[SOLVED] Backup job fails, cannot create Volume snapshot (fails to backup a recovery partition)
WilliB,
Is the disk in question an HDD? A partition that suddenly shows a partition as RAW and not Healthy indicates a bad partition. If you use Windows Disk Management tool do you see the same RAW status of this partition as is shown in diskpart which I think is where you see this?
It sounds to me like you have a failed disk and need to replace it. Hope you have a full disk backup image of this drive as I think you are going to need it.
Enchantech,
i have installed Windows 10 clean on a new Samsung SSD, the Samsung Tool and SMART Info says all ok.
I've made some Screenshots, the first is harddiskmanager which says no Filesystem, the Second diskparts says RAW and the Third says NTFS (Servicepartition). Now you can choose ;-)
Your diskpart screenshot showing volume 3 as RAW should not be. This partition should be of NTFS filesystem format. Your screenshot of the hard disk manager confirms this as well. On a clean install of Win 10 I am at a loss to explain how that happened. Maybe someone else here might have that answer. I do think that this condition is the reason that VSS fails on this disk as VSS is an NTFS function so what that means is that VSS not seeing a compatible filesystem fails.
Since this is a clean install of Win 10 which I am assuming means that you did not upgrade from say Win 8.1 you would not have any recovery information in this partition for use to revert back to a previous installation or state.
In that case you could use diskpart to format volume 3 into an NTFS filesystem and also add a RECOVERY volume label to the partition. If you choose to do this and maybe I do not need to say this to you here but, be certain that you understand the use of diskpart to accomplish this task. Additionally make certain that Volume 3 is the SELECTED volume before using the diskpart format command. I would not recommend this to most average users but given you supplied the images above tells me that you are a bit above the average user.
I also would not recommend the above had you not indicated that you have a new clean install of Windows on a fresh drive. Additionally, if say this were an HDD that suddenly was showing this partition as RAW whereas previously it did not I would recommend that a new disk be installed and a full disk image recovery to that new disk be performed if one were available.
Guys,
I am dissatisfied with the workarounds you post. I want that Acronis does solve the issue even though it seems to be a rare one.
The computer has a standard partitioning layout and I really don't want to change anything on top of that. It is pretty unlikely that any normal user will be able to carry this all out even when detailed instructions are given at hand. More likely he will uninstall the Acronis product and search for alternatives.
I see no technical reasons for this issue nor has Acronis declared why this problem exists at all.
"Your diskpart screenshot showing volume 3 as RAW should not be. This partition should be of NTFS filesystem format."
When I played around with diskpart the partition was shown as RAW for me too, but this depends on the partition property flags. As soon you convert the partition to a non-recovery partition the file-system should be shown as NTFS. Please have a look into my description for the usage of diskpart to make the recovery partition read / writable @WilliB. I have posted this earlier in this thread.
Enchantech,
back from work going further ...
First as you mentioned i go on and changed the filesystem to ntfs at last. After playing around a little bit ;-)
This helps, from now Diskpart shows NTFS as filesystem. Hardiskmanager shows no filesystem at all.
After this i started Acronis TI 2016 and my new created CompletePC Backupjob startet without any Error, now the Backup runs and i will see if it was complete at last.
If this was the solution for now, i can live with that. But Acronis should fix that fast! In this Case i'am with Karl Heinz, this Issue was fixed in earlier Versions and with the Bootmedia (PE) it worked without any changes on the Recovery.
Thank you for your support !
WilliB,
You are welcome. The cannot create volume snapshot issue is a very complex issue. There is not a simple fix for this as there are many conditions which cause the error. They range from filesystem corruption to wrong Windows settings. Many of these issues are not a direct result of the Acronis application itself. All of that necessitates the need for an individual basis investigation into the exact cause for the error on any given installation.
Some of these problems can be fixed by the end user and some are more problematic and require advanced expertise to solve. Karl's issue is one of these later problems I believe.
With your backup reportedly running I see no reason why it should not complete.
Hey Enchantech
I have a new finding.......... latest build......... when backup without selecting "shutdown after complete"............ it will still shutdown......
Richard,
It would be best if you post this NEW issue to a NEW thread so that others see it that may offer guidance or solutions. Adding a new issue to an existing thread topic for an unrelated issue is known as high jacking and is frowned upon by the community at large.
