Create a windows system image

So can anyone recommend a program to create a windows 7 system image ?

I was poking around the control panel and noticed the built in backup and restore has the ability to make a system image but I don't know what they expect you to save it to. They won't let me save it to a separate internal drive or a usb drive so what else is there ?

Clonezilla?

I will check out Clonezilla but I am still messing with the one built into windows because I want to know why it won't work.

I think I figured out why windows won't let me use my internal drive. I guess you can't use a "system" disk and when I look at disk management it says the drive is "system". Not sure why or how to fix it.

I did have windows installed on this drive prior to getting the SSD that it is installed on now. I noticed when I try changing permissions on all the files on the drive I get told permissions can't be changed on d:\Boot and d:\bootmgr. Those files do not show up in explorer even with hidden files showing.

Do I need to rewrite the MBR on that drive somehow ?

It sounds like you installed 7 on the SSD while the old drive was still plugget into the machine. Can you confirm this? If so, Windows, upon install, may have assumed the BCDStore to be used is still the one on the old drive. So, that is still a system drive, and actually the one being used to boot.

To test that, try to boot after disconnecting the old drive.

If the system won't boot, you'll have to move the BCDStore from the old drive to the SSD by using BCDEDit.

If you think this may be the case, let me know if I can help more.

You are right I did have both drives connected when I installed windows. I unplugged the old drive and I can not boot. I will see if I can figure out how to do what you are talking about but if you want to elaborate that would be great.

The issue was something with the BDC taym was right. I fixed it with EasyBCD http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 .

I'm not exactly sure how I did it I think I removed the BCD then made a new one on the right drive. Then when I re-booted the computer wouldn't boot unless I disconnected the old drive.

So then I connected both drives with the SSD connected to port 0, booted from the windows disk and let it fix whatever it decided was wrong.

After that the old drive no longer shows being a system drive so I was able to create a backup using the windows utility.

Not sure if this was the best way to do it I will find out when I try to restore from it someday.

Thanks !

Great

The easiest way to fix it, I think, would have been to remove the old disk and boot from a Win7 installation DVD/external drive, and chose to go to command prompt.
Then, simply:



Last line is the only relevant one. Most likely you did not have the bcd file at all - that was the problem.
bootrec /RebuildBCD would have scanned your drive, found the windows installation, asked you a couple of questions, and created the new BCD.

So far, it always worked for me. I even used on a broken RAID set.

No need for external tools. But I've heard a lot of good things about EasyBCD

Easy if you know what you're doing

Geeky fact: BCD files are just unmounted registry hives; you can edit them (if you really know what you're doing) using REG.EXE or RegEdit.

Ah! Geekily cool . I did not know that. I am now curious to see what's inside them.