I am running win7 on a recently purchased machine, pre-installed. Windows backup and restore work fine *except* that a system image can not be made. The reason is that the 100MB SYSTEM volume has only 12MB free (as reported by Disk Management), and one of the error screens told me that at least 50MB must be free to allow a shadow copy to be made. Most systems show only about 24MB in use, so I must determine what the atypical usage is and hopefully correct it. The files that I can see in my SYSTEM volume do not come close to adding up to 88MB, so I am perplexed about how to determine the usage.

Hi tpgettys, That 100MB partition is called System Reserved partition, please see this: http://blogs.technet.com/b/uspartner_ts2team/archive/2010/03/13/what-is-the-windows-server-2008-r2-windows-7-system-reserved-partition.aspx What do you mean the "system image cannot be made"? Do you mean go to Backup and Restore then select "create a system image"? If so, please refer to the method in this thread: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/624aef35-b27f-4e78-9fed-3beb24442457 Here's a similar issue for your reference: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/backup-keeps-failing-error-0x81000033/4dda0585-47b9-4ce7-926c-64aa5d6a54da Regards, MiyaThis posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. | Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.