Windows Backup and Restore problem - Lenovo created

Hi, I finally have narrowed down why I keep getting the error "not enough disk space for volume shadow copy" when I try to create a system image backup in Windows Backup and Restore.
Apparently, according to a Microsoft employee, it's caused by either not having 50MB or more free space on your system partition, or a system partition that's greater than 490MB.
Considering that my 7 Home Premium install came with a 1.2GB system partition from the factory (of which only 129MB are free ), I see it's a problem that Lenovo created. I don't fault them for it, but I need to figure out a way to free up some space on the system partition and shrink it to 490MB. That's where you hopefully come in. Can anyone give me advice on how to do this without nerfing my 7 install?

Unfortunately when I had XP installed for a short time, graphics performance was poor. I couldn't run one game without selecting "software vertex rendering" in the Intel control panel. Likewise 3dmark06 wouldn't run without software vertex rendering, and only gave me a score of around 399 (it gets 1904 in windows 7!). With this problem with 7 that I can't create any new system images, and I still am having the occasional issue where my computer doesn't shut off completely when I shut down windows, I may just go for the middle ground and install Vista, atleast until Microsoft fixes these 2 bugs in 7. At the microsoft forums they acknowlege it's a bug and offered some work arounds, but again I'm afraid of destroying my 7 install.

So, any ideas? Thanks if you can help. Otherwise I may just install Vista. :\

 

I have successfully used Mozy and SyncBackSE, both of which use Microsofts shadow copy service without problems on my T510.

 

What's "system partition"? I assume it's not the one with Windows on it. Are you trying to back up this partition? Type in partition into the Start menu, and click "create and format hard disk partitions". See if you can resize your disk partitions. If you can't resize it, then I don't know what else to do. Maybe use Lenovo's backup utility?

 

@pstrisik; I'd rather not use 3rd party software, as backup and restore is more than adequate (when it works), plus I don't trust 3rd party software so much for important backups.

@jaakobi; the hidden partition is the system partition that windows 7 uses to boot from, it has all the important boot files in it.

 

Just checked my T510, and my System Partition is 1.17GB, and 516MB free. I haven't done anything unusual that I know of. Not sure why yours is larger.

 

Can you resize the partition from the Windows partition manager?

 

No I can't, I can only see it.
I just downloaded all the vista drivers in case, and noticed there was a new BIOS available. I downloaded and installed, now my fan is on all the time, just whirring away like a blow dryer.

 

My point was that the volume shadow copy service was working, not to use other software. However, after mike5065 posted I checked mine and it is also 1.17GB but with 519MB free. But something still does not make sense. All three of our partitions are greater than 490MB in size, so that is not likely it. And since you have more than 50MB free, that's not it either. Something isn't adding up.
.

 

Let me double check mine to be sure and I'll report back.

Edit: Ok, it is 1.17GB sorry. But now it's reporting 514MB free, and I just ran a test backup and it worked fine. Before it would always cancel out with an error before asking you to insert a disc greater than 1GB. This time it made it that far. This is weird.
Also, I reinstalled the previous BIOS version I had, and the fan is now back to normal.

 

I had a thought. I do not use a Windows page file, and I do not use Windows restore points. Wondering if this, or more likely something like this, contributes to the difference.

EDIT: posted right when you did. Good to hear it's working.

 

It still bothers me that I don't know why it was fixed, it just seemed to fix itself. Its kind of weird. If I knew the exact cause then I could try to fix it to avoid this problem again in the future. :\

 

I finally figured out why it was happening. If you have a partition that is less than 500MB, windows backup and restore (mainly the volume shadow copy service) needs 50MB of free space. If your partition is larger than 500MB, it needs 320MB of free space.
The free space in my hidden system_drv was at 187MB (a 1.17GB partition ). Further investigation revealed that it's just the Lenovo rescue and recovery stuff, don't need it. So I just marked my C: drive as active, rebooted, and windows made it boot/system/active. I nuked the hidden partition, but I couldn't resize it or merge it with C:.
I downloaded and ran gparted, and was able to merge them, now my T410 is happily running with just one full size partition.
Maybe someone will find this info useful one day.

 

So... deleting the hidden partition, and reclaiming the space, worked out well for you?

I want to do this. Do you now have any weird behavior when you use the blue ThinkVantage button during startup? I realize it's not really functional anymore, but I am curious if there was a link between the button and the missing recovery partition (i.e. not the system_drv partition).

 

I did that initially on my T61P and it has always worked fine. I wonder if you are not making a gigabyte/megabyte error? You've got the partitions correct but I'm wondering if an error by 1000 hasn't tiptoed in there because you are wondering about what used to be entire systems but now have shrunk.
Renee

 

I haven't had any problems at all. I ran crystaldiskmark, and my SSD is as fast as ever.
Through searching I found out that the hidden partition "system_drv" is just related to Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery. Since I just use windows backup and restore, I have no use for it and I wanted to claim all the space I could for my SSD.
I read that by deleting it, you do lose the blue thinkvantage button functionality, but big deal.
I was reading an article by Lenovo on how to setup rescue and recovery. They say to create 2 system partitions, one 1.17GB, the other remaining space. Basically they set it up so the hidden partition is window's system and boot partition. In disk management, all I did was right click the C drive and mark it as active. I rebooted and back in disk management windows had made C active/boot/system, and the hidden partition was only "primary partition" at that point, don't need it any longer.

 

Well I didn't see where I thought I said hello to my old friend Talin, So

Hi talin

Renee

 

@talin, thanks for all this info, I'll be removing that partition too. Sounds like it's only use is to redirect the R&R process (and boot, but the main partition can be retasked for that). This will clean things up a bit for me.

 

Worked like a charm. Will be adding live Gparted to my toolkit. Thanks again.