Vista Backup Stopped Working - Fix

I’ve been using Windows Vista’s built-in Backup and Restore functionality daily for over three years now, with good success until recently. I recently started experiencing a backup error every day for the incremental backups as well as when I attempt to create a new full backup.

The backup did not complete successfully. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable (0x80070570)

This error message was not very helpful because it didn’t indicate which file or directory was corrupt. It also didn’t indicate whether it was my backup source Operating System partition, Files partition, or the backup destination device.

The Fix

I ran numerous utilities including the Seagate Tools (manufacturer of the source and destination hard drives) on both drives which didn’t detect any problems. The final fix was opening a Command Prompt and running “CHKDSK C: /R” where the C-drive was my primary OS disk. Because the Operating System was in use, the Check Disk utility couldn’t run until the next restart.

Backup Redundancy

The Complete PC Backup, where it creates a VHD image file of each of the backup drives, was working the entire time which provided some level of comfort while troubleshooting the traditional backup process.

photo credit: ground.zero / CC BY 2.0