Thinkpads Forum

Hey guys,

I partitioned my drive to run xp with win7 and when I try to run a backup I get the following error message...

"please set the drive letters as they were previously and retry the backup. you may need to exclude partitions created since the last backup."

My guess is that you've installed either W7 or XP since your last backup, the drive and/or partition letters have changed, and now the R&R backup program is scratching it's head because it can't find any files in the same lettered partitions where they were before. I 'think' if you delete your last backup and start again it will learn the new drive letters, or there may be a way to define the new drive letters in the backup program....don't recall and I don't run it on my machines.

Before it was backing up C: with no problem. Now that it's C: and E: it gives the error. I tried to find a way to define the new drive letters but couldn't figure out how. I'm not sure I want to delete my previous backups because xp has been giving me a lot of problems recently. I guess my worst case scenario would be to run a restore to a previous backup and then install win7 again?

Well, I am not a multi-boot guru by any means, so personally I'd take a simpler approach. I'd restore to a previous backup and make sure that backups are now working. Then I'd get a separate SATA drive and a 2nd SATA hard disk adapter, and install W7 on it with the main drive out of the machine. That way XP and W7 don't interfere with each other. Then when you boot each time, hit F12 to get to the boot menu. Then select to boot either the XP or the W7 drive. I'm sure there is a more elegant approach to dual booting (2) Windows OS's on the same drive, try a google search or perhaps a multi-boot guru will chime in here. The other thought here is that the Thinkvantage backup program was not designed to work in a multi-boot environment, which you've discovered the hard way.

You're completely right. Since thinkvantage has a problem with multi boots that's probably the safest way to do it - on a separate drive. So I guess that's what I'll do. Thanks for your help.