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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
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.

Was this answer helpful?

10+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

778 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2013-12-15T17:46:35+00:00

    Fantastic!  A few questions, if you don't mind.  

    (Added numbers to match answer structure by KevinIsrael)

    1. First, how did you assign a drive letter to the recovery partition, and when you did, does the partition now show up under "This PC" like your C drive does?
    2. If so, is there a way to hide it?
    3. Secondly, is ImageX.exe /export s:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre the only command you have to type in the command prompt?
    4. Third, will this have to be typed every time you want to do a system image?
    5. The command basically deletes the old wim file and replaces it with an up to date one which will be smaller because it has no old info that's no longer needed?
    6. After downloading ADK for 8.1, I only install the Deployment Tools, right?
    7. And the most important question...you are doing the system image with the regular built in Windows system image tools like normal, right?  Sorry for all of the questions.  I am completely lost when it comes to things like this and just want to make sure I do this correctly. You have Server 2012 Essentials on the same machine?  I don't mean to sound like an idiot, but I don't really have any idea what that even is.  What would this have to do with a Windows 8.1?  Again, sorry for sounding, well... being clueless.

    I'm going to try this on my Acer, the one that I test everything on as it is my guinea pig computer.  It already has the enlarged recovery partition, but I'm going to do the things you did anyway and see what happens.  Of course, the only way I would know for sure is to shrink the size of the partition back down to 350 or 300 or whatever it was when it didn't have enough space, then try it.  If I can't shrink it, perhaps I will just reinstall windows 8, then upgrade to 8.1 again and try it with the original partition size.  As I said, I don't mind messing around with this computer.  Actually, the old HDD ( I say old, but I've only had the computer for a couple of months) that was in it still has just Windows 8 on it.  I could upgrade that to 8.1 and try it.

    Thanks for the help.  If this works, it's a lot less scary than messing around with partitions, at least in the sense of resizing/creating/registering.  Faster, too.

    No problem.  It's a lot of information to process, and I'm sure I could have done a better job explaining.  As for your questions.

    1. I just used the Windows Disk Management (search disk, and "create and format hard disk partitions" comes up in search.  That's the one you want).  I then just right clicked on the partition and assigned a letter.  That worked on my laptop, but not on my desktop.  On my desktop, the only option for the drive in Disk Management was help, so I used diskpart from the command line.  Details on adding a drive letter can be found here.
    2. It will show up like your system drive and any other one under PC.  To hide it, you just remove the drive letter once you're done with this process.
    3. The ImageX.exe /export s:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim 1 c:\winre.wim is the only command I had to type in command prompt on my laptop.  On my desktop, I had to use diskpart to get the drive letter on the recovery partition.
    4. Once you go through these steps, you shouldn't have to do it again unless Microsoft modified the image again and it gets too big.  These steps solve the root cause of the backup issue, by freeing up space on the recovery drive.
    5. The command doesn't delete the old wim file.  It just creates a new one with the name specified as the last argument for ImageX.  Once the new one is created, you have to go into the recovery drive and replace the old one with the new (and smaller) wim yourself.
    6. Correct, only the deployment tools from the ADK are needed.
    7. I normally don't use that exact tool, but the impacts were the same and it seems the solution is the same.  These are Windows 8.1 machines.  I use a Windows Server 2012 Essentials machine to manage my backups for all my computers.  I believe it uses the same underlying backup processes the built in system image tool does.  It was impacted the same way as described by everyone else in this thread.  I was able perform the system image backup through file history as well now.  It just isn't how I do my backups normally.  I guess I could have just left that part out, since it is not normal for this thread.

    On the second machine I did this to, it only took me about 10 minutes.  Of course, at that point I knew what I was doing.  I didn't want to deal with the partition resizing solution, so I decided to keep looking and was able to piece together this solution.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-15T15:58:31+00:00

    Fantastic!  A few questions, if you don't mind.  First, how did you assign a drive letter to the recovery partition, and when you did, does the partition now show up under "This PC" like your C drive does?  If so, is there a way to hide it?  Secondly, is ImageX.exe /export s:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre the only command you have to type in the command prompt?  Third, will this have to be typed every time you want to do a system image?  The command basically deletes the old wim file and replaces it with an up to date one which will be smaller because it has no old info that's no longer needed?  And the most important question...you are doing the system image with the regular built in Windows system image tools like normal, right?  Sorry for all of the questions.  I am completely lost when it comes to things like this and just want to make sure I do this correctly.  After downloading ADK for 8.1, I only install the Deployment Tools, right?  You have Server 2012 Essentials on the same machine?  I don't mean to sound like an idiot, but I don't really have any idea what that even is.  What would this have to do with a Windows 8.1?  Again, sorry for sounding, well... being clueless.

    I'm going to try this on my Acer, the one that I test everything on as it is my guinea pig computer.  It already has the enlarged recovery partition, but I'm going to do the things you did anyway and see what happens.  Of course, the only way I would know for sure is to shrink the size of the partition back down to 350 or 300 or whatever it was when it didn't have enough space, then try it.  If I can't shrink it, perhaps I will just reinstall windows 8, then upgrade to 8.1 again and try it with the original partition size.  As I said, I don't mind messing around with this computer.  Actually, the old HDD ( I say old, but I've only had the computer for a couple of months) that was in it still has just Windows 8 on it.  I could upgrade that to 8.1 and try it.

    Thanks for the help.  If this works, it's a lot less scary than messing around with partitions, at least in the sense of resizing/creating/registering.  Faster, too.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2013-12-15T13:22:35+00:00

    The restore of the backup succeed.  I've also confirmed that I can still access the recovery tools.  Everything looks good.  I also opened my new wim file and the original in Windows System Image Manager (installed by the ADK), and confirmed that the contents are the same.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-15T03:45:03+00:00

    I may have found a different solution then the ones I've seen in this thread so far.  I ran into this problem with my recovery partition after updating one of my machines to 8.1, which has a total size of 300MB.  I had 23MB of space left on the partition, causing my Server 2012 Essentials client backup to fail.  On the recovery partition, the Winre.wim file was 253MB, the only file with substantial size. 

    My solution was to install the Microsoft ADK for 8.1 (just the deployment tools are needed).  I then added a drive letter to my recovery partition so I could access the data on it with command prompt.  After that, opened command prompt as administrator, and ran the ImageX program that was installed with the ADK with the following commands: ImageX.exe /export s:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.

    The reason that /export shrinks the wim file is because when items are deleted from a wim file, the total size does not decrease.  Kind of like when you delete a file from a hard drive, the data is still there, just the references to it are deleted.  The /export command causes a new wim file to be created, without the old data that is no longer referenced.

    Image backups are now succeeding, and so far, I've had no issues.  No resizing partitions needed.  However, I have not restored a backup yet, but I can't see this change causing any issues with that.

    Please let us know if restoring from the backup works, if and when you use it.  If it does, this would be a great alternative to having to mess with partitions.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments