDD, so I couldn't use the system image for a disk half the size, nor could I shrink the system partition enough to be able to clone it to the new drive.  The original was 500GB and the new is 250GB.

     When I restarted the system after clicking apply in step five, the computer would not reboot.  It finished the Minitool process, but then said that it had no boot manager.  I went online, searched, and tried different things for almost three hours, but alas, nothing worked, so I am now having to reinstall everything a second time.  My amendment is as follows....

     After step one, click apply and it will say to restart, as it can't resize a system partition that is being used.  After the restart, continue on with step two and the rest, but when you click apply at the beginning of step five, there will be no restart because from steps two to five nothing is being done to the system partition.   

     The reason I suggest this is because I think it wouldn't restart because it had no active EFI partition at this point and the system got confused, although, as I stated at the beginning, it worked fine when I did it the first time with all three systems.  I don't know what actually happened, but I figured it might be safer to not have to restart while you are copying the first, creating the second, then deleting the first EFI partition.  Then, when you finally do the restart at the end, the new EFI partition will already be set as active because of step twelve. 

     I also did this before I did the upgrade to Windows 8.1, as if it messed up again, it takes 15 or 20 minutes for me to install Windows 8 again, but hours to install Windows 8 and then Windows 8.1 again.  Of course, most people don't know of the whole problem until after the upgrade to 8.1. 

     Just a suggestion.  Probably not necessary, but I figured it would be safer.

So the new partition arrangement works. I rebuilt win 8, then 8.1 and tested image backup both times. It works, except some files are not backed up, like Recorded TV, and others. But I can bare metal restore, so I'll just need a real image backup solution until Microsoft allows backup of these files.

There are files excluded in a registry setting, but I'll bet Recorded TV just goofs up when restored anyway, so still looking for real backup solution.

-Ambi

8000 hits !!