Create system image does not work with WD Mybook Essential USB 3.0

There may be something special about the 3TB My Book essentials.
The MBR is the first 512 bytes of the disk and it serves a number of functions. When it's a data disk it's the partition table which is of most importance.
The MBR partition table which is restricted to 2TB per partition. It's something historical.

GPT may overcome the MBR issue if you need 1 big partition. But I can't see why you can't partition in say 3x1TB partitions. I'm not sure why WD are telling you they don't support multiple partitions.

What puzzles me is you have tried formating the HDD as a 1TB (presumably 2TB unallocated) and it doesn't take an MBR and an image.

I have a 1TB WD essentials with 4 partitions (MBR) and it's full of images.

Do you have the 100MB System Reserved partition. If so, how much free space is in the system reserved?

MJF, I havd had several issues with that on a couple of occasions,Microsoft claims a minimum of 40GB but 50 would be better. That is why I no longer have a system reserved partition. The real issue of this problem is that Microsoft has been aware of it for at least 3 years that I know of. They have not fixed the issue and probably never will.I talked with them. They said that they were aware of the issue but had no fix for it. Just deal with it I guess.

On my disk C: I have a 39MB (Healthy OEM Partition), a 10.39GB (RECOVERY), AND A 1386.83GB NTFS system. This is a Dell XPS 9000 computer.

I forgot to mention, I have a 750GB Western Digital MyBook USB 2.0 and have been creating images with Windows 7 Backup for 2 or 3 years, with no problem. I have also restored my system from one of the images and it worked beautifully. So I don't think it is my disk partition configuration. I think I am going to give up on Window 7 Backup and use something else. Can you recommend a backup program that is reliable, every time?

Am I understanding you correct, your trying to create a bootable image on your external drive.?

If so then your probably out of luck. I suggest that you get a program like Acronis that will create images
of your system and allow you to extract files from it and re-write your system if you have problems.
I use Acronis to create a complete system image on external 500gig usb/esata drives on a weekly basis and
it allows you to create a bootable cd that when you connect everything and boot the cd. It will completely redo your system to the stat it was when you created the image.

If your trying to image your system to another hard disk, that is a different ball of wax. Some of the external drives that you can purchase have strange disk controller internals and won't allow you to create all the necessary partitions that a bootable image would reguire. I have done this on a external drive but I did it with one of those little dongle type devices that support esata and provide power to the drive. It also supports usb or esata. cost around $25. There isn't any drive controller electronics in them, just usb to sata
controls. They can be formatted from the hard disk options in control pane.l

I hope this explains a bit.
Acronis is available for around $25 (well worth it) from the user groups store at ugr.com for user group members. I don't have any financial interests..

Rich

You may want to read this thread, it discusses the question you just asked about. Probably most people use either Windows system image, free macrium or Acronis. The truth is, as you will see in that thread, some work for some people and not for others. I have speculated that it has to do with hardware setup. BTW. With your Western Digital Drive you can download a free backup program from their web site. It is a free, scaled down version of Acronis.
I use all three so if one doesn't work another will. I also backup to two different extertnals (at least)- I have 4. Externals die just like internals. They seem to die at exactly the wrong time.

With that said, I don't know why your external does not work, it should. Although I do not understand the limitation, Windows sometimes has trouble with disks of 3TB. I don't know if that is the issue or not. If you have a smaller external try a backup on it to see if that is the problem.
I hope this helps.

Also, I believe that if windows gives you that message it will also allow you to see the log file that will tell you which parts of the backup did not work. If you know that it may shed some light on the problem.