Windows 10: Is it safe to save a System Image Back Up File of Windows onto my Portable HDD?

Hi everyoneI want to save a full System Image Back Up File of my current Windows 10 environment onto my Portable HDD which is a 'Seagate Expansion Drive E:'. It is correctly formatted to NTFS.But I ALSO have lots of pictures and documents and videos etc on the 'Seagate Expansion Drive E:' Portable HDD of mine that I want to KEEP as well. I don't have any other USB Flash Drive that has enough storage space to save my System Image Back Up File of my current Windows environment which is over 200 GB in size. So my question is: would it be safe to do a Back Up and Restore of the Image File of m

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Files saved at work cannot be seen at home and vice versa! copied to the portable HDD.

Original Title: Missing File (repeatable)

Issue:

Missing File (repeatable)

The Situation:

I have purchased two identical computers with the same OS (Win 10 Pro 64bit) and installed all the same applications and antivirus etc. One is for home and one is for work.

I use a portable HDD to save my work onto (data). Mainly graphics design and saved in *.vDoc along with Office 2016 files such as *.docx etc.

The portable drive has been set to Quick removal i.e. no write caching

• When I get home and view the portable drive's contents the file I have saved from the day’s work has vanished?

• All the older files and complete folder structure are still there (copied to the portable HDD in the past but never opened or worked on).

When I return to work the next morning the original file is still nowhere to be found, but after around 30 minutes the original file I was working on the day before suddenly reappears.

The same thing happens at home as well. The files I save at home cannot be seen at work. However, if I wait for around 30 minutes they reappear.

So effectively the files saved at work cannot be seen at home and vice versa! nor can they be seen until I wait for around 30 minutes!

This has occurred on 3 sets of portable HDDs now. I have tried Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital portable drives in 1Tb, 2Tb and 4Tb configurations… Happens every time and I have lost days on this situation.

I have also reinstalled Windows 10 on both systems.

Perhaps Windows caches the portable drive and when you boot up on an identical system (office and home) and it gets confused and hides the files?



Does anyone know how to overcome this issue?

 

Portable HDD full but isn`t..

Hi Graham,

In most cases, this may already point to a hardware issue. We suggest doing the following to properly isolate this:

• Connect your portable HDD to a different port.
• Connect your portable HDD to a different PC.
• Connect other storage devices.

If you find that other storage devices work properly and your portable HDD still encounters an error with other computers, then this is already a hardware issue and you'll need to get in touch with the device manufacturer for assistance and troubleshooting.

Feel free to post back if you need more help.

 

Creating and Saving Win 10 System Images

You can save system image either on:

• A different HDD(partition)
• External HDD
• CD/DVD

I don't think there is a way to save Multiple Image backups on the same drive.