Are portable USB hard drives ok to use for Windows Image?

A partition would of been good. As your right much of the data is static (games). Trouble is pulling it apart for that kind of setup is pretty daunting. I'm gone to have 1 more go with the Samsung portable tonight. If that fails I'll try the toshiba portable I spotted an Amazon that seems to have great reviews and I'd that fails then I'll blame window image software and look at macrium and AOMEI which have been kindly suggested

Speaking of drives i just brought a 2TB seagate backup plus 3.5" hdd. I threw the included software in the trash and set macrium reflect to do a full system imahe once a week and only keep the last 3. Your issues are strange but a usb powered drive still should work

I'm going to try again and then probably revert to Macrium. It's strange it always worked fine before. I wonder if a recent windows update / change is causing the grief. But I suspect I've been unlucky with the USB HDs. The one I always used went bang. I'd had it about 3 years but I still think it should've lasted longer. This Samsung portable may also of had an internal issue.

Scottyboy99 said:

I'm going to try again and then probably revert to Macrium. It's strange it always worked fine before. I wonder if a recent windows update / change is causing the grief. But I suspect I've been unlucky with the USB HDs. The one I always used went bang. I'd had it about 3 years but I still think it should've lasted longer. This Samsung portable may also of had an internal issue.

I managed to keep an 80gb wd scorpio blue (in enclosure) alive for 8 years but now its painstakingly slow to use for os booting and is only fast enought for basic file storage. I think its going to fail in a month or 2 but still not bad for 8 years