The drive is not a valid backup location

[Lorcan]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum and your tutorial, but they have already served me fine. Right now I'm stuck in your "How to Create a System Image Backup in Windows 7". I (think I have a backup) on an 5yr. old 40g portable done with HDClone. Now I'm trying to follow your Win 7 Image Backup, I do have a few more older HDD's but I want to use a new 32g Corsair flash, but "Create a System Image" keeps giving me a
"the drive is not a valid backup location." Do you have any ideas if/how to get around this?? Lorcan

 

[Brink]

Hello Lorcon, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Not sure why, is the drive formatted?

 

[Lorcan]

Hi Brink, Yes, was done in FAT for the HDClone but brought it back to NTFS for this.

 

[Brink]

What was the complete error message that it gave you?

 

[Lorcan]

Yes, then I tried to do a backup in system, went through the whole thing then said it failed.

 

[Lorcan]

Sorry, didn't read your last right.
Error message was: The drive is not a valid backup location.

 

[Brink]

I must admit that I am stumped as to why it does not allow a back up to those drives.

 

[sup3rsprt]

Maybe there is too much data to fit on a 32GB drive?

According to an article I just read, Windows should be able to use a flash drive as target destination.

 

[Lorcan]

That's not it either, my C drive shows 17,391,846,912bytes / 16.1GB. I do have a 32GB SSD and a IDE bridge I could try.

(I Really have to learn to read what things say rather than what I think they do.) Says to open the case/tower not the HDD case, DUH

 

[Avien]

Could it have to do with maybe AHCI? Also, have you tired doing diskpart for the flash drive and making sure it is set to active before trying to backup on it?

 

[Lorcan]

Hi Avien, thanks but now you've gone way over my head if whatever you just said "is" involved then I guess I'll do without a backup or go with the SSD or a a regular "go round n round drive."

I did check and the Corsair is: Healthy(Active, Primary Partition.)
OK, solved, sorta.
Seems HDClone doesn't like the Windows formatting, used the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, took just over an hour but the Flash drive was accepted finally.

 

[serendipitousP]

I have the same problem, tried first with a 4gb usb drive, reformatted to NTFS. then went and bought a 16gb usb stick, formatted as NTFS and made active. still no go for making a system image or backup under win7 starter.

there was some decent advice here: Install Windows Vista and Windows 7 using bootable USB storage device

but i don't hold much hope that the copy that's been running for about 20 minutes so far is actually going to succeed. and i'd really rather have a system image and/or backup, or repair disks...rather then just copying everything on my hdd to this flash. i doubt it'll be bootable, either way.

any further advice?

 

[blahblahblah]

FYI System Images cannot be saved onto Flash Drives.

Sucks...

Read - Scroll halfway down...
Where should I save my backup?

 

[ELH]

I think that MS had a team of attorneys design W7 backup.

In any case, you can break their laws by doing the following,

1. Format your USB stick as NTFS
2. Share your USB stick as a network drive
3. Insure the advanced share allow permissions are set to full control
4. Start Windows Backup and select System Image
5. Select network drive as your backup location
6. Browse to your own computer and select the USB share
7. Enter your computer's logon credentials, if your password is blank use 1 space

Hit OK and you are off and running.

 

[AlecWest]

Why Microsoft made this process so difficult is a mystery. The solution for me was to "go 3rd party." Macrium Reflect offers free software allowing a system image to be saved to an NTFS-formatted flash drive with enough free space to handle the image size. It even "compresses" the image. I had roughly 45gb to save to a 64gb flash drive - and the software compressed the 45gb down to about 20gb.

Note that the first thing the software prompts you to do is create a Macrium Reflect Rescue Disc (about 350mb - easily burned to a CD). Assuming a PC's BIOS is set to boot from a CD, the CD and flash drive are all you need to restore the image to a similar-sized hard drive.