"They range from filesystem corruption to wrong Windows settings."
Agreed the problem has multilayered causes, and I understand and respect your primary goal is to help users as MVP but this quote makes me a little bit sick. Nothing of this range applies to my case.
Albeit only 1 out of 18 ATIH 2016 installations show this error at all I've tried everything (except enlarging the partition) to solve the issue.
I really insist to understand why Acronis TrueImage cannot backup this specific partition. In exchange I am willing to provide any information and take any really neccessary steps to investigate the issue.
It might be that the old trick of freshly installing Windows will solve this but as Richard pointed it out, it seems to affect only ATIH 2016 and not ATIH 2015, though I have not downgraded to ATIH 2015 myself to prove the case.
Enchantech,
maybe some users can fix this issue, but i think many of them can not. They buy a program to make a backup and then it doesn't work.
And the error Message doesn't help much, so the user think the program is crap. Whatever the real reason is.
This is something no company wants ...
An Error message like "Can't read Recovery Partition" or anything else describing more clearly would help.
I'am positive, i know Acronis many years and belive they will fix it, this and other issues ;-)
Come on guys at Acronis !
Meanwhile my Backup is completed.
+1 for your spirit
Hi Karl,
Will you open an administrator command prompt and run the following command and post the results.
reagentc /info
I'm interested in seeing if your Windows recovery tools partition is functional since it is listed as RAW under diskpart.
I have checked this partition on all of the systems I clean installed Windows 10(True Image did not make the cut), and they are all listed as NTFS.
Edited.
Removed unrelated content after re-reading initial post.
Hey Enchantech - Ok sure and done .
Hi Joey,
good idea haven't thought about that.
Here are the outputs (my computer / no backup issues with recovery partition):
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.10240]
(c) 2015 Microsoft Corporation. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info
Konfigurationsinformationen zur Windows-Wiederherstellungsumgebung (WinRE) und zur Systemwiederherstellung:
WinRE-Status: Enabled
WinRE-Ort: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition5\Recovery\WindowsRE
Startkonfigurationsdaten-ID: 4c595c08-f3cc-11e3-90cb-d88c509e3628
Ort des Wiederherstellungsimages:
Index des Wiederherstellungsimages: 0
Ort des benutzerdefinierten Images:
Index des benutzerdefinierten Images: 0
REAGENTC.EXE: Vorgang erfolgreich.
Here are the outputs (other computer / backup issues with recovery partition):
Konfigurationsinformationen zur Windows-Wiederherstellungsumgebung (WinRE) und
zur Systemwiederherstellung:
WinRE-Status: Disabled
WinRE-Ort:
Startkonfigurationsdaten-ID: 14ecfcb1-3af1-11e5-9f12-9c1d6ace78e0
Ort des Wiederherstellungsimages:
Index des Wiederherstellungsimages: 0
Ort des benutzerdefinierten Images:
Index des benutzerdefinierten Images: 0
REAGENTC.EXE: Vorgang erfolgreich.
Based on the output the recovery configuration actually not working.
Karl,
I had missed the detail in your initial post that the system your having issues imaging was converted from MBR to GPT. What procedure did you use to perform the conversion?
no problem. Meanwhile I am on the opinion that this is the initial cause.
here is what I did:
0. booted a ATIH 2016 Linux recovery disk (UEFI)
1. backup the computer (aka full disk backup) with ATIH 2016
2. tried to restore the computer with ATIH 2016, but it failed to restore the MBR backup as GPT (described here: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/97791)
3. so restored the backup as GPT (non-system disk) against all odds
4. converted the MBR to GPT using PWfree 9
5. booted from a Windows 10 USB stick (UEFI)
6. deleted a duplicate Recovery partition (there was a second recovery partition present from Windows 7. 300 MB) The 450 MB recovery partition has been created by Windows 10 setup during the upgrade - this is actually the partition ATIH is not able to backup under Windows.
7. created the EFI partition using diskpart as follows:
create partition efi size=100
format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
assign letter="S"
8. in cmd
mkdir s:\efi\microsoft\boot
xcopy /s c:\windows\boot\efi\*.* s:\efi\microsoft\boot
bcdboot %Windir% /L de-DE
9. hide the EFI partition using diskpart as follows
remove letter="S"
10. At the end the layout did reflect the UEFI compliant layout MS suggests. And the "non-system disk UEFI" restore worked because my manually done steps (so creating the missing EFI partition and setting up the files and bootmanager to boot from it.
