Creation of Win 7 System Image to External Drive Fails

I have two Seagate 2TB external drives that I want to use for backup purposes (system image only). The older drive is USB 2.0 and it works fine, whether it's plugged into a 2.0 or 3.0 port.

My new drive is USB 3.0, and it is causing me problems. It will store data files, but not a system image. When I try to create a system image of my Win 7 Pro C: drive (and by default the EFI System Partition), it goes through the following steps:
- Windows is saving the backup
- Preparing to create the backup
- Preparing media
- Backing up EFI System Partition
At that point I get the Backup Failed screen shown in the attachment.

I am totally perplexed as to why one drive is successful and the other is not. Any help/advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

whs said:

Try to make the image with this command where "S" is the address of the disk to where the image is written. You may need to change that to reflect your setup.:

wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:S: -include:C: -AllCritical -quiet

Well that is certainly worth trying.........thanks much for the advice.

Since C is the drive I'm trying to backup to external drive N, then I assume my command would be
wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:N: -include:C: -AllCritical -quiet

whs said:

Try to make the image with this command where "S" is the address of the disk to where the image is written. You may need to change that to reflect your setup.:

wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:S: -include:C: -AllCritical -quiet

OK, I tried (twice) backing up to drive I and got the attached error message. What should I do next? Thanks.

whs said:

Hmm, looks like your VSS is kaputt. Try this command first:

"%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe /d srrstr.dll,ExecuteScheduledSPPCreation"

OK, I will. But I have a quick question. Where does VSS reside in my system? The reason I ask is because I can successfully create a system image of C: on another older Seagate drive (USB 2.0), as well as on an internal drive. It's only on my new Seagate drive (USB 3.0) that is causing me problems. Actually I have two new USB 3.0 external drives.........both have the same problem.

whs said:

Hmm, looks like your VSS is kaputt. Try this command first:

"%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe /d srrstr.dll,ExecuteScheduledSPPCreation"

Me again. I guess I don't know exactly how to enter this command.....I always get confused on the %'s.

If I am at the Administrator: Command Prompt screen, this is what I see:
C:\Windows\system32>
What exactly do I enter at this prompt?

whs said:

Just copy and paste it the way I posted it.

That's what I did, both with and then without the "" marks. Attached are the error notices I got. So I am doing something wrong.