1067 - Error: Extended partitions are not supported for Full System Backups

Background

When using the ESE client and Full System Backup you may encounter the error message “: Extended partitions are not supported for Full System Backups” and related errors concerning specific volumes.

For example:

• ERROR : 11:30:05 Extended partitions are not supported for Full System Backups
• ERROR : 11:30:05 Volume '\\?\Volume{21862422-0282-11e8-80b4-806e6f6e6963}\' has extended partitions on device '\\?\PhysicalDrive0'
• ERROR : 11:30:05 Volume '\\?\Volume{e245b130-0283-11e8-80b7-0050569549d8}\' has extended partitions on device '\\?\PhysicalDrive0'
• ERROR : 11:30:05 Volume '\\?\Volume{21862423-0282-11e8-80b4-806e6f6e6963}\' has extended partitions on device '\\?\PhysicalDrive0'

Cause

The system running the backups has one or more extended partitions containing one or more logical drives within – eg drive E in the screenshot below.

Older style Master Boot Record (MBR) disks were limited to only 4 partitions per disk, whereas modern GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks are limited to 128.

Using an extended partition allows users to have more than 4 addressable drives on an MBR disk to meet application needs.

On physical servers there are benefits to splitting application functionality across multiple drive letters to take advantage of the performance of multiple disk spindles and caching.

For example, on an SQL server they might benefit from SQL database being located on E:\ and the logs being located on F:\ where both are physical different disks or disk arrays.

On a virtualised server, there is little benefit to splitting application functionality across multiple drive letters where the underlying disk hardware would locate them all in the same place.

Solution

To resolve the issue, the server needs to be reconfigured or it will not be possible to restore the volume using Full System Recovery.

Note: The data itself can still be recovered using the ESE client or Instant Data, so you may wish to disregard the error.

To reconfigure:

• Stop any applications that may be using the volume.
• Make sure you have an up to date backup.
• Attach a new disk (or virtual disk in the case of Virtual Machine) to the machine.
• Change the drive letter of the existing logical drive to an unused letter.
• Create a partition on the new disk and format this use on the machine, setting the drive letter to the one that the old disk was using.

For example, logical drive E has been changed to drive X and a new drive E has been added:

• Perform a restore of the drive using the ESE client, making sure that all file and folder permissions are restored.

• When the data restore has completed, any applications that use the drive letter can be restarted.
• The original logical drive and extended partition can be deleted.

Data can be restored over the wire or from a local copy if you have the feature configured.

Note: Third party technologies can be used to copy or change formats if desired.