Backups of system reserved partition fail with 'VSS_E_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE'.

Problem

Backups of the system reserved partition on Windows client machines are failing with 'VSS_E_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE'. 

Or

Defining a Backup of a system reserved partition on a Windows client fails.

All other volumes are backing up successfully.

Error Message

E4F3000E error: Snapshot failure while using Volume Shadow Copy Service. Please check application event log for VSS errors. Error code: VSS_E_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE (-2147212513). 0xE4F3000E (Symantec System Recovery)

OR

Volume does not have sufficient storage space to perform a VSS snapshot

(UMI: V-281-3215-6071)

Solution

Solution 1 : 

Possible cause is that the volume does not have enough free space to create a VSS snapshot.

As per Microsoft, if the volume is less than 500 MB in size, VSS requires 32 MB of free space.

If the volume is 500 MB or greater, VSS requires 320 MB of free space.

For more information, refer to: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/computer-backup-error-solution-1.aspx

Solution 2 :

1. Assign a drive letter to the System Reserved partition using DiskPart (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/diskpart)
2. Run command prompt as administrator and run the following command:

FSUTIL USN DELETEJOURNAL /N /D X:
(where X is the letter you assigned to the System Reserved partition above)

3. Remove drive letter from System Reserved partition and run backup.

Solution 3 :

Create independent backup of the partition(s) that are failing from with the VSS_E_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE error. The data on these partitions does not necessarily change, thus a single backup is sufficient in case of a disaster recovery. Once these backups have been created, these partitions can be excluded from the backup job in Windows. Once complete, the end-user has backups of each partition in the system.