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
    2013-12-17T15:17:01+00:00

    More and more people are eventually finding this thread and the number of hits it has had is very substantial, still Microsoft are not helping us with this?? Why??

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-17T15:13:19+00:00

    Totally agree, I am not savvy enough to attempt to mess around with partitions, and have found this upgrade really frustrating.

     I have always done back-ups and created system images in case of serious problems, and I am finding the inability to do so with windows 8.1 really difficult.

     I also cannot make a recovery flash drive as I thought this would be a good alternative, so I bought a flash drive and  I get an error with that as well.

    So other than file history that's the only type of back up I can do, which is totally useless should my system crash.

    Why have Microsoft not sorted this out. A system back up is a fundamental part of PC maintenance!

    Really wished I hadn't bothered up grading!

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-12-17T06:53:02+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.  This also caused a File History System Image Backup to fail.  On the recovery partition, the Winre.wim file was 253MB, the only file with substantial size. 

    Here is the solution I came up with:

    1. Install the Windows ADK 8.1.
    2. Assign a drive letter (in my example, s), to the recovery partition.
    3. In explorer, go to view section of the action pane.  Click options.
    4. Under the view tab of folder options, change the option to show hidden files, as well as uncheck the box to hide protected operating system files.
    5. Open command prompt as administrator
    6. Run the following command:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Deployment Tools\amd64\DISM\ImageX.exe /export s:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim 1 c:\winre.wim 7. Confirm that your new wim file is smaller than the old one.  If it isn't, this solution won't help you. 8. In explorer, right click on the S:\Recovery folder and go to properties.  Go to the security tab, and click on advanced.  Click the continue button, and then add your user to have read/write permissions. 9. If you want a backup, copy your old winre.wim from S:\Recovery\WindowsRE to somewhere else. 10. Permanently delete the old winre.wim from the S drive (don't let it go to the recycle bin, though it shouldn't fit anyway). 11. Copy over your new winre.wim file. 12. Change your settings back to how you want them.  I'd recommend hiding the protected OS files and removing the drive letter when you're done.  You can also hide hidden files again, but some people prefer to have them on.

    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. 

    ImageX.exe argument details:

    1. The first argument /export flag causes a new wim file to be created.
    2. The second argument is the path to the winre.wim on your recovery partition.
    3. The third argument specifies which image within the wim file to use.  There is only 1 in the winre.wim.
    4. The fourth argument is the location to create the new image.  This can be anywhere, so long as you remember where it is.

    Image backups are now succeeding, and so far, I've had no issues.  These are both the server initiated backups and the standard image backups.  No resizing partitions needed.  I've restored a backup, and it seems to work fine.  This has worked on both my laptop (the two partition scenario), and my desktop (the four partition scenario).  Recovery tools still seem to work fine, and the Windows System Image Manager (installed by the ADK), and confirmed that the contents of the original and new wim files are the same.

    Edit: Added a few more details and confirmed that the backup restored fine.  Re-added a portion of the post that seemed to have disappeared somewhere.

    Edit 2: Reformatted the post to a list format, making it easier to read.

    I can confirm that this worked for me (at least to the point that the System Image is currently being copied to my external drive.

    *Although I was able to navigate through it, it might help if someone with better explanation skills than me include the details for unhiding/taking ownership/changing security on the s:\recovery folder

    My exported winre.wim was about 7MB smaller than the original, which gave me just over 36MB free space after doing the replace...which seems to be enough to have made the System Image Backup tool happy.

    Thanks for the assistance.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-17T05:30:55+00:00

    You're very welcome.  BTW, my sentence in the post that looks like it got cut off was supposed to read...I used it a couple of times to clone drives and it worked perfectly. 

     The MS system image backup works fine in Windows 8.  If there are any problems, it's pretty much with a given individual's computer or setup.  The Windows 8.1 system image problem is with just about everybody. 

    I'm glad the Macrium backup worked for you.  Of course the true test is actually restoring it using said backup.  As I said, though, Macrium works for a lot of people and from what I understand, it's pretty simple to use.  The clone part of it was simple to use as well.  I opened the program just to see what the backup entails and it looked easy enough.

    If/when you do use the backup to restore your computer, please let me know how it worked, even if it's a long time from now.  Thanks.

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