• System image won’t recognize USB Hard drive

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    #498659

    I’ve been using Windows 8 (now 8.1) system imaging to create monthly system images for my Lenovo Twist for the past 15 months, using the same external hard drive and deleting old images as needed to create room for the new images. Today in the “Create a System Image” window my external USB hard disk [noparse](D:)[/noparse] is no longer recognized. It is accessible from Windows and has 472 GB of free space, while the drive to be backed up[noparse] (C:)[/noparse] has 163 GB used. I’m assuming it’s not a capacity issue.

    To try to understand more, I tried the command line alternative to create an image:
    [noparse]> wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:D: -include:C: -allCritical -quiet[/noparse]
    This resulted in the error message:
    The backup storage location is invalid. You cannot use a volume that is included in the backup as a storage location.

    That command line doesn’t include D:, nor did I explicitly include D: in the GUI based system image tool (where I wasn’t asked what I wanted to back up). I have tried leaving the USB drive disconnected until after the system image window is open, but it still refuses to consider this drive as a backup destination. When I search for this error message on the web I receive lots of hits for Windows Server 2008, with instructions on how to modify the registry so that you can force a backup to be written to a “Critical volume”. I didn’t see anything referencing Windows 8 or 8.1. Given that this external USB Drive shouldn’t be a critical volume to begin with, I’m not that excited about telling Windows to stop looking for that conflict.

    Where does Windows hide the list of drives that will be included in a backup? Is there a straightforward way to tell Windows that the D: drive is not a critical drive? Has Microsoft done something to break imaging?

    Thanks for any help you can offer.

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    • #1490116

      Greg,

      On my reading of the help for the wbadmin command I would try leaving out the -allCritical parameter as it seems to be redundant when backing up the [noparse]C:[/noparse] drive.

      You might want to also consider using a better tool like Macrium Reflect Free, my personal favorite or Easeus ToDo Backup Free.

      HTH :cheers:

      May the Forces of good computing be with you!

      RG

      PowerShell & VBA Rule!
      Computer Specs

    • #1490124

      Thanks for the suggestions. That made the difference, the backup ran to completion. It included the following less than reassuring message:
      Note: The list of volumes included for backup does not include all the
      volumes that contain operating system components. This backup cannot be used
      to perform a system recovery. However, you can recover other items if the
      destination media type supports it.

      Considering that the only volume left out was the USB hard drive, and that drive is only attached to the machine for the duration of the backup, it’s not clear to me what operating system components could have been left out. I’m guessing that this is just an artifact of not including the “-allCritical” parameter.

      I have a second, theoretically identical machine, that backed up without a hitch. Clearly they’re not completely identical.

      Time for me to investigate those alternative backup tools.

    • #1490128

      Greg,

      It’s possible that the message may be referring to things like the System Reserved partition and/or UEFI patrition. HTH :cheers:

      39430-GregPatritions

      May the Forces of good computing be with you!

      RG

      PowerShell & VBA Rule!
      Computer Specs

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