your question is a little confusing.. your hard drives are all fine.."Active" is associated with System Files .. if a HD is not marked with "Active" then it's used mainly for Backing up and storage.. as for the paging file question: - to really gain performance.. you have to use a separate Hard Drive.. (you should not use a partition created on the same hard drive where your current memory wapping is located) - then go to Advanced Tab and relocate the memory swapping location to the new HD .. - you'll notice a difference when playing games or using resource-intensive programs.. i do this for my VMware .. helps tremendously
AFAIK, you cannot backup to a system partition, which is what F: shows up as. This naming convention is very strange. System partition is where the files needed to boot the computer are located. It is normally the first primary partition on the first disk enumerated by the computer's bios. The Boot partition can be located on any other disk and contains the files for the windows os (among other things). Looks like you have a dual boot system where one of your windows 7 versions is installed on C: and another on F:? Or did you have a previous vista install? What you can do is shrink F: and create a simple volume, ntfs and and assign a drive letter to it. It should show up as logical in the disk management window and it should not be marked system. Make sure it isnt very small, if necessary relocate some files from F:. Then try the backup again, your new partition should show up as a target.
Did you install Windows 7 to an already partitioned harddisk ? Windows 7 wants to put its bootmanager somewhere, normally (installing Windows 7 to a non partitioned harddisk) it creates a 100mb partition, makes it system, active and primary and puts the bootmanager bootmgr there (among other things). In your case it looks like it chose F: for the bootmanager. If you want to change that, it's possible, but beware! Your Windows 7 won't boot if you are not careful. Anyway, it would be better to make backups to external harddisks, they are pretty cheap nowadays. One thing I learned the hard way (and this would have helped you too): - if you have more than one harddisk - no multiboot with several operating systems - install Windows 7 (or whatever) - unplug power cable from all harddisks, except harddisk where you want Windows 7 - install Windows 7 - after installation plug in power cables again This won't help you now, but saves you a lot of trouble in the future, it did for me
yes, the hard disk had 1 partition (D:, above, with data on it), and a clump of free space from me deleting C: and the 100mb partition (win7 RC) during windows 7 retail install. I figured it would create a 100mb partition and a new C: (which was there before) should I have left the 100MB partition alone? I also thought of that after the fact. heh. good tip. yes, I want to move the NTLDR stuff from F: to a 100MB partition on the drive along with C:\ and D:\, or at least put it on C:\, and I want my F:\ not to be flagged as system how do I do this? is it as easy as copying the files from F:\ to where I want them?
to be honest I'm trying to do this without using third party tools. I could backup to DVD or to E:\ if I want to.. your solution does not solve the problem that F:\ is set as system. how do I fix that? does anyone know why MS prohibits backing up to a drive set as System. why do they care? can't I make my own decision? I guess you are right it is not really a mature backup solution.. but still I want to try to use it without involving third party tools.
You can keep trying but will never get anywhere without using 3rd party tools that can change drive letters make bootable or move partitons around.
I still don't understand how disconnecting hard drives and putting a loader on C:\ is going to magically remove the loader from F:\ I also don't understand how a 3rd party backup tool is going to do that. so really, you guys keep telling me to use 3rd party, yet it offers no real solution. I want to use Backup & Restore. therefore, as a rule, there is no third party solution. if you think I am being stubborn, you are correct. I feel I should robocopy D:\ to F:\ before I do anything just to be safe, then I can work on putting a loader on C:\. but the question remains, how do I remove System "status" from drive F:\ ?
Of course it is not done in one step, why should it be ? Normally if I see a bad system configuration as yours, I tell the user to backup important data and start over. There is so much wrong with it (ALL your harddisks are misconfigured and may make trouble in the future), that a simple single step is not enough.
I used Daz's Win7 loader, is there anything special I need to do regarding that before I try this type of thing? how should they be configured? what kind of trouble are you talking about? I set E:\ inactive using diskpart. I figure I can get C:\ to be active and system by what herrkarl says, then make F:\ inactive and delete files related to booting, but will it still be marked as system? urie says I am required to use a 3rd party tool, if so, which one?
Good work - however Acronis would have done the backup straight off, allowed you to boot from it to make sure it is OK, allow you to install software in Try and Decide mode to see if it breaks your system, restore from a hard disk boot rather than a DVD boot plus a host of other useful things that Windows native tools cannot.