Complete PC Backup - D: has turned into a system disk

[Eivind Gussiås Løkseth]

I started using Vista's complete PC backup once Vista was installed on my
computer. I have two physical disks, one partition on each. The first
backups were stored on my second disk, D:, so I have a folder named
WindowsImageBackup on that drive. The last backup is from november 20th
2007.

Now I would like to take a new complete PC backup, but somehow my D: is now
considered a system disk by Vista, which makes it impossible to store the
backup on D:. I've attached an external hard drive, which is large enough to
store a backup of my C:, but not both C: and D:. Since D: is now a system
disk, I cannot choose not to back it up.

So my question is, how do I make D: not be a system disk again? I noticed
that there has been created a Visual Studio 9 folder with some Common7 sub
folder for WiX (Windows Installer XML), so I uninstalled WiX, and that
folder was removed from D:. I've also installed Ubuntu Linux to use D: as a
storage for virtual harddrives, so I tried uninstall Ubuntu Linux also.

Now the only folders left on my D: drive are:
-$RECYCLE.BIN (the recycle bin folder for D
-Stuff (a shared folder which contains junk)
-System Volume Information (only accessible by the special SYSTEM user)
-Virtual Machines (a folder for all virtual machines used by Virtual PC)
-WindowsImageBackup (which contains the first complete PC backups from
2007)

The root of D: also contains a msdia80.dll file, which I'm not sure what is
and how it got there.

 

[Eivind Gussiås Løkseth]

I found a post by someone else having the same problem.

The backup utility is also available from the command prompt, and from there
it is possible to create a full backup of only the C: drive. So hopefully
the backup will be usable for recovery if needed, even if the D: isn't part
of the backup.

I used the command util with the following parameters:
wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:G: -include:C: -vssFull

 

[Eivind Gussiås Løkseth]

My solution was to do a complete PC restore back to 2007. Then Vista no
longer insisted that the D: disk was a system disk. So after applying all
Windows updates, installing SP1 again and loosing a lot of content, I was
able to perform a complete PC backup again. And all this just to test Visual
Studio 2008 SP1 Beta...