Why is my D drive included (mandatory) in system image?

I posted this on the MS forums but found this to be a much better source of experts, so I'm hoping someone here can help me with this:

I want to create a system image of my C drive for backup purposes, but when I use the built-in backup tool, my D drive is also selected and I can't uncheck it. My D drive is filled with videos and stuff and I really do not need that backed up.

This should explain:
http://stuff.digicrap.com/backup.png

Is there a way to check why this is marked as required for the system? Is there a way to make it so that I don't have to backup that drive?

This might have something to do with it: http://stuff.digicrap.com/backup2.png Any ideas on how to change the system tag from D to C?

Thanks!

(original thread here: Why is my D drive included in system image? - Microsoft Answers)

It would appear d drive is the bootmgr drive and thus no backup of the system can be properly made without including it. This is why it is tagged as system.

Unfortunately I do not know a way around this that doesn't involve both changing the physical location the drives are plugged into the motherboard at, but also a reformat.

Basically what happens is windows drops the bootmgr on whichever drive the system sees as drive 0.
This is determined by where the drive is physically plugged into the motherboard it is not determined by software, but rather by the system bios.

I believe this to be the cause of your problem, though I am not 100% certain.

Might it have something to do with the fact that the C drive is an SSD?

DeltaBlast said:

I posted this on the MS forums but found this to be a much better source of experts, so I'm hoping someone here can help me with this:

I want to create a system image of my C drive for backup purposes, but when I use the built-in backup tool, my D drive is also selected and I can't uncheck it. My D drive is filled with videos and stuff and I really do not need that backed up.

This should explain:
http://stuff.digicrap.com/backup.png

Is there a way to check why this is marked as required for the system? Is there a way to make it so that I don't have to backup that drive?

This might have something to do with it: http://stuff.digicrap.com/backup2.png Any ideas on how to change the system tag from D to C?

Thanks!

(original thread here: Why is my D drive included in system image? - Microsoft Answers)

Click to expand...

Mike told you the same thing up there ( Microsoft Answers) that we are telling you here. The fix is messy and fraught with risk. DO you really want to risk it?

zigzag3143 said:

Mike told you the same thing up there ( Microsoft Answers) that we are telling you here. The fix is messy and fraught with risk. DO you really want to risk it?

Click to expand...

...what? So far Mike has posted two replies, one completely missing the question (thinking I wanted to backup C to C) and one asking if I had anything installed on D (I haven't).

So far I haven't seen a fix there or here. I myself posted a link at the MS forums that told to use bootfix, but I tried that to no avail.

My SSD (C: with windows 7) is 100% sure plugged in at SATA 0. I got a completely new mobo along with the SSD and I plugged in the hardware in the correct order. You can even see that in my second screenshot.
The only thing I can imagine is that perhaps it marked D as the system drive because C is an SSD and it had to park it's data at a "regular" drive first before it could load the SSD drivers or something.

But I was kind of hoping that someone knew for certain what would be the cause here, and/or knew a way to change it (perhaps there are 3d party tools that could do this).

the troubling part is the bootmgr actually requires it's own little 100mb partition to be made.
You could try pulling the d drive, plugging the windows drive into the port it's currently plugged into. Restart with your windows disk in the drive and see if the startup repair feature can create you a bootmgr out of thin air.

That would be the absolute simplest way I can think of. (plugging the d drive back in after all of this in a different port on the motherboard.

Then there are other ways to do this, you could also try the way we restore the bootmgr after grub has messed with it.
http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/178900-bootmgr-missing-after-grub-install.html

To my knowledge there is no simple click next and it's fixed solution for this.
The windows drive needs to be moved to port 0 on the motherboard before you can even start trying to fix this though.

You may want to consider using Partition Wizard to do the job for you.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html

If it's just a case of fixing the master boot record, this tutorial should help: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

I would stress however, that before you alter the drive sytructure, you'd be well advised to back up to an external media any important data first.

