Solved Windows 7 Backup identifies wrong drive as a system drive

[weaselbites]

This is a silly problem to be having. I have two operating systems in a dual boot system. Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit, C drive, (where I am trying to run the backup from) and Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit (I drive).

It used to work fine, I think round about 4 weeks ago or so. I am not sure what has changed but it no longer works properly. Instead it identifies my data drive as being a system which needs a system image created for.

I tried using the Backup reset registry key from the tutorials section but that does not work either. They say a picture can paint a thousand words, so here are some screenshots.

I am not sure what else you need to know. Its Dell XPS 420 with a RAID 0 (striping) drive...that is to say two drives combined together in an array (as I understand it). So it acts like one big hard drive.

Any help would be most appreciated!

 

[derekimo]

Welcome to the forum,

From your screenshots I don't see the problem you're talking about, Can't you just select the partitions you want and go from there?

What does it show when you expand the top "Data Files" ?

 

[weaselbites]

Thank you for the welcome

In the "include system images" at the bottom of the backup it shows "Data (F)" as being one of the images. I enclose a more clear screenshot. Apologies!

My concern is that although I could possibly uncheck that box, if something does go wrong with my Windows and I am no longer able to boot into it, then restoring the files alone will not be enough to make it work properly. As I understand it, it needs to be a system image for it to work correctly. I don't actually need a "file backup", I need a system backup say for instance if I am installing new drivers and Windows dies or whatever and can't get into safe mode.

I hope you understand my concern, and see what I am talking about when I say Backup is choosing the wrong drives. (I want C and I selected).

 

[Brink]

Hello Weaselbites, and welcome to Seven Forums.


The Data F: drive would also be included as a system drive if either one or more have been done:

• You moved your page file to the F: drive
• You turned on system protection for the F: drive
• Vista is on your F: drive

If not, then could you post a screenshot of your Disk Management showing all of your drives layout?

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[weaselbites]

Hi there Brink! (Can I just say I love your tutorials - they have shown me any number of times how to do things and made it soooo easy!).

On to the problem at hand. System restore is off for every single drive except the C drive. (I drive - my other windows always used to be recognised as a system drive).



My data (f) drive has no page file on it. Its on the Z drive (i created a logical drive for it over a year ago)...but I cant seem to fit all the drives in.




Oppps the disk management screenshot coming up. Sorry!

Does this help any, or do you need the graphical part which is all compressed together. Not sure!

 

[Brink]

Hmm, I see no reason above for why so far in Windows 7. How about anything from my post above in Vista?

What do you have on the F: drive? Any programs or anything set to save to the F: drive automatically? For example, a library, Windows Media Player (music, etc...), Windows Media Center, etc.....

 

[weaselbites]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Okay to give a rundown on whats on what drive....

C - Contains Windows 7 Home Premium and associated programs.

D - OEM Recovery partition.

E - CD ROM Drive.

F - Data. Contains Audio files, Downloads (about 12GB - lots of patches etc) , CD Images such as ISOs etc, Games folder, Miscellaneous other programs that I don't intend to be permanent such as FreeOCR, nitroreader pdf, nlite, openoffice etc and finally System Volume information (which seems to appear on every drive but is always inaccessible),


G - Backup and virtual machines.

I - Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit.



WIth regards to libraries, there are links to G and F in both of them (eg for music there is a link to F, and i created a library called downloads whcih also links to F, Documents links to G....



I am going to boot into Vista and see if there is anything odd there...see if Vista for some reason marked it as a system drive.

 

[weaselbites]

I found the answer eventually, hidden away in the middle of a microsoft forum where it was not the actual answer, but seemed to help me.

It seems, that Windows Backup bases a system drive on criteria that include "any drive where a service is launched from".

I recently upgraded Nitro PDF reader which put a service in it. That was in my F:\progs directory. This made Windows Backup think that my F drive was a system drive. GRRRRRRRR.

(You could ask, why I would have a folder called progs somewhere separate from my system drive, but its usually portable stuff or things I don't want for very long).

I hope this helps someone else - save them from hours of searching if nothing else.

Thank you VERY much for your help derekimo and Brink

 

[derekimo]

Thank you for posting back, it will definately help someone else.

You're welcome and we're glad you got it figured out.

 

[Brink]

You're welcome Weaselbites. Thank you for posting back with your solution.

 

[Signy]

Process Monitor could help

I used to have the same problem (data drive as a system drive). After days I've found solution:

1) Download and install Sysinternals Process Monitor Process Monitor
2) Start System properties - System protection (with button "Create").
3) Run Process Monitor and set Filter:

Process name is SystemPropertiesProtection.exe
(SystemPropertiesProtection.exe is name of process, which creates restore points).​

4) In System protection press button "Create" and make a restore point.
5) In process Monitor find every occurrence of your not system drive, eg. "D:\" (without quotes).​

After these steps I could find the reason why Win7 thought that my data disk is system - I had two incorrect junk links from system drive to data disk. Windows followed these junk links and tried to find some Windows gadgets...
I corrected junk links (from system disk to system disk) and finally is my backup working.

Thanks Sysinternals for their small useful tools - only Process Monitor could reveal me why Windows recognized my data disk as system disk.