Windows 7: Cant select storage drive for backup.

Hi,
I have 3 drives in my system,
64gb boot Health System Active
640g Apps Health Primary 376gfree
500g storage Healthy Primary 496gfree

I'm trying to a backup with a system image,
It says for the storage drive when selected that it will not do a system image.
But when I select the 640, it doesnt say it wont, but will not let me choose any files from that drive.


Not sure what is going on,
thanks for any help.

Please clarify:

Are those 3 separate drives, each with one partition?

Or is this all one drive containing 3 partitions?

Are you trying to make an image of just the 64 g partition?

An image file cannot be stored on the source partition.

What application are you using to make the image?

to Clarify,
Each drive is a seperate Sata Device.
I am trying to get an Entire System Image of the SSD (c and the 640g App Drive (e onto my storage drive (d using the built in Windows backup system.

If you are doing a "Backup now" with settings for both file/folder AND image selected then you probably don't have enough space.
If you are using "Create a system image" to your 500GB drive then it looks like you do have enough space.
BUT are you sure you want to make such a large image. Also note that windows imaging will not let you do a reimage which does not include the OS partition.
You may be better with the greater flexibility of other 3rd party imaging programs.

I used Marcium and it worked fine,
the backup was only 100gigs...
which is about what I expected, I just wanted to have an image of my current system handy.

Your question was about Windows.
Estimates:
SSD = 30GB (guess; you don't say how full)
App HDD = 640-376 = 264GB
Total = 294GB

Assume Macrium compression to 40% you get 118GB in the ballpark of your figure.

Windows imaging has little or no compression but an image alone would fit the the free 496GB.
A Windows image + file/folder backup of 264GB would probably be rejected.

I know what's going on now,
the volume for the 640g drive is listed as a system/active drive.
So windows wants to add it in the backup,
the drive is now empty files but I cant seem to, or know how to remove it as a system drive.
Formatting doesnt seem to help.
Help

Check this tutorial: Partition - Mark as Inactive

The start of this post was over 2 months ago. I assume your issue is still ongoing. Initially you said that the 64GB (SSD) was system active? Now it's the 640GB?
The solution is probably quite straightforward but you should upload a screenshot from Disk Management so we are sure this time.
Use the Windows snipping tool and the little paperclip on the forum toolbar.

Well,
It worked itself out..

The system problem eventually was that,
1st setup.
1x64gb SSD boot drive
1x640gig Apps drive.
I however moved some files like user apps and what not following a SSD guide to clean up space on the drive.
This inadverntly maked the drive (640g) as a system drive.

Having not realised that,
I installed my RAID-0 (2x64SSD),
It seems even tho the original 64gb was formatted into the raid, and a new o/s installed onto it.
When windows gathered it's information it included the 640g drive as being needed, since it was marked as system.

Long story short when I made the disk inactive it killed the raid,
when I re-installed the raid and made the drive active again, it was still a system drive.
Turning it off again, killed the raid.
That's when it struck me, so I used a boot cd to clear the partition/volume and everything about the damn drive (640g).
Re-installed everything, and things are fine now.

Well fine as in, I'm up and running and yet to start a backup... until all the updates are installed.
I'm sure the problem will be gone tho.