Windows 7 Backup Help

[sanjo]

So I have been trying to create an image backup with the win7 (backup and restore) tool and the problem Im having is that its trying to back up ALL my HDDs when I really only want the main drive backed up.

I have tried to disable the drives in bios but they still show up, I have disabled the ports but they still show up. I have unplugged the drives but then the system wont boot, I have made sure the right dive is set to boot but it still wont.

I cant find a way to select certian things to backup, it just wants to do EVERYTHING.

HALP!

 

[sminlal]

Do you have more than one physical disk drive, or do you actually have one drive with multiple partitions on it (i.e., a "C:" partition and a "D:" partition that are actually both on the same disk drive when viewed using disk manager).

I believe that the disk image backup will back up everything on the physical drive that the OS is installed on. That's what it does - makes an image of the OS disk.

I have three physical drives in my system and Windows Disk Image backs up the OS and recovery partition on the OS drive and doesn't touch the other two drives.

 

[sanjo]

Hmm, I only have 1 drive listed as a backup option and its one of my smaller ones. I tried to go through with the backup but it just said not enough space, it "could" take up to 997gigs. It shows both the other drives as (system) when they aer just storage drives, nothings installed on them.

It doesn't detect my other drives to use as a backup location. It shows them under the list of things its going to back up though.

 

[sminlal]

If you open up "Disk Management", what drives and partitions does it show?

You can open Disk Management as follows:

- Start -> Right-click "Computer" -> Manage
- Click "Disk Management" in the left pane

A map of the disks and their partitions is shown in the LOWER portion of the right pane. Tell me what disks you have (i.e., "Disk 0", "Disk 1", etc.) and what the partitions are (i.e., "C:", "D:", "System Reserved", etc.) and what their sizes are on each disk.

 

[sanjo]

0 C= OS 60gigs
1 E= storage 1gig
2 H= storage 1gig
3 F= 36gig (the would be backup drive)

 

[sminlal]

0 C= OS 60gigs
1 E= storage 1gig
2 H= storage 1gig
3 F= 36gig (the would be backup drive)

Do the numbers at the start of each line you wrote refer to the "Disk 0", "Disk 1", etc. labels in Disk Manager? If so, then each of those drive letters should appear on separate rows, as in this screenshot (click the image to view at full size):

And is there not a "system reserved" partition on disk 0 along with the "C:" partition? I don't think this would be an issue, just trying to verify that what you transcribed is correct.

If that's all true, then it looks to me like you should be able to do a backup of the "C:" drive (and the "system reserved" partition") without any problems...

You're using the "Create System Image" link in the upper-left the Backup program's main window, right? And after you choose which disk will hold the backup do you see a selection that looks like this (your drive letters and volume names will be different):

 

[sanjo]

I couldn't get the pics to show up so here are the links of each step. As for the numbers 0,1,2,,etc yes it is the drive order on disk management. Thanks for the help! I dont have a screen like yours that would allow me to select what disks I want to backup, it jsut selects them all.

http://img62.imageshack.us/i/86282992.png/

http://img39.imageshack.us/i/55465545.png/

http://img189.imageshack.us/i/75167048.png/

 

[sminlal]

Could you post a picture of what the drives look like in Disk Management? Your second image shows "(System)" after each of the listed drives, which really, really makes me suspect that these are all just partitions on one physical disk drive.

A "System Image" backup will make a backup of all of the partitions on the physical drive that the OS is installed on, and that would explain why it's working the way it is.

 

[sanjo]

 

[sanjo]

IT could also be whey when I unplug the drives the PC wont load windows. I dont understand how windows could have installed crap on the other drives though.

Do you think Im going to need to reformat to fix this?

 

[sminlal]

Hmm.... Is there any chance you have a pagefile configured on the "E:" drive?

I see that your "H:" drive is marked "Active", which means it's bootable. I'm making a bit of a guess here, but I'm thinking:

- the E: drive is included in the backup because it has a pagefile on it. Another reason might be if you've reconfigured the system so that the profile folders for accounts are on that drive.

- the H: drive is included in the backup because when you installed Windows for some reason it ended up putting the files that normally go into the "Recovery" partition there.

Those could be the reasons the drives are considered as "system" drives.

If that's true (and it could be a pretty big if) then the "E:" drive is easy to fix by reconfiguring your pagefile or profile folders to be somewhere else. The "H:" drive is more difficult - I don't know any way to fix it other than disconnecting everything except the "C:" drive and then reinstalling Windows.