Win8x64 backup fails with error code 0x81000019

Hi,

I did an upgrade install of Win8x64 Pro (final) from Win7x64 Pro. It all went very well and everything appears to work, however... I typically backed up in Win7 every Thu lunchtime using the Win7 built-in backup software (which I was very happy with) and I noticed yesterday that it failed. It says: 'A shadow copy could not be created. Please check "VSS" and "SPP" application event logs for more information. Details: Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data.' I checked the application event log but there isn't anything VSS or SPP relevant.

I have four HDDs. The boot/Windows disk is a 256Gb SSD (C:). The next two disks are in RAID Mirror configuration and form a single 1Tb fault-tolerant disk where data is stored (D:). Finally I have another 512Gb disk for backups (U:). I use the Win7 backup system to backup a system image and files on the SSD to U:. This is primarily in case of SSD failure as the D: drive is already fault tolerant. As the SSD is the boot volume creating a system image is very important to me, hence why I am not using the new Win8 'File History' backup system. I even tried reformatting the backup (U:) drive to make sure it had all space available for the backup, but that didn't help.

I was searching for issues relating to this when I came across these threads:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprogeneral/thread/fce6950d-c06d-4dd0-a850-67022db4fe04

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprogeneral/thread/ace0faac-a0af-4740-a331-2b14d604a846

Which seems to be very much the same sort of issue(s) on Win7. I ran "vssadmin list writers" as advised in one of the posts and it produced this output (I am only showing errors here):

Writer name: 'System Writer'

Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}

Writer Instance Id: {fe25ff29-c773-4265-a663-f13eab503010}

State: [7] Failed

Last error: Timed out

Writer name: 'MSSearch Service Writer'

Writer Id: {cd3f2362-8bef-46c7-9181-d62844cdc0b2}

Writer Instance Id: {12940831-5c84-4a78-ab98-b8a6a37ff214}

State: [7] Failed

Last error: Timed out

I also checked my System partition (on the SSD) using the Disk Management service. It seems to contain two extra hidden small OEM partitions, one on the SSD and the other on the backup drive. All disks/partitions are healthy. The System 'RECOVERY' partition on the SSD is 752Mb in size and 327Mb (43.5%) is free. I did try unchecking the "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" box on the RECOVERY drive, but it complained about permissions for some files and in any event it didn't help with the backup problem.

I do have one other outstanding issue, which might be related as the search service is one of the vss problems above: If I go to the Indexing Options ("Change how Windows Searches") control panel and click "Modify" then I get a message box which says: "Either there is no default mail client or the current mail client cannot fulfil the messaging request. Please run Microsoft Office Outlook and set it as the default mail client." I have Office 2007 Pro on the machine. I have tried setting Outlook as the default mail client, but this does not help with this issue. However, the searching of email seems to work fine within Outlook, although it seems to have been removed from the Win8 interface search (shame!).

Anyway, the backup problem is the main issue and I am not exactly sure where to go next on this, so I would appreciate any help or advice. There are a lot of things that I could try in the threads I have pasted above, but they all seem quite risky (e.g. moving/recreating boot partitions) and they relate to Win7 not Win8 so I would like to be sure that whatever I try next is safe and likely to work, particularly as I don't have a backup to restore to if it all goes wrong.

Anyone have any ideas please?

Thanks,

Phil

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