Solved Attempting my first backup...

Hi all.
I am now dual booting Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8 Professional. I have two internal hard drives in my computer, and each OS is on its own disk. Windows 7 is on disk "0" in the below image and Windows 8 is on disk "1"
as you can see, I have disk 1 split into three partitions, the Windows 8 installation being on the partition labeled: "New Volume (F)" The partition labeled "D" is solely for file storage.

I'm now trying to configure my first Windows 8 backup, and I want to include a system image. I do not, however, need to include the partition labeled "D".

Windows 8 wants to include that partition, as it is labeled "active". How can I make the Windows 8 partition itself the "active" one instead of the partition labeled "D"?

Is it possible to make a system image that just includes a single partition on a hard drive?

Hello Philippo,

When you installed the last OS (Windows 8 ?) while setting up the dual boot, did you have both disks connected at the time?

Yes, I did, W8 was a clean installation.

In that case, you could mark the D: partition as inactive.

Next, test to make sure you are still able to boot to Windows 8 at startup. If not, then boot into Windows 7, and mark the D: partition active again. If yes, then you are good to go, and the partition should no longer be included in the system image by default.

Booted successfully -- worked like a charm, thanks!
Should I mark the Windows 8 partition "active" now or just leave it as it is?

You're welcome.

No, you would want to leave it as is as "inactive".

Almost there, I think...marking the "D" partition as inactive worked and it appears that way in Disk Management also (as seen below)

Windows 8 still wants to include it in the "system image" though, and I simply don't have the room on my external backup drive to do that (if I did, I would just go ahead with it...)

Any more ideas?
Thanks for your guidance so far!
Philip

Did you move anything like your user folders, user profile, page file, etc.... to the D partition?

Could very well be...I was tossing a lot of stuff there to "store" in case one of the OS's went south. I will take a closer look at it when I get a chance later...thanks for the clue.

I finally took a pretty close look at all the data I put on that partition and nothing matches the criteria you mentioned... any other ideas?
Philip

In that case, it's due to the order the partitions were created on Disk 1 (D F I) and D being to the left of the OS partition.

It appears that you may need to wipe Disk 1 to start over to have Windows 8 installed first, then create the other partitions so they will be to the right of the Windows 8 partition.

So if the position of drives in "Disk Management" corrosponds to certain parts of the physical disk itself, would it be possible to temporarily "store" the data than is now in partition "D" on the external drive where I will be eventually putting the system image (if I'm ever successful), formatting the "D" partition, and moving or migrating the Windows 8 installation to that partition?


Or does Windows 8 actually have to be installed (or re-installed) first to reside there?

Sure, you could manually copy and paste any files/folders you like to your external HDD first to not lose any of it.

Next, do a clean install of Windows 8 with the disk being unallocated. Create your partitions when it's finished. Copy what you want back to the new partition from the external.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/13375-clean-install-windows-8-upgrade.html

Afterwards, you should be good to go with the system image, and only having the Windows and system drives included.

Thanks, now I know what my choices are!

You're most welcome.