Veeam Agent for Windows - Error Partition exceeds disk layout by...

Today, I met a backup error with Veeam Agent for Windows on a physical server (Microsoft). Following error “Partition exceeds disk layout by bytes” is causing backups to fail: “Partition 2 exceeds disk 1 layout by … bytes Error: The drive cannot find the sector requested. Error code: 27 Asynchronous read operation failed Failed to upload disk. Agent failed to process method {DataTransfer.SyncDisk}. Exception from server: The drive cannot find the sector requested. Error code: 27 Asynchronous read operation failed Unable to retrieve next block transmission command. Number of already processed blocks: [114312]. Failed to download disk“.

Came across this error recently which is thankfully an easy fix but there is not a lot out there, the following is the error and the fix. Veeam Agent for Windows is available now in Beta version. There are three editions: “Free“, “Workstation” and “Server” being released that include enterprise features such as Application Aware Processing (VSS), flexible scheduling and retention options all while being able to backup directly to Cloud Connect repositories.

Cause:

Veeam Agent for Windows can determine a volume being allocated incorrectly on the disk. As a result, you may get the warning above in the backup log (warning is thrown during backup job execution):

Job result is an error “Partition exceeds disk layout by bytes“:

Solution:

To correct the allocation issue you can run a Windows built-in shrink operation for the volume that exceeds the disk layout. Open Windows Disk Management from Control Panel \ Administrative Tools > \ Computer Management \ Disk Management.

Identify the volume to shrink. Warning message contains the sequential partition number which can be associated with the volume allocated on the disk. In most cases, such partition is the last volume in the disk layout. In my example: Warning says Partition 2 exceeds disk 1 layout by 102898176 bytes.

According to the Disk Management, Partition 2 – disk 1 is volume C:

Calculate the amount of space to shrink. Warning: message displays the size in bytes and shrinking operation is calculated in Megabytes, so you have to convert bytes to Megabytes and round the result. Divide the value indicated in the warning by 1048576 and round it to get an integer.

In my example, I divided 102898176 by 1048576 and rounding to the integer would give the result of approximately 100 MB.

So, performing a 100 MB shrink of volume C:. Right-click the affected volume and choose: “Shrink Volume“. Specify the value you calculated earlier and click “Shrink“.

When the shrinking operation completes, re-run the backup job to verify the result!

Hope this post will help you! Veeam Agents (Windows and Linux) are powerful. They can allow you to backup your physical workloads and workstations. Thanks to my mate Mike Resseler for his help (Veeam KB)!

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