Backup fails and the only error message is "A backup error."
I backup three drives as individual jobs. Two of those continue to work fine, but my C: drive backup has suddenly started to fail after working for many months. The process starts and I get a brief message about "Preparing data," and then the backup halts with an error message saying only "A backup error." I have tons of space for the backup and nothing changed before this started, so I am at a complete loss. Any advice on how to proceed would be greatly appreciate. Thanks!
Rick, the VSS tool is indicating that you have a hidden / system partition on your C: drive SSD of size 532 MB that is limited in free space.
To confirm which partition this is, open an Administrator level Command prompt window or a Powershell window, then issue the following commands:
diskpart
list disk
select disk 0 (using the number for your C: SSD disk).
list partition (to see all the partitions on the selected disk).
This should give you a list similar to mine below and identify if the 532 MB partition is such as the Windows Recovery partition?
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19042.985] (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.964 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. On computer: STEVE-9OP3KKF0 DISKPART> list disk Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- --- Disk 0 Online 465 GB 0 B * Disk 1 Online 1863 GB 0 B * Disk 2 Online 1863 GB 0 B DISKPART> select disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> list partition Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- Partition 1 Reserved 128 MB 17 KB Partition 2 System 260 MB 129 MB Partition 3 Primary 200 GB 389 MB Partition 4 Primary 263 GB 201 GB Partition 5 Recovery 978 MB 464 GB DISKPART>
The hidden / system partitions will all be much smaller sizes as above, where Reserved = the Microsoft System Reserved 128MB partition, System = the EFI System 260MB partition, and Recovery = the Windows Recovery Environment 978MB partition.
When you have identified the problem partition you could test your backup by deselecting that partition from the backup Source (assuming you are doing a Disks & Partitions backup and not an 'Entire PC' one!).
To confirm the lack of free space on the problem partition, you would need to use a partition tool such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software as the normal Windows disk management tool doesn't show the Recovery partition! The partition tool would also allow you to resize any adjacent partition before the Recovery one, then resize the Recovery partition to increase its size.
FYI, the MVP Assistant System Information area can be used to see the disks and partition, including space used and free, device ID, recovery partition info, etc.
Thanks for the reminder Bruno, I keep forgetting the extra features you added to the MVP Assistant tool!
Thanks to Steve and BrunoC for the help. After failing for days (and few dozen attempts), Acronis suddenly started to successfully backup (and validate) the C: drive. I did nothing to solve the problem, but have waited to see if the success would continue (and it has). I intend to run VSS doctor again and see if it still shows any errors, but am not inclined to make any changes while it is working. I'll report here after I try VSS doctor again.