Backup onto Flashdrive problem

[Oli Perrett]

Hi, I've just bought this new computer and am trying to backup Windows 10 to a USB Flashdrive as instructed by guy in the shop. However, it keeps saying 'the drive is not a valid backup location', any ideas? I've already formatted the flashdrive to NFTS as requested on screen but still no joy. Thanks

 

[Norton]

You don't mention the size of your flash drive. If you are just backing up personal files then try reformatting your USB drive for FAT 32. Fat 32 will work on any machine. Fat32 has limitations of 4GB on large files. I have Win 10 and Fat 32 USB drives work well.

 

[Oli Perrett]

You don't mention the size of your flash drive. If you are just backing up personal files then try reformatting your USB drive for FAT 32. Fat 32 will work on any machine. Fat32 has limitations of 4GB on large files. I have Win 10 and Fat 32 USB drives work well.

Hi, I've tried a 32 and 64GB Sandisc flashdrive both say same thing. When I go to Create a system image it says it needs to be formatted to NTFS, but when I do that it then says 'the drive is not a valid backup location'. I'm trying to backup the Windows 10 operating system. THANKS

 

[Norton]

Check and see if the device is identified as active, Control Panel>Administrative Tools> Computer Management> click on Disk Management. Your portable device should be marked as active. If not, right click on the device and mark as active. Your machine should now have the ability to identify the device.
Good Luck!

 

[Saltgrass]

When you say backing up there are several possible versions of that comment.

If you are using the Windows Imaging utility and want to make a system image, there are requirements for the device to hold that image. I use a secondary internal drive but you can use external drives or network locations. You can now even create the image on the same drive although having it there might not be a good idea if the hard drive were to fail. You could copy or move the image for safe keeping.

If you have a new system it is more than likely a UEFI install which has certain requirements for a bootable device which is where creating a Bootable USB drive, which you are not doing, would need to be FAT 32.

A recovery drive will create an image of your current Windows 10 install and then use the images in the Recovery partition to give you a modified factory reinstall, if you wanted to do that.