Win 7 System Backup

haste

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 27, 2005
Messages
7,994
I am looking to throw a system image of my SSD onto a BD-50 but windows is showing two of my mechanical hard drives as "system drives" and it wants to include those drives in the system image also.

Any idea how to tell what is causing windows to look at these drives as "system" drives? All libraries are at their default location.

Any help is much appreciated!


here is a pic of what i am talking about:

Win7sysbackup.jpg



edit:

another image to possibly help with troubleshooting?

Win7diskmanage.jpg
 
Last edited:
I've never had good luck with Windows 7 built-in backup, so I suggest looking for a free third-party tool. I use Acronis and haven't had any issues, as it even keeps the alignment on my SSD.
 
The "System Reserved" 100MB partition SHOULD NOT be visible. It's supposed to be a hidden partition that Windows uses for recovery purposes.

As for your 1.36TB Seagate drive showing up as "System," you need to make sure no services are running from that drive. Any drive that has a service running from it is immediately marked as a system drive and must be included in a system image. The only application I've had this problem with is VMWare, which runs one particular service from its own application folder. Installing it to D:\ caused D:\ to get flagged as a system drive. All I had to do was reinstall it to C:\ and all was well.

Edit: Rather than clicking through services one at a time to figure out where they're running from, I'd recommend using Autoruns to get a quick overview (flip to the services tab, make sure nothing is running from G:\) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902
 
Last edited:
Also, if you ever used that drive as a system drive, ie. installed Windows on it such that it would be the C drive, it could still be marked as a system drive.
 
The "System Reserved" 100MB partition SHOULD NOT be visible. It's supposed to be a hidden partition that Windows uses for recovery purposes.

As for your 1.36TB Seagate drive showing up as "System," you need to make sure no services are running from that drive. Any drive that has a service running from it is immediately marked as a system drive and must be included in a system image. The only application I've had this problem with is VMWare, which runs one particular service from its own application folder. Installing it to D:\ caused D:\ to get flagged as a system drive. All I had to do was reinstall it to C:\ and all was well.

Edit: Rather than clicking through services one at a time to figure out where they're running from, I'd recommend using Autoruns to get a quick overview (flip to the services tab, make sure nothing is running from G:\) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902

Also, if you ever used that drive as a system drive, ie. installed Windows on it such that it would be the C drive, it could still be marked as a system drive.

Thanks for the app link Unknown-One! I went through and found FRAPS is on my D drive and autostarts. Unchecked that. Found an iRacing service that autoruns at startup that belongs on D. Unchecked that.

That's all I found in Autoruns on anything other than C drive. Neither my D: or G: have ever been used as boot drives. Neither drive was actually in my system or connected when I first installed Win 7.

No VMWare here, so that can't be the problem. I appreciate the help so far. I am still at a loss.

I guess I'll just have to disconnect all secondary drives so I have only my C drive when Windows loads.
 
That's all I found in Autoruns on anything other than C drive. Neither my D: or G: have ever been used as boot drives. Neither drive was actually in my system or connected when I first installed Win 7.

They don't have to have been in your system when Win 7 was installed - it is more of an issue where you might have had an older version of Windows on those drives, and then converted them to storage drives at a later point. Was any version of Windows ever installed on those drives?
 
They don't have to have been in your system when Win 7 was installed - it is more of an issue where you might have had an older version of Windows on those drives, and then converted them to storage drives at a later point. Was any version of Windows ever installed on those drives?


nope. both were brand new drives
 
Sometimes Windows 7 puts system files in hidden folders on other drives if you have more than one. Disconnect those drives, run the backup, then reconnect them. I've never had problems restoring from an image like that (where a drive or two was disconnected to get Windows to stop marking it as "System").
 
Thanks for the app link Unknown-One! I went through and found FRAPS is on my D drive and autostarts. Unchecked that. Found an iRacing service that autoruns at startup that belongs on D. Unchecked that.

That's all I found in Autoruns on anything other than C drive. Neither my D: or G: have ever been used as boot drives. Neither drive was actually in my system or connected when I first installed Win 7.

Mind taking a screenshot of the "Services" tab in Autoruns?

Also, make sure you haven't moved your page file to D:\ or G:\, that will also make Windows want to include them in the system image.
 
Back
Top