I was happy the first time I used the built in backup feature of Windows 7 RC1. It was a very easy tool that allowed me to backup my whole system (or just selected partitions) to another external disk or a network share.

Today I tried to backup my current Windows 7 installation before updating the firmware of my Intel Postville SSD – but I was not able to creat the backup. I always got the following error message:

There is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy on storage location. Make sure that for all volume to be backup up, the minimum disk space required for shadow copy creation is available. This applies to both the backup storage destination and volume included in the backup. Minimum requirement for Volumes less than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 50 megabyte of free space. For volumes more than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 320 megabytes of free space. Recommended at least 1 gigabytes free of disk space on each volumes if volumes size is more than 1 gigabytes (0×80780119)

I figured out that the hidden volume created by the Windows 7 setup caused this error. It is only 100 megabytes of size and has only 37 megabytes free. I was not able to deselect it or to free space on it. So now I am giving Macrium Reflect – Free Edition a try – I hope this does the trick, so far it looks pretty nice.