Any fix will involve risk so make sure your OS/program drive (0) is imaged.
I suggest you
1) Make a system repair CD / DVD (from Backup & restore screen)
2) use free Macrium reflect and make an image of drive 0 so if things go wrong you can reimage and get back to your starting point.
3) then set drive 1 inactive set drive 0 active
4) unplug all drives except drive 0
5) Now you need to rebuild the boot sequence to rely on drive 0 alone.
Option: A
Booting from the system repair CD run Startup Repair 3 times with up to 3 restarts of your PC.
Option: B
I personally prefer this option when I think it is specifically a boot sequence issue.
1) Boot from the System Repair CD
2) Go into the command prompt then specifically address the boot sequence with
>bootrec /fixmbr
>bootrec /fixboot
>bootrec /rebuildBcd
3) Boot your computer

Info on Bootrec

If this goes pear shape then simply reimage drive 0 with Macrium Reflect.
If you want to include a separate "System Reserved" partition on drive 0 then some more steps will be required.

If this seems a little confusing then get back and ask but you don't really want boot files on a separate drive to your OS.

Edit: I saw the reference to you by Mike Hall (via zigzag3143 post). The advice he gives is of course valid. If you have other key system files like the page file on drive 1 then that complicates matters.

DeltaBlast said:

zigzag3143 said:

Mike told you the same thing up there ( Microsoft Answers) that we are telling you here. The fix is messy and fraught with risk. DO you really want to risk it?

Click to expand...

...what? So far Mike has posted two replies, one completely missing the question (thinking I wanted to backup C to C) and one asking if I had anything installed on D (I haven't). Mike (and I dont even know him) asked if you had a pagefile or other OS componenet on that drive. YOU DO

So far I haven't seen a fix there or here. I myself posted a link at the MS forums that told to use bootfix, but I tried that to no avail.

My SSD (C: with windows 7) is 100% sure plugged in at SATA 0. I got a completely new mobo along with the SSD and I plugged in the hardware in the correct order. You can even see that in my second screenshot.
The only thing I can imagine is that perhaps it marked D as the system drive because C is an SSD and it had to park it's data at a "regular" drive first before it could load the SSD drivers or something.

But I was kind of hoping that someone knew for certain what would be the cause here, and/or knew a way to change it (perhaps there are 3d party tools that could do this).

Click to expand...

You have the partition holding the boot files there. Move it at your own risk.

DeltaBlast said:

zigzag3143 said:

Mike told you the same thing up there ( Microsoft Answers) that we are telling you here. The fix is messy and fraught with risk. DO you really want to risk it?

Click to expand...

...what? So far Mike has posted two replies, one completely missing the question (thinking I wanted to backup C to C) and one asking if I had anything installed on D (I haven't).

So far I haven't seen a fix there or here. I myself posted a link at the MS forums that told to use bootfix, but I tried that to no avail.

My SSD (C: with windows 7) is 100% sure plugged in at SATA 0. I got a completely new mobo along with the SSD and I plugged in the hardware in the correct order. You can even see that in my second screenshot.
The only thing I can imagine is that perhaps it marked D as the system drive because C is an SSD and it had to park it's data at a "regular" drive first before it could load the SSD drivers or something.

But I was kind of hoping that someone knew for certain what would be the cause here, and/or knew a way to change it (perhaps there are 3d party tools that could do this).

Click to expand...

I can't confirm this but I have read that on a new system when installing onto a SSD that the other mechanical drives should be removed as Windows will install the bootmanager onto the mechanical drive by default. This may have happened in your case.

Jim

Phone Man said:

I can't confirm this but I have read that on a new system when installing onto a SSD that the other mechanical drives should be removed as Windows will install the bootmanager onto the mechanical drive by default. This may have happened in your case.
Jim

Click to expand...

fud at its finest...

stop messing with weird partition schemes while on windows setup or unplug any other drive before installing windows, and let setup create the apropiate one on the current drive, no more problems.

Phone Man said:

I can't confirm this but I have read that on a new system when installing onto a SSD that the other mechanical drives should be removed as Windows will install the bootmanager onto the mechanical drive by default. This may have happened in your case.

Jim

Click to expand...

I would say when installing Windows on any sort of drive you are safer to have all other drives disconnected and the OS drive plugged into Sata Port 0.

At Install

Yet another case for unplugging all drives but the target when doing an install.

I would just move the bootmgr from D: to C: - a 2 minute job. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-bootmgr-move-c-easybcd.html Then just tell the BIOS to boot from that disk.

Hi all, I was gone for most of the weekend, but I see that it has yielded some excellent replies!

So far, I've gathered from the answers that it is probable that Windows created the boot partition on the D drive instead of on C, and that it probably needs to be moved before I can create a system image without D.

