Most of the users who try to backup their Dell server using Windows Server Backup (WSB) receive an error saying “Volume(s) OS have an unsupported file system and cannot be backed up”. If you have a Dell computer that is or was running Windows Server 2008(R2) or Windows Server 2012(R2), this may be of your concern.

WSB can only backup partitions that is NTFS formatted. If you open Disk Management, you will see a 2GB FAT32 partition labelled as OS. The OS partition is probably from Dell initial setup.

If you want to create a backup including system image, this OS partition will be included because its status is Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition). Therefore, you will receive the error backup volume have unsupported file system.

Skip the partition

The simple solution is to skip this partition by creating a custom server backup. If you want to create a system backup, you can just select system state, system reserved partition and C: drive on MBR disk. If you system is on a GPT disk, you need to select system state, EFI system partition and C: drive.

Delete the partition

You can delete the 2GB system partition in Disk Management or DiskPart.exe. It is recommended to deactivate the partition before deleting it because there are chances that you may not be able to reboot the machine. When it fails to boot, you can ran a system repair to surely fix it.

Switch backup software

To fix this problem, you can also use third party backup software that supports FAT32 partition backup besides NTFS. If you need easy server backup software that to protect your server, AOMEI Backupper Server should be a good choice.

AOMEI Backupper supports many file systems including NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, EXT2, and EXT3. It provides system backup, disk backup, partition backup and file backup to meet your common backup needs. The backup with AOMEI Backupper is safer and more secure because it uses block by block backup.

Main features:

Universal restore: restore system to another machine with dissimilar hardware.

Schedule backup: automatically backup your server at a specific time or on a certain event.

Incremental and differential backup: backup only changed and new added files.

Explore image: browse the items in the backup with Windows File Explorer.

Create bootable media: make a bootable disk or CD to restore unbootable machine.

Email notification: notify you when a backup is performed.

Disk/system clone: copy hard drive or system without imaging.

If you use this backup software to create backups, you will not receive the volume OS have an unsupported file system error at the firsthand. Now you can free download the 30-day trial version to get started.