Windows 10: System cannot find hard drive to put system image on

Greetings,

I have a new rig. I want to make a backup system image to another drive (3Gb SATA). It works well (gaming drive). And is "seen" by Win 10 in File Explorer and otherwise works.

But the system backup windows cannot find it. I hit the refresh option and it does not show up.

I have 1.09 Tb of free space and the primary drive I will copy is 294 Gb.

Thank you,

win 10 (Creators Update)
i7-7700
8Gb
480 SSD
Geforce 1070

:)

 

Installing Windows 10 on a new hard drive

Installing Windows 10 on new hard drive. Recovering content of old hard drive.

1. Save a system image backup on external hard drive.

2. Make a USB recovery drive.

I mount the SSD and boot from the recovery drive and select Advanced options > system image recovery and I get this error message.

System image restore failed, can't restore system image to computer with different firmware. Image was created on computer using BIOS and this Computer is using EFI.

I cannot get Windows 10 operating system and all my files installed on the new hard drive.

 

How do I load a system image located on the hard drive I am using? Restoring windows using system image wouldn't work.

When my old hard drive crashed, I bought a new 1 tb hard drive to create a system image on it. After I created the system image on my new hard drive, the old one crashed again. Using a windows 10 installation USB I made from my laptop, I tried to restore
windows using the system image on the new hard drive. However, windows prompted me with the message "Windows cannot find a system image on this computer. Attach the backup hard disk or insert the final DVD from a backup set and click retry." I tried everything
else and nothing worked. I have looked everywhere for solutions but I couldn't get it to work. Finally, I decided to install windows 10 onto my new hard drive. Everything is fine, just that my computer doesn't have any of my older documents, pictures, or data
from the system image on my new hard drive.

Is there any way can I load the system image onto my computer so that my computer is just how it was before my old hard drive failed? I have the system image on my new hard drive.

Thanks

 

Does wbadmin command find it?

From winpe:

wbadmin get versions -backuptarget:d:

Obviously replace d: with the drive letter ( as seen form winpe) where your image is stored. (I assume it is in the original folder structure).

 

You mean reboot to the repair menu (blue screen) and go to the DOS option and type the string?

 

Yes. The wbadmin restore functions are only in winpe.

 

Am I to understand this will recover my computer from the version I find? I do not want to recover a drive. I want to create a system image on this drive (OP: "to put system image on"). The drive has nothing on it except games. There is no system image or backup files on it.

 

If you have an esp partition you will have to restore that as well ( restore it first if it was the first partition ).

 

The -backuptarget is the drive containing the system image. You will have to have that attached so winpe can see it.

The -recovertarget is where you want to copy the contents of the image file.

That is the easy bit. You may need to fix the restored os drive letter. Tricky to do manually, so I included that function in these guys: NT6.zip

Fix Drive Letter section. Select the recoverytarget letter in the dropdown and click FIX. It is almost instant.

 

You want to create a system image and save it onto a drive that doesn't show in system image GUI?

You coul try removing the drive letter in diskmgmt, then assign it another.

 

FYI: my disk management: I am trying to copy (for the first time) a sys image on E.

 

Very odd.

Maybe free version of Z-dbackup will see it. Z-DBackup Free Backup Software for Windows

It is a basically a GUI for win Sys img. It may coax win sys image to save onto E.

System Image Backup with Z-DBackup Freeware - YouTube

 

Someone else suggested NTFS 4k sectors are not supported by win 10 backup.

 

Curios...Win 10 thinks my E drive is a system drive! That's the drive I was trying to make a new system image on! What gives??

 

All your problems will go away if you use this forums undeniably favourite backup up tool - Macrium Reflect Free.