Why can't I back up my SSD to my HDD

I'm trying to backup my SSD onto my HDD but windows just tells me that you can't backup to a drive which the computer boots up from or windows is installed on.

But my HDD doesn't have windows on it. I made sure it wasn't even plugged in when installing windows. So why doesn't it work, please help???

I have 3 drives an ssd, hdd and disk drive. The ssd doesn't show up in that list you saw because I'm trying to back up the SSD. I can assure you I didn't install windows on my HDD trust me if I did it would be allot slower to boot

Have you checked in the BIOS to see if your HDD is assigned as the primary boot device?

 

From what little I could understand, it looks like your SSD still has a boot flag assigned to the partition that you're trying to use for your backup(s). Either that, or you really do have Windows installed on the HDD even though you're NOT actually booting from it -- Microsoft is "funny" that way. This can get very messy if you don't understand drive partitioning very well. Therefore, I'd suggest looking into backing up to a VHD (Virtual Hard Drive) or possibly even an ISO. Once you "mount" your virtual drive (VHD or ISO), whatever you use for backing up will see it as a completely different drive, drive letter and all -- voila!

The Windows "Disk Management" tool will allow you to create a .vhd just about anywhere -- even on a boot drive. And you can mount .vhd's in a virtual machine (like VirtualBox) too. But the the tricky part would be making the .vhd big enough to accept whatever you're backing up. There's also the consideration of file/drive compression (assuming you allow it) so that you can actually stuff that 10 pounds of (pronoun omitted) into that 5 pound bag.

Of course, using a virtual hard drive (VHD) can be a bit tricky when it comes to restoring whatever you backed up. And there is the fact that all your stuff is now in one freaking huge file too. But personally, I like using VHD's especially for saving Windows system images (hint hint).

It's important to not confuse a system image for a "backup" even though an image can be used that way. Backing up an entire drive in one image is way overkill if all you want to keep is your user data. Nevertheless, I use VHD's because I can much more easily manipulate that one huge .vhd file than always looking for one specific real world HDD, thumb drive or whatever. I can also keep all of my VHD's in one place too -- like on a file server. But really, I especially enjoy using VHD's (and the system image contained within) for those times when I need to reinstall Windows! I do it because it's almost a pleasure to reinstall Windows that has already been activated and has most of those annoying system updates already applied.

Of course, you may opt for using ISO's since there's really no reason you can't make one enormous ISO. I just shy away from using ISO's since they're mostly intended as read-only type devices like an optical drive. But either way you look at it, using a virtual drive may be the solution you need instead of banging you head on the wall trying to figure out why Microsoft won't let you use the real drive that you want to use.

... Then again, it could be that the drive you're trying to back up to is too small to accept all the stuff you're trying to back up (maybe I should have said that first).

Hope it helps.

 

I'm trying to update a 120gb ssd to my 1tb HDD.... So I don't think that is the problem. Also I did have windows installed on my HDD prior to buying my SSD. However when I bought my ssd and installed windows on it I wiped my HDD. There are no windows files I can see on it. I will mess about in the BIOS a bit today

DBAN the hdd, change to another sata port or chuck it in a usb enclosure and backup from there.