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VSS issues trying to image my boot drive

Thread solved

Coming back to Acronis after many years (seemed like it was getting too bloated and didn't work with SSDs at the time). So downloaded the trial and didn't look like it supported imaging a drive with trial so decided to purchase. And it can't image my drive. Ugh. It just gets stuck at "Preparing... and Calculating" then errors out. Doing some research it seems like an issue with VSS (Shadow Copy). This is already getting way more involved especially since I just spent $50 on this software that is supposed to be able to image drives. Doing some more research found it could be caused by a partition name with invalid characters. In Event Viewer I'm seeing a lot of VSS errors like 

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: An invalid XML document was returned from writer 

I downloaded the GDisk tool and ran it for my C: drive which is disk 4. There are 4 partitions on that disk and all the names look fine. 

4) Basic data partition

3) Microsoft reserved partition

2) EFI system partition

1) Basic data partition

So not sure where to go next.

1 Users found this helpful

Dan, welcome to these public User Forums.

Not sure why you thought that the trial version of ATI 2021 could not do basic backup images but looks like there are other issues that were at work giving that issue!

The issue with invalid partition names is pretty rare in my experience so don't know if that is in play here for you, but would have thought unlikely if nothing stands out when looking at your partitions and their names in Windows Disk Management or other partition tools.

The first recommendation if you are seeing VSS type issues is to download and run the Acronis VSS Doctor tool and let this fix any issues found if it offers to do this.

The preparing and calculating stage of backups can seem to take a while but would advise going and getting a cup of tea or coffee and leaving it be then come back a little time later rather than watching the grass grow!

Dan, did the VSS Doctor offer any options to fix the VSS Writer errors being detected?  If not, then you need to look at the links provided in the end part of the report based on data collected from the Event logs.

It did not but I fooled with GDisk again and fixed at least one of the issues I think. So the drive that had the bad character was not the drive I was trying to backup nor the drive I was backing up too but apparently can still block TI from doing its job. I case this could help anyone else I'm posting screen shots showing how I fixed the bad partition name. Will look in event log to see if I can fix the remaining issues. 

Even though the VSS tool still showed issues it is backing up now since I renamed that partition.

 

Dan

Dan, well done for resolving this strange issue and for sharing how you did so!  Glad that your backup is now running too!

I seldom post on these forums, but I had a VSS failure with the Acronis. I felt I needed to share my resolution to maybe help someone else.

I was getting a VSS returned invalid XML message. It turns out that some program, probably EaseUS, put a cryptic XML string in the partition name. It was full of Chinese characters.

I used GDisk to put in new partition names and that solved my problem.

Cheers

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Matthew Knepp wrote:

I seldom post on these forums, but I had a VSS failure with the Acronis. I felt I needed to share my resolution to maybe help someone else.

I was getting a VSS returned invalid XML message. It turns out that some program, probably EaseUS, put a cryptic XML string in the partition name. It was full of Chinese characters.

I used GDisk to put in new partition names and that solved my problem.

Cheers

An interesting case, Matthew! Thank you for taking the time to share your solution!