Complete PC rejects my target drive

In working with Complete PC and wbadmin, I created a second volume to hold my
backups, drive E:. I made my first Complete PC backup to this drive
successfully. Now when I try to do another backup (which should be
incremental), drive E: is not shown as a valid target, even tho the backup
center in the control panel tells me my last back up was to drive E:. In
using wbadmin to try and start this incremental backup, wbadmin gives an
error and says the "location for backup is a critical volume". Now the only
other thing on this drive is the WinRE wim file and boot.sdi, which were
added after the first complete PC backup. I have tried renaming boot.sdi and
winre.wim but that did not help. I have found no info so far on what makes a
volume "critical" and how to work around this problem.

[jackmcguire99]

Hi

I have exactly the same problem.

First hard drive is partitioned into C and E partitions. Second hard drive has just one partition D:

When I try a "files backup" I am presented with locations that include my D partition.

However, when I try a "complete PC backup" the D partition is missing. If I select the E partition as a backup location and click next, Vista tells me that it wants to backup both C and D partitions which it lists as system partitions.

On using wbadmin I'm told that D is a "critical volume" and it wont backup the C partition onto the D partition.

I've formatted my D partition fully to no avail.

Any help here would be appreciated.

[amouses]

Yes I have the same problem too.

Like other posters it worked the first time then insisted that the target is a critical volume.

Initially there was a work around to the problem. See my blog posting about letting system state backups go to this "critical volume"

www.majzel.com: The Long Road to Windows 2008 Server

As of right now I can do a System state backup but not a full OS backup to my Z: drive.

This is useless to me!

My Z: drive is simply a blank 1TB disk for OS backups.

I would encourage you to start DISKPART and check that your volume has no obvious critical components on it. Of course if you formatted it then like me it seems to be a mystery.

Overall my question is. What is a critical volume and how can we tell exactly what is making it critical.

---

Here is an extract from DISKPART on my supposed Z: critical disk:
Volume 10 Z backup NTFS Partition 932 GB Healthy

DISKPART> select volume 10

Volume 10 is the selected volume.
DISKPART> detail disk

SAMSUNG HD103UJ SCSI Disk Device
Disk ID: 78FF4B1B
Type : SCSI
Bus : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No

I am therefore confused as to why this is regarded as a Critical Disk. Multiple google searches have revealed nothing.