@Maguscreed: Thanks, I'll look into that way, if the way Whs posted fails.

@seavixen32: Or I'll try your way as well

@mjf: As this involves messing around with the drives more than the above options, I'll try it if the others fail. Thanks for recommending Macrium Reflect, I'll use it to make an image before messing around

@zigzag3413
The text that you highlighted:
"Do you by any chance have a pagefile on D? Or maybe applications installed on D? Or have you movced the Documents folder to D? If any or all of these are true, Windows Will see the drive as part of the 'system' and bank it up accordingly.."
Pagefily? No. Applications? No. Documents folder? No.
"or other OS componenet on that drive", a line you just added yourself? Yes, *probably*.
From the posts here (all posted after the above comment) I've gathered that it is most likely that the D drive contains the boot partition, due to Windows picking mechanical drives over SSD's. But don't come telling me that Mike told me so at the MSA forum
(I just now noticed your signature... I guess it's a personal matter for you )

@Phone Man: Ah! This is what I sort of expected, guess it seems to be in the right direction...

@OldMX: Next time I will... I've been installing with multiple drives attached since win 95, never gave problems before so I never thought about it much

@mjf: I always use drive 0 for system, but as above, I've never disconnected all the other drives first. The more you know!

@HammerHead: Yup, found out the hard way

@whs: Thanks! Your option seems the most easy and straightforward one, I'll try that one first.


So... thanks all for you replies and thinking along with this issue!

I'll go and try the options later today or tomorrow, and I'll post the results of course!

Just to confirm D indeed contains the Boot partition, according to EasyBCD:

Default: Windows 7
Timeout: 30 seconds
EasyBCD Boot Device: D:\

Entry #1
Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe


and so:

---------------------------
Boot Partition Changed
---------------------------
EasyBCD has successfully made drive C: the new boot partition, and has loaded the new BCD store for modification, should you wish to make any further changes. If this partition is on your first boot disk, you don't need to take any further action. If it's not, you should now turn off your PC and change the boot drive from the BIOS for the changes to take effect.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

I'll now go into the bios to see what drive is set to boot from, and I'll edit this post when I come back

Edit:

Victory! I've changed the drive to boot from in the Bios as said, and:



W00t

One last small question though: In the bios, it said my SSD was ch6 while my other drives said ch0, ch0, ch1 and ch1.. does that mean that in the end I did plug it in incorrectly? Windows itself says C is Disk0 though...

Don't worry about the port. Any port is OK. The only difference is Sata2 or Sata3. If your SSD is a Sata3 SSD, it is better to plug it into a Sata3 port - but it would also work on a Sata2 port. You probably did plug it into the Sata3 port which may be one of the highest ports on the mobo - and that is fine.

The story that one should plug the OS disk into port0 is only significant when you make a fresh install because the Windows 7 installer normally always places the bootmgr on the disk with the lowest port number - as you have seen. But that is easy to fix - as you have also seen.

yeah, I suppose some of my advice was rendered a little useless considering that bios now have a much better boot management in general.
On older systems I still recommend the port 0 method.

DeltaBlast said:

Just to confirm D indeed contains the Boot partition, according to EasyBCD:

Default: Windows 7
Timeout: 30 seconds
EasyBCD Boot Device: D:\

Entry #1
Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe


and so:

---------------------------
Boot Partition Changed
---------------------------
EasyBCD has successfully made drive C: the new boot partition, and has loaded the new BCD store for modification, should you wish to make any further changes. If this partition is on your first boot disk, you don't need to take any further action. If it's not, you should now turn off your PC and change the boot drive from the BIOS for the changes to take effect.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

I'll now go into the bios to see what drive is set to boot from, and I'll edit this post when I come back

Edit:

Victory! I've changed the drive to boot from in the Bios as said, and:

W00t

One last small question though: In the bios, it said my SSD was ch6 while my other drives said ch0, ch0, ch1 and ch1.. does that mean that in the end I did plug it in incorrectly? Windows itself says C is Disk0 though...

Click to expand...

D and R are still marked ACTIVE so possible boot partitions. Mark them INACTIVE

Another thing that can cause huge backups is those useless Libraries. If you have a reference to another drive's data then that gets added to the backup, or at least it was when Win7 first came out and I stopped using Libraries because of it.