Backup fails in Windows Server 2012 Essentials

I have a customer running Windows 2012 R2 Essentials with Windows Server Backup scheduled to do twice daily backups. Recently it started reporting that the backup “Completed with warnings”.

I opened up Event Viewer, and under Application logs, I found this event 547 warning:

“The backup operation that started at {date & time) has encountered errors for the volumes ‘X:’. Log of files not successfully backed up at ‘C:\Windows\Logs\WindowsServerBackup\Backup_Error-{date & time}.log’

So, I go to the specified log folder, and open up the log file and it reports that it could not back up some files – Error [0x80070005] Access Denied.

With this information in hand, I check Microsoft ‘s Support website, and sure enough, I found KB 2747459 that identifies this exact problem and lists two workarounds:  Server backup process fails and “0x80070005” errors are logged in Windows Server 2012 Essentials

I chose to implement option 2 (Registry Edit). Please note that after editing the registry, you will need to reboot the server in order to implement the change.

Here are the steps as outlined in KB 2747459:

1. In Registry Editor, locate the following registry subkey:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup

2. Right-Click FilesNotToBackup, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value
3. Type IgnoreNTFS, and then press Enter
4. Right-click IgnoreNTFS, and then click Modify
5. In the Value data box, type \$Extend\* /s
6. Click OK, and then close Registry Editor.
7. Restart the server.