Windows 7 Backup Stuck at 97% or 57% [6 Ways + 1 Tip]

Quick Navigation of the Content:

• Windows 7 End of Support

• Why Windows 7 Backup Stuck at 97% or 57%?

• How to Fix When Windows backup fails?

• Method 1. Disable Windows Backup

• Method 2. Delete Previous Old Backup

• Method 3. Disable Antivirus or Firewall Temporarily

• Method 4. Disable All Running Programs

• Method 5. Check Hard Disk Error

• Method 6. Create System Image and Data Backup Separately

• Better way to avoid Windows 7 backup stuck problem

• The Verdict

Windows 7 End of Support

As we all known, Windows 7 support has been ended on January 14, 2020, which means you will no longer get the technical support for any issues, software updates, security updates or fixes from Microsoft Windows.

If you still using Windows 7 without upgrading to Windows 10, you will be in at a greater risk for virus attacks and natural disaster. Hence, it’s highly recommended to upgrade to Windows 10 to keep everything safe. Or create a regular backup task for your Windows 7 computer.

Sometimes, you will get Windows 7 backup stuck at 57%, 97% or other percentages while using Backup and Restore (Windows Backup) to create a system image or data backup. Even if you waited for a whole day or more, it still got no any progress. How to fix?

Why Windows 7 backup stuck at 57% or 97%?

Many users have experienced that Windows 7 backup fails to complete or hangs in the middle of the backup process. There are some reasons should be responsible for the error:

• The specified files to backup has some errors. As you may know, Windows backup does a file by file backup. If the file locked by other programs, and Windows backup cannot access this file, it will hangs or stuck. Or if any of the files to be backed up has a problem, which is why Windows backup tells you that it cannot find the file specified sometimes.

• Insufficient storage space on the destination location. If the destination is showing low disk space, you may get the error: The media in the drive has too little space while the Windows is saving the backup.

• Bad sectors in your system disk or destination disk.

In a nutshell, you failed to create restore point in Windows 7 for the OS and get the Windows Backup is currently in progress error screen.

How to fix when Windows 7 backup fails?

If the Windows Backup hang in the progress in Windows 7, you can try the following methods to make it work again.

Method 1: Disable Windows Backup

The first thing you should do is restart the Windows backup and try again if you meet the Windows 7 backup stuck at 97% or 57%, etc.

Click Start and type services.msc and press Enter to open Services; Scroll down and right click the Windows Backup > Properties; Under General tab, click inverted triangle icon at the Startup type, choose Disabled. Then click OK to force shut down the Windows Backup software.

Then restart the program to create a Windows 7 backup to check if it’s solved or not. If still not working, try the next method.

Method 2: Delete Previous Old Backups

To delete Windows 7 old backup images, please open Windows Backup first, then follow the steps to delete:

1. Click Manage Space.

2. Press View backups... button > choose an old backup image > Delete to delete old backup image file.

If you would like to keep the older system image backup, please copy it to the new location, because the new system image will overwrite the older one.

Method 3: Disable Antivirus or Firewall Temporarily

Disable the antivirus and firewall while backing up Windows 7 system files. After the backup successfully complete, do not forget to enable them as antivirus software are very important to protect your computer form security threats.

Method 4: Disable All Running Programs

Close all the running programs might help you to create a Windows 7 backup easily. No other programs bother. And all the files will be accessed by Windows, and backed up.

Method 5: Check Hard Disk Error

To check the bad sectors and other error for your system disk and destination disk, please input the following command prompt(Run as administrator):

chkdsk C: /f /r (check any errors and fix it automatically on C: drive)

Replace the C: with the drive letter of your destination disk to check and fix any errors on the target hard drive to fix backup in progress Windows 7 backup stuck at 97%.

Method 6: Create System Image and Data Backup Separately

In the process of configure a new backup, uncheck the option “Include a system image of drives (C)”, which is checked by default. Since many users have installed software on C: drive, the backup program will include these applications. If these applications are running, they may stop Windows backup accessing the files. After that, create a system image manually with this software. 

In these above six methods, you should be able complete a backup without getting Windows backup stuck at 57% or 97%. However, Windows 7 backup is slow and it is cumbersome to do such steps to be able to run a backup, especially for schedule backup. If you are looking for a better way to perform backups, here come AOMEI Backupper Standard (block level backup).

Better way to avoid Windows 7 backup stuck problem

AOMEI Backupper standard is a free Windows backup software for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 (all editions, including 32-bit and 64-bit). And it’s capable of backing up opened files, files that used by other applications. Besides, AOMEI Backupper will calculate the storage space on the destination for you to notify you if there is low disk space to backup.

For flexible use, you could backup Windows 7 and other data to local disk, external hard drive, CD/DVD, network share or NAS, USB flash drive, even clouds (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, etc.).

Now, let’s create a system image to external hard drive in Windows 7 with the help of AOMEI Backupper Standard. Please download this free backup software in Windows 7, and execute the program after the installation.

1. Click Backup tab, and then click System Backup on the main window.

2. The Windows 7 system partitions (C:\ partition, EFI system partition, Recovery partition, etc.) will be selected automatically. Select the external hard drive to save the Windows 7 system image file.

3. To automatically backup Windows 7 system files, please tick Schedule > General, and then choose daily, weekly, monthly, event triggers, or USB plug in to backup Windows 7 on a regular basis. The last two features only available in AOMEI Backupper Professional or higher.

4. Press Start Backup >> button to create Windows 7 system image to avoid the Windows 7 backup stuck problems.

✍Besides, you have two other settings to set up (it's optional) before starting backup:
◉ Options: Customize the settings for your backup image, like comment, encrypt (paid), compress, split the backup image to meet your needs, even run specified program or script before the backup (paid), enable email notification, etc.
◉ Scheme: You could set it up to delete old backup images automatically while the backups exceeds the number you specified to retain. And you have 5 backup schemes to choose: Full Backup Scheme, Incremental Backup Scheme, Differential Backup Scheme, Space Management Scheme, and Other Backup Scheme. Please upgrade to AOMEI Backupper Professional to enjoy the premium feature.

After 30 minutes or more, the Windows 7 operating system will be backed up successfully. And there is no need to worry about Windows 7 backup stuck. 

To ensure you can bring your computer back at any time, you can choose to create a bootable USB or recovery environment in Windows 7. Both of them allows you to boot computer from this software and the latter one is to add a boot menu on the current computer, without requiring any device.

The Verdict

If you get the Windows 7 backup stuck issues, please follow the instructions provided in this article to solve it. Try another reliable free Windows backup software - AOMEI Backupper Standard if you still have problems with Backup and Restore in Windows 7/8/10. Besides, It provides disk backup, partition backup, and file backup, and file sync, etc.

For advanced users, you could try AOMEI Backupper Professional to enjoy the feature, like Restore system to dissimilar hardware computer, command line backup/restore/clone, dynamic disk/volume backup and restore, migrate OS to SSD without reinstalling, real-time sync, two-way sync, etc.

If you want to manage backups for unlimited PCs and Servers, please upgrade to AOMEI Backupper Technician Plus to enjoy more.