Getting error “The location for backup is a critical volume” when perform System State backup

As everyone know NTBackup is already remove from Windows 2008 server, if you want to perform a system state backup on Windows 2008 server, you will need to issue a command:wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backuptarget:Drive_Letter: and provided with backup feature installed on your Windows 2008 server.

If you would like to backup the system state on your local C: drive, you may receive the error "The location for backup is a critical volume" and the system will stop you from backing up your system state. If you have additional hard drive attached to your Windows 2008 server, you can always easily change the backup path to another drive, but how if you only got C: present in your Windows 2008 Server? This scenario mostly exist in virtualization environment, do we really need to attached another volume for the purpose of backup system state?

It is always recommended that store your backup at different locations and always keep the updated backup sets. But in this scenario, you can tweak your Windows 2008 server registry in order to allow system state backup on your system drive and the steps as below:

1. Open registry editor, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wbengine\SystemStateBackup\ (Note: If you cannot find the SystemStateBackup key, you may need to manually create it)
   
2. Inside the key, create a DWORD value name AllowSSBToAnyVolume and set the value to 1.
3. You can now backup system state in system drive.

Always, do not forget to backup your registry before you perform the above action, it may corrupt your system if you misused it. ;)
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