Windows Server System State or Windows System Backup won’t work

The Windows Server System State and Windows System Backup Protected Item types use Microsoft's own backup tool, wbadmin. wbadmin writes the backup to a spool directory, Magnus Box backs up the spool directory, and then Magnus Box cleans it up. Because they rely on wbadmin, these backup types inherit its restrictions and can fail for many reasons outside Magnus Box.

The most common mistakes are spooling to a drive that is also selected for backup, and spooling to a drive that isn't permanently attached (for example a portable USB drive). See our recommendations in Windows Server System State.

If that guide doesn't solve the problem, consider switching to the Magnus Box Disk Image backup type, which was designed to avoid these problems. See Disk Image - Walkthrough.

Jump to an error:

• "The target path 'X:\WindowsImageBackup' already exists"
• "not a supported backup storage location" (spooling to a USB flash drive)
• "The specified backup storage location has the shadow copy storage on another volume"

Error "The target path 'X:\WindowsImageBackup' already exists"

Full message: "The target path 'X:\WindowsImageBackup' already exists - please safely remove this directory and retry the backup."

Magnus Box removes the WindowsImageBackup directory from the spool drive after every backup, even a failed one. If the directory is there when a backup starts, it means one of these:

1. Magnus Box didn't get the chance to clean up (for example, the PC wasn't shut down safely);
2. another Magnus Box backup job is running at the same time; or
3. other software on the PC also uses wbadmin for System State or Windows System Backup.

You can prevent case 2 with the Skip if already running option on the schedule.

You usually can't tell case 1 from case 3. If the job history or the PC itself shows clearly which it is, and nothing else is using the directory, it's safe to delete it. You can do that by temporarily adding this as a Before command on the backup job:

rmdir /S /Q "X:\WindowsImageBackup\"

Remove the command from the job again once it has run. If you leave it in place, it causes problems if two Magnus Box jobs ever run at the same time.

Error "not a supported backup storage location" backing up to a USB flash drive

wbadmin doesn't support USB flash drives (pen drives) as a backup target, in case the drive is removed during the backup. So you can't spool a System State or Windows System Backup job to a flash drive.

Workarounds:

• Spool to a permanently attached internal or external disk instead (recommended).
• Share a folder on the flash drive and enter the share's UNC path (for example \\SERVER\spool) as the spool directory.

Error "The specified backup storage location has the shadow copy storage on another volume"

This error comes from wbadmin, not Magnus Box, so you may find more information about it online.

The spool drive has its shadow copy storage set up in an unusual way that wbadmin can't work with.

To troubleshoot:

• Check what kind of drive the spool target is: a network share, an external hard drive or a SAN? If it's a SAN, is it a managed appliance?
• Run vssadmin list shadowstorage as Administrator and check where shadow storage for the spool drive is configured.

Workaround: create a network share on the same drive and enter its UNC path as the spool directory instead of the local drive letter.

Still stuck?

Email support@magnusbox.com with the user name, the device name, the job log and the spool directory you're using.