06 Mar Support queries shared: Windows image backup reaching 2TB limit

We’ve seen a few issues recently where a Windows image backup job has failed due to the destination drive partition being larger than 2TB. Unfortunately the errors generated can differ, so it can be sometimes difficult to spot.

We recommend that if you are using the Windows imaging engine within BackupAssist, you use destination devices that are 2TB or smaller, and the same applies to iSCSI destinations.

If you are trying to backup more data than can fit on a 2TB destination, consider splitting the job up into multiple parts. For example, run one Windows Image job to do a bare metal backup of the system drive and system reserved partition, and a second job to take care of any data partitions.

I recently worked with a customer who had around 3TB of virtual machine data when using Hyper-V. In cases like that it’s advisable to split the jobs even further so BackupAssist backs up half of the VM’s with one job and the rest with another – each job running to a separate destination that is 2TB or less. A third bare metal backup looked after the system volume.