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
    2013-12-17T00:00:35+00:00

    @KevinIsraelI have tried your suggestions and still do not succeed with the Image Backup. My WinRE.wim shrunk from 262 MB (275.348.717 Bytes) to 240 MB (252.104.704 Bytes). The Recovery partition shows still 266.72 MB out of 300 MB used (i.e. 33.25 MB unused). I guess these values represent million bytes instead of MB. So the WinRE.wim file takes 252 from 300 MB. Obviously this value ist still too large.

    However interestingly adding up the file sizes within the recovery partition, I cannot see where the additional 14 MB are comming from that blow up the size of the recovery partion beyond the WinRE.wim file. There seems to be only a file boot.sdi, which has a size of 3MB. All remaining files only have some kb in size.

    Do you have any advise here?

    The only thing I can say is that I also noticed some phantom data that couldn't be accounted for.  It was around 15MB, so I'm thinking there is some "really hidden" data on that drive.  Did you remove the drive letter from the partition before you tried the backup.  I noticed that my free space numbers looked off until I removed the drive number.  The other suggestion I have is to make sure there isn't a hidden recycle bin folder on the drive taking up some space.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-16T21:49:12+00:00

    TwoMercs,

         I have an Acer Aspire V5-122P-0889, and using Jobongo's instructions worked perfectly.  I had to do it a second time because I did something incorrectly and screwed my system up (I'm always messing with the Aspire), but the second time I did it (meaning trying to do the partition steps after the upgrade to 8.1) I think I screwed a step up and my system wouldn't restart.  I then altered the steps a little to prevent it from happening again, which if you look on page 30, about two thirds up the page, you will see, but the core of Jobongo's steps still worked.  This was going from Windows 8, which was preinstalled, but makes the partitions exactly the same size again if you reinstall Windows 8, and using the store to upgrade to 8.1.  After the upgrade, as everyone knows, there wasn't enough space to do the volume shadow copy. 

        

         Your Aspire shouldn't be any different than mine, if it came with Windows 8 preinstalled, that is.  There really is no "Easy" solution.  The easy solution would be for Microsoft to fix it.  That's not going to happen, it seems. 

         If you are looking for third party software to do the backup without having to mess with anything, I understand that Macrium Reflect Free is used often and has a great track record.  Here's the site  http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx .  It actually is free, not trial software.  I used it a couple of I'm eventually going to try it on my old Dell Dimension E521 with Windows Vista Home Premium.  I just have to dig it out and update it first.  I've used Macrium Reflect Free to clone before and it worked perfectly. 

         Hope this helps.

    Thanks very much for your reply Gabe1972, its reassuring to know that Jobongo's instructions worked on the Aspire V5-122P. I've made a backup using Macrium Reflect for now and will await a Microsoft Update in the meantime. (unless I'm feeling brave enough to roll my sleeves up - I have book marked you post for the future). I didn't try the MS backup before I upgraded from Windows 8 to 8.1 though will try it on my Aspire One 725 which is still running 8.

    Thanks again.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-12-16T21:42:38+00:00

    With regard to step 5.  When it creates it, it will put it in a different folder or something, then I just copy it, then paste it in the recovery drive, which will ask me if I want to replace the old file with the new one, which I will, of course?  If this is correct, where does it create it so I know where to get it from?  Will it be c:\winre.wim, and this is the file I copy, then paste it into the recovery partition, which will ask me if I want to replace the old with this one? 

    This .wim file is very small, I take it.  Less than 250MB, so there will be the required 50MB of space in the 300MB partition? 

    The reason I want to make sure of this is that the only .wim file I am familiar with is the one I created for the usb recovery drive, and this thing was about 11GB.  It was called refresh.wim or something like that.   

    Sorry about all of the questions.  I am completely lost when it comes to this stuff.  

    The last argument is the path and file name to create the new one.  I choose to create in the root of the C drive, but you could do anything.  It can't be on your recovery partition, since there isn't room, but the C:\winre.wim could be anything.  That is just the new wim file create location and name.

    The wim file only contains a few minoir drivers and debug tools.  It is how you access command prompt without booting Windows and the like.  The refresh.wim file your referring to probably contained the entire OS.  My original winre.wim file was 253MB in size.  When I exported it to a new file, it sharnk to 236MB, which resulted in 43MB of free space on the recovery partition.  Still below "minimum", but the backups now succeed, so the 50MB isn't a hard limit.

    I will definitely just do it exactly the same way you did and create it in the C drive.  Thanks for the help.  Also, I didn't know that you could access the command prompt without having to boot into Windows.  I've never done that, and hopefully will never have to, as the only reason I could see the need for that is another problem, which I hope I never have.  Again, thanks for all the help.  After I upgrade the original Acer Windows 8 HDD to 8.1, I will try it instead of the partition workaround and let you know how it worked.  It will take a couple of days.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-16T20:16:11+00:00

    @KevinIsraelI have tried your suggestions and still do not succeed with the Image Backup. My WinRE.wim shrunk from 262 MB (275.348.717 Bytes) to 240 MB (252.104.704 Bytes). The Recovery partition shows still 266.72 MB out of 300 MB used (i.e. 33.25 MB unused). I guess these values represent million bytes instead of MB. So the WinRE.wim file takes 252 from 300 MB. Obviously this value ist still too large.

    However interestingly adding up the file sizes within the recovery partition, I cannot see where the additional 14 MB are comming from that blow up the size of the recovery partion beyond the WinRE.wim file. There seems to be only a file boot.sdi, which has a size of 3MB. All remaining files only have some kb in size.

    Do you have any advise here?

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