System cannot find hard drive to put system image on

Someone else suggested NTFS 4k sectors are not supported by win 10 backup.

Curios...Win 10 thinks my E drive is a system drive! That's the drive I was trying to make a new system image on! What gives??

All your problems will go away if you use this forums undeniably favourite backup up tool - Macrium Reflect Free.

Shawn said:

Curios...Win 10 thinks my E drive is a system drive! That's the drive I was trying to make a new system image on! What gives??

It doesn't want to offer one of the source drives as destination to Save the image.
Do you have some system files on E?

cereberus : I understand the use of third-party backups. But I had a bad run in with one of them (Norton) on a prior computer and stuck with Windows since then. I do not think its windows fault as such: if Seagate made an odd drive, that would explain why I cannot backup to it. The latest problem may be my fault: in using tech support, I misunderstood their muddled response and turned system restore ON for E drive. Then off. (I did not create a restore point though!) THAT may have set it up to be seen as as system drive (per win 7 forum thread here).

SIW2 System files on E? Maybe? See above about turning restore on. SO: thinking it was the turning on then off of system restore for E drive, I ran the Process Monitor Tool and filtered for SystemPropertiesProtection.exe Created a restore point (via C drive) and searched for E drive locations. I found some (and still scrolling).

SO: if I find these links, how to I repair or remove them?? Or is that not desirable? Someone did so on Win 7.

Thank you all!

Ah.....I forgot I used the win 10 backup option a week or so back and it backed up some folders on my E drive. Would that not make win 10 think it is a system drive?? If so, can I fix it??

thanks,


81%x​

Well, looks like 3rd party time or remove the E folders, create system image, and move them back!!

There have been many, many times more complaints about Windows backup and restore not working than there have been about Macrium Reflect Free not working.

:) Great to hear! Already downloaded it. Then I'll decide if I want the full version.

There are plenty of good 3rd party imaging programs. I recommend Aomei Backupper ( they do a free version ) as the simplest to use., and it creates boot media without having to download masses of stuuf.

Others may have different features, e.g. Paragon allows excluding files from an image ( even in the free version). O&O disk image (not free) has option not to overwrite other files during restore, Easeus Todo( they do free version ) lets you see image contents in windows explorer ( though, like Acronis, it is quite a large program). Drive snapshot ( not free ) is tiny at about 1mb and runs happily in winpe without any other dependencies, etc..
Macrium is popular since I first started recommending it many years ago on Vista forum. Back then ,only Vista Ultimate contained windows system image. IFW- Image for Windows ( not free ) is another well known product. Minitool is in the process of making one..... Just a few examples.

What you use will depend which features you like, how you get along with the UI and so on.