OK, I did an experiment. I removed power from the PC and physically removed the E: drive. Then I applied power and rebooted.
After reboot, I went into the Backup parameters and selected 'Let me choose..'. The following screenshot was presented:
OK, I tried an experiment. I shutdown the PC and removed power. I then physically removed the E: drive, applied power and rebooted. After reboot I went into Backup and selected 'Let me choose..' and got the first screenshot.
I then did a backup, shutdown the PC, removed power, inserted the E: drive, rebooted, and went into Back again. Upon selecting 'Let me choose...' this time, I got the second screenshot.
At this point it seems that there is something on the E: drive that makes the OS think that it's a system drive (the drive is still inactive by the way). This wasn't apparent in the backup of Sunday 4/21, and there's been windows updates since then, so I'm wondering if something in those updates changed something.
Any thoughts?
Ok, but do you get the option to unselect E: when you try creating a system image with both drives connected doing what I previously posted below instead?
Help in marking a partition 'not active' for system backup
No, both drives are checked and greyed out.
It shows E: as a "system" drive. That would be why it's included in a system image.
Odd that it doesn't show E: as a "system" drive in your Disk Management screenshot.
If you have anything being saved to the E drive like your games, then change it to save into the library on your C: drive again to see if it will let you uncheck E: in System Image.
I save all my games to the E: drive. There are no MS program installs on the drive. I think the only executables are Steam, Origin, and UPlay. Everything else installs in the programs folders on the C: drive.
If you run your games from the E: drive, then that is why the E: drive is being included in the system image.
E: has to be included for the game to be able to run properly.
The only way around this would be to uninstall all games from E: , and install them on C: instead.
I've had my games on the E: drive for years and this has not happened. It only began after my successful C: drive backup of 4/21. Went downhill after that.
Not sure then other than something is on the E: drive making it appear as a system drive to system image.
If you like, you could try using the Macrium Reflect Free to see how it works for youf or system images and backups instead.
I just downloaded the program. I'll let you know how it works.
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