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Is it possible to backup the System State of a 2008 server without using wbamdin? The setup in question does support the requirements that wbadmin forces (all volumes are marked as critical).

Third party tools are an option but I would like to keep away from the big money sinks (BE etc)

I think I should expand on this, I have a scenario where it is impossible to use wbadmin to backup my system. All of my volumes are marked as critical and wbadmin will not allow a backuptarget to be a critical volume, it also wont allow a network folder or a removable USB media to be a target either, thus I am looking for third party software that can achieve what the built in wbadmin cannot.

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There are numerous third party backup tools that support system state backups. Take your pick of the mix. For an inexpensive one, checkout www.backupassist.com

You can do just a system state backup with wbadmin. Is there a particular reason you can't use wbadmin?

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Thanks for the advice amargeson, the problem is that wbadmin won't let me specify a volume that is marked as critical as the location for the backup files. As I only have two volumes, one contains the OS and the other contains Server Role logs, therefore all volumes are marked as critical. Another workaround could be using a USB drive to do a local backup then moving it across the network (as I intended to do in the first place). – Beuy May 21 '10 at 0:42
You can also install NTBackup, but it's not officially supported. – amargeson May 21 '10 at 2:29
I've heard that NTBackup no 2008 only supports reading previous created backups, is that the case or is it possible to work around it? – Beuy May 21 '10 at 2:55
Hi amargeson, BackupAssit does not provide the ability to perform a system state only backup in 2008, it's a common problem I am running into with third party backup solutions. – Beuy May 21 '10 at 5:07
You can use wbadmin to do a system state backup to a network share. That won't work for you? – amargeson May 27 '10 at 4:43
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I found a work-around to my problem provided by the following kb article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944530/en-au

Gives instructions on how to modify the registry to allow the backuptarget to be a critical volume. While this is not considered a "best practice" it's the only option I have.

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