Hello! I'm trying to set up the Backup to an internal hard drive called Z: After originally installing win 7 64bit, I had to manually assign a drive letter to the hd before windows would see it. This HD has nothing on it and is not used often so its perfect for my windows backup. However, when I start the backup setup - it does not list that hard drive in my options to backup to. When I manually goto CMD to run "wbadmin start backup -backuptarget:f: -include:c:" it gives me the error saying the HD is read-only and cannot store backups. Under disk management, I am not allowed to reformat the z: drive - it says "Windows cannot format the system partition on this disk." It lists the Z: drive as being system, active, primary partition - WHY DOES WINDOWS THINK IT IS THE SYSTEM HD? It has 100% free space according to diskmanagement. I ran a chkdsk on z: (it is still going on step 5) and there doesn't seem to be any errors yet :/ Any suggestions? Thanks!

Did you partition the drive with 3rd party software? Have you tried deleting all the partitions on the disk in the disk management console then recreating and formatting them?Kerry Brown MS-MVP - Windows Desktop Experience

Hey Kerry, I have not used third party software. Also, I am only given the option to shrink the partition (single partition), not delete. I assume this is because it is a system/active drive for some reasons? Thanks for your reply!

Are any other partitiions showing up as the System partition? Was this drive hooked up while you were installing Windows 7? It sounds like it was and somehow the boot files are on this drive. You could confirm this disconnecting the drive then trying to boot the computer. If it doesn't boot then that is the problem. With the drive disconnected you should be able to boot from the Windows 7 DVD and use the Startup Repair to create the boot files on a different drive. You will probably have to reboot to the DVD running the Startup Repair several times as the repair will need to do things like set the active partition then reboot before it can continue. Whatever you do make sure you have a backup before you start this. You will also need to make sure the BIOS is set to boot from the correct hard drive. Once you can boot with the drive disconnected you should be able to connect it and repartition and format it.Kerry Brown MS-MVP - Windows Desktop Experience