The change had an impact on the WinRE environment as the output of your command shows Joey, but I never touched the Windows 10 recovery partition prior to the advises of Acronis to do a chkdsk.
Quite likely the WinRE has no target at the moment because it was linked to the deleted 300 MB Windows 7 RE or because the position of the partition moved along the way.
Hi Karl,
Here are the steps I use to convert a MBR system to GPT.
Boot computer using the Acronis True Image WinPE rescue media. Select the command prompt window and use diskpart to select the disk for conversion to GPT. In the following example the target disk was disk 0.
select disk 0
clean
convert GPT
create partition primary size=450
create partition efi size=260 (Preferred for advanced format disks otherwise use 100)
format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
assign letter="S"
create partition msr size=128 (Windows 10 clean install uses 16)
create partition primary (Utilizes remaining disk space for Windows partition)
exit (Just exit diskpart. Do not exit the command prompt window)
Select the True Image window and begin a partition mode recovery from MBR based image. Select only the 450 MB recovery partition and the Windows partition. After recovery True Image will request a reboot. Reboot the computer back into the WinPE. At the command prompt type
diskpart
list vol (Identify temorary drive letter assignments)
exit
bcdboot n:\windows /s m: (Replace n with the Windows letter and m with the ESP letter)
Reboot the computer and if everything was successful, Windows 10 will boot in UEFI mode.
Launch an adminstrator command prompt and type the following commands
diskpart
list vol (Identify Volume number of Recovery partition)
select volume n (Replace n with the number of the recovery partition)
set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"
gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001
exit
reagentc /enable (Enables advanced Windows recovery options.)
Hi Joey, thanks for your help. I have looked into the configuration of the computer that has issues.
Given your steps there differences.
My partition order was
1. MSR
2. EFI
3. Boot drive
4. Recovery
5. Random Data Partition
but it should have been (according to your steps and MS)
1. Recovery
2. EFI
3. MSR
4. Boot drive
5. Random Data Partition
As I do not have access to the computer at the moment and don't want to break anything I decided to leave WinRE disabled and deleted the recovery partition. At a later time I will realign the partitions like they should be and see if this helps. It may take weeks before I can reply here because I don't have the time to drive by there to fix it onsite.
Today I will use my free day to investigate how the ATIH 2016 internal MBR / GPT conversion works, as the problems with that forced me to do it manually in the first place.
Karl,
I downloaded trial of 2016 and performed a test backup from Windows of my converted system, and it completed successfully with no errors. I suspect that the conversion with PWFree9 may have corrupted your 450MB recovery partition.
Have fun testing.
Karl : Try build 5634............ solve your problem ?
Thanks for making me aware about the new patch. I cannot tell anymore, I decided to delete this bugging recovery partition. I will recreate it at a later time but as I said this might take some weeks before I have the opportunity to be able to do so onsite.
Karl,
I downloaded trial of 2016 and performed a test backup from Windows of my converted system, and it completed successfully with no errors. I suspect that the conversion with PWFree9 may have corrupted your 450MB recovery partition.Have fun testing.
Hi Joey,
this could have been the case that pwfree9 or any steps I took ruined this 450 MB recovery partition. I won't bother to reconstruct the issue.
I had some other problems today and quite lucky we got another update as Richard also talked about it. I will run some (time) extensive tests converting a MBR Windows 8 installation into UEFI and also Win 7 / Win 10. I did not manage it to do so on my free day unfortunately but I am very eager to do it.
Basically I have found a way to convert a system from MBR to GPT without data loss (diskpart > select disk 0 > clean) and without Acronis but as I pretty much wished that ATIH fields this feature more intuitively I am of course willing to make sure it does work as intended.
Here is one more potential cause for this problem.
I had created an NTFS Volume mount point at C:\temp pointing at an older, smaller SSD.
Once this volume was deleted and the C:\temp shortcut replaced with an actual folder the backup proceeded without the "unable to create volume snapshot" error occurring.
Here is an article from Microsoft about these mount points.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938934.aspx?f=255&MSPPErr…