Help making first backup on system

[richc46]

You need the drive for the external hard drive. Do you see it? What letter is it?

 

[sdow84]

G: drive. It's there. I'm just wondering why my E: is all the sudden completely full, it wasn't before I started all this.

 

[richc46]

I think you are trying to back up to E. With macrium make sure you see that you are backing up to G. Did you do that?

 

[sdow84]

I open Macrium.
The first box at top shows my C: drive which I click the box to select.
I click next.
It asks me to choose a destination, which I pick my G drive.
I click next, and it gives me an operations page, I click Finish.
It then says:

Starting Image
Initalizing
Creating Volume Snapshot - Please Wait
then in red: ERROR: COM call "m_pVssObject->BackupCOmplete(&pAsync)" Failed
-Returned HRESULT = 0x80042301
- Error text: VSS_E_BAD_STATE

Then below in bold red: Backup aborted! - Failed to create volume snapshot. Result code: 0x8004231f

 

[sdow84]

I think I may have been trying to back up to E: earlier. Should I delete that?

 

[sdow84]

I checked what my shadow copy storage parameters are, this is what the cmd prompt told me:

used: 43.4 gb
allocated: 45.6 gb
total: 50gb (I had upped it to this this morning, I think it was at 45. something).

If I have never backed anything up, why is so much space already used up? How much space does this process take?

(..I will be back in 10. Making a Taco Bell run since I physically cannot stand to eat one more bite of turkey. It's a quarter mile away.)

 

[richc46]

This article may help.
Give it a try. Ill see you tomorrow
VSS Error: 0x80042318 - Failed to Create Volume Snapshot (VSS errors)
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html

 

[sdow84]

Ha! To show the extent of my lack of knowledge about making a backup, I don't even have a blank disc in my house. I need to run out in the morning and get one. The man in the tutorial's voice is very interesting.. he has an accent. Thanks. I'll tell you how it goes.

 

[sdow84]

I forgot to grab a disc while I ran errands today, I'm going to continue to listen to the tutorial assuming I can make that disc later tonight after I run back to the store? Right?

Actually, according to the steps the tutorial is showing me, I cannot. Bummer. Back out I go.

 

[richc46]

If you continue to have problems the author of that video is a forum member, we can get him to help too.
If you need the CD to create the boot CD, that is not necessary for the image to work properly

 

[sdow84]

Well the video is outdated. The version he used was 4.2 to make the video and I have 5.0. The difference is his version has a 'wizard' and mine does not.

 

[sdow84]

Still unable to make a backup.
When I restarted my computer last, it told me I'm out of space on my recovery drive (probably because I think I tired to make my inital Vista backup there.) Can I delete the SARAH-PC folder which states was created yesterday? (The other folder states RECOVERY, has a lock for a symbol, and was created in 2009).

 

[sdow84]

According to the error code, I googled it and it sent me here:
VSS Error: 0x8004231f - Failed to Create Volume Snapshot (VSS errors)
Like I said earlier I already made my total space 50gb, and already 43 are used. (Do you know why so much space is already used, if I've never made a backup before?)
Everytime I try to make a backup it tells me unable to create snapshot.

 

[richc46]

I think that the space is used by restore points. Although not readily accessible in Vista, it can be accessed by shadow explorer. Try increasing the available space by a large amount (for testing) and see what happens.

 

[sdow84]

Does that in any way take away from what I have available for other things on my HD, like pictures? (I have an infant daugher, all I do is take photos.) And, is there any way to 'clean out' what's not being used?

Should I, maybe double it and say 100 gig total space allocated?

 

[richc46]

Yes, the more space that is used for the restore, the less for other things. This is just for a test, however. After we see if it works, we can reduce the size. We are just trying to find the cause of the problem, now.
You may want to make a separate partition on the External and use that for pics.

 

[sdow84]

Im thinking of getting a second external hard drive so I have one for back ups and one for photos.
I will double the space and see what happens, but is there any way to 'clean up' unused files to create space? I dont understand how 45 gigs are already being used for a process I initated yesterday.

My computer keeps prompting me to clean up files for my recovery drive, this is what appears there:

Can I delete SARAH-PC?

 

[richc46]

Delete a restore point

 

[sdow84]

Even with 100gb allocated, unable to make the snapshot.

 

[sdow84]

And even with deleting the previous restore points (which there are none) there was no change to my shadowstorage sizes.

I'm beyond stumped.