Windows 7: Why can't I do an image backup on second internal hard drive?

Hi, I've tried to set up an image backup on my second internal hard drive but it says: " A system image cannot be saved on a drive that your computer boots from or that Windows is installed on"
My windows is on my SSD drive and I'm trying to backup to a sata drive. Please help !
Thanks

It's possible that the drive is configured in such a way that it's not recognized as being available to store a system image. Perhaps it once contained an operating system and needs to be formatted. If you could post a screenshot of your Disk Managment it will probably give a clue as to what's wrong.

Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

As was suggested, if your SATA drive was originally your one internal hard drive and you upgraded to add the SSD, depending on how you did that re-install of Windows 7 it's possible your BIOS is still pointing to the SATA drive as the "boot drive", so the Windows 7 install put the 100MB "system reserved" partition on that drive, and then installed the OS itself on the SSD when you pointed there as the target for the Windows 7 install.

The boot manager files are always placed on the "boot drive" as set by your BIOS settings, and from there Boot Manager can load the OS from any other drive.

If you can look at DISKMGMT.MSC, the "active" partition (one one of your two drives) is where that "boot manager" was installed (typically in the 100MB "system reserved", but it could actually be in yet another partition coming from some old WinXP or even Win98 environment, when boot manager files were placed in that very same partition). So if your SATA drive has a partition which shows as "active", then that is why it is considered part of the boot process and cannot be used to hold a system image.

As was requested, posting the expanded full-screen output from DISKMGMT.MSC with columns spread so that we can read all the text in each field would let us help you further.

Also, please look in your BIOS setup and determine which of your two drives is considered that "boot drive", i.e. "hard disk #1" or something like that in "boot sequence".

The operating system was originally on the 1Tb SATA drive. I cloned it using acronis to the SSD.
There is a second partion "E:system" which was cloned at the same time. I'm not sure what this is? I think it may be some sort of recovery partition disk that my computer manufacturer put on there.
I've just formatted drive "F" but it made no difference, I still can't backup an image to it.

A better picture:

You didn't tell us what your BIOS says is your "boot drive"... the SSD or the SATA?

But since you say you just formatted F (SATA), and yet you can still boot, I'm guessing that the SSD drive is actually your "boot drive" in the BIOS, since formatting F would have obviously erased the boot manager files if they were there. So they're not there. They must be on that E partition which got created by Acronis, since that is marked as the "active" partition on the SSD drive. Your operating system got cloned onto what is your C partition also on the SSD drive.

But your F partition on the SATA drive is still marked as "active", even though there is nothing on it any longer that is bootable... especially now that you just formatted it. I'm guessing that's what prevents system image from being written to it.

So, in my opinion, your "boot drive" must be set in the BIOS to be the SSD drive. And the "active partition" on that drive is E (which at 2GB is certainly much larger than it needs to be for just Boot Manager, but it doesn't hurt), which is obviously where Acronis placed the Boot Manager files. A real Windows install would have built a 100MB "system reserved" partition instead of the 2GB E partition built by Acronis, and not assigned any drive letter to that little "system reserved" partition. Boot Manager would have been placed in that un-lettered "active" 100MB partition, and the rest of the drive would have been given to C (unless you changed that allocation to be smaller, but you could also have shrunk C after Windows got installed using a program like Partition Wizard).

Nevertheless, apparently the cloning by Acronis gave you what you now have, with the 2GB E partition on SSD drive set as "active", and having a letter E, and also containing Boot Manager. The real Windows partition is over on C on the SSD drive. This is all fine. Remember, at machine boot time the BIOS goes to the "active" partition on the "boot drive" to pick up the boot files to launch, i.e. Boot Manager.

It is simply that residually your F partition (on SATA drive) is still marked as "active", but for no reason any longer. If you UN-ACTIVE that F partition I'll bet you will then be able to write a system image to it.

Free Partition Wizard can do that for you in 3 seconds.

Try this Partition - Mark as Inactive and then you should be able to place the image on the F:\ Partition. Being marked Active Windows 7 considers it a system drive.

Still can't understand it!
I used Partition Wizard to make the "F" drive un-active and I still can't save a backup image to it.
I've used the Partition Wizard to claim back a little of the 2gb on the "E" drive though.
I have also checked the bios and disabled the "F" drive from the boot sequence.

How are you trying to make a back-up, that is what software?