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How to fix 'The drive is not a valid backup location' in Windows 10/8/7
"Getting error message 'Drive is not a valid backup location' while trying to create a system image to USB flash drive in Windows 10. Is there any way to fix the issue?"
It's a question that asked by one of the Windows 10 users on the Microsoft Community. And many users who running Windows 8, 8.1, 7 have admitted that they suffered the same issue as Windows Backup and Restore feature does not support thumb drives as backup storage. But don't worry! Here, we will offer two useful solutions to troubleshoot the problem.
1. Recommend: Create system image on USB with a third-party backup tool
The third-party backup tool is the easiest solution for 'The drive is not a valid backup location' issue. Here, EaseUS Todo Backup is a nice choice. As a professional software, it is the best alternative tool when Windows 10 backup doesn't work properly. Now you can download and try it to create a system image on your USB flash drive in Windows 10/8/7 or other versions in just 3 simple steps.
Step 1. Empty the USB Flash Drive
- 1. Make sure that your USB flash drive is as big as or even bigger than your current system C drive.
- 2. System Backup will overwrite all existing data on the USB, please also empty your USB flash drive if you saved important data there.
Step 2. Backup Windows System to USB
1. Connect the USB to your PC and run EaseUS Todo Backup.
Click the icon at the left top corner, select System Backup on the left tool pane.
2. Select the Windows system and click Browse to select USB as your backup destination.
If you want to create a backup plan to automatically backing up your Windows OS at a certain frequency, click Schedule: Off and set to backup your OS by day, by week or even by month.
You can also click Upon Event to set automatically backup your OS to USB everytime when it's plugged in your computer.
3. After this, click Proceed to start backing up your Windows OS to USB now.
If you've created an automatic backup plan for Windows OS backup, EaseUS Todo Backup will automatically to run and back up your OS after the first full backup.
2. Create a directory on the USB drive
Except for a third-party backup tool, you can also try to troubleshoot 'The drive is not a valid backup location' problem by creating a directory on a USB drive. The only disadvantage is that it takes much more steps to manage the job.
1. Format the USB stick with NTFS.
2. Share the USB stick as a network drive.
- Create a directory on your USB drive.
- Right-click the directory and choose "Share with", "Specific people".
- Choose yourself from the list of users and click Share and Done.
3. Ensure the advanced share allow permissions are set to full control.
4. Start Windows Backup and select System Image.
5. Select the network drive as your backup location.
6. Browse to your own computer and select the USB share.
7. Enter your computer's login credentials, if your password is blank use 1 space and click OK.
After all the above steps, Windows Backup and Restore will start to create a system image on your USB flash drive and 'The drive is not a valid backup location' error will no longer happen at most times.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- Why choose EaseUS Todo Backup?
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"The easiest way to protect your data and system files." —techradar
"EaseUS Todo Backup Free is one of the most popular free data backup applications available. This software offers a myriad of features and is extremely user-friendly. It provides a full system backup, meaning you can back up your entire operating system." —TopTenReviews
"EaseUS ToDo Backup Home is a great backup program, well suited to the home and SMB space." —PCWorld
- What is the difference between Clone and Backup? In what cases should I use Clone?
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Clone will copy one disk to another or one partition to another (unallocated space is also supported). Usually, this option is used to upgrade the current disk by creating an identical copy. Backup will generate a .PBD image file containing the selected files or system that can be restored from the .PBD image if needed.
- What is the difference between System Backup and Disk Backup?
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System Backup will auto-select the system boot related partition(s) as the backup source to make sure the system image can be restored properly. Disk/Partition Backup will allow you to manually select a whole disk or speficy a certain partition as the backup source. You will get the same backup result as System Backup if you manually select the system and boot partitions with the Disk/Partition Backup option.
- As a computer newbie, what features should I use to protect my computer?
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You can use System Backup to back up the system and boot partitions, use Disk/Partition backup to back up the data partition and add plans to run an automatic backup. If you use the computer frequently or have software that may cause boot failure of the computer, we would suggest you back up the computer every 1 to 2 days. For other situations, you can backup the computer once a week. In addition, you can schedule File Backup to back up the files which are changed frequently.
- What kind of storage service should I use to save my backup images?
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EaseUS Todo Backup can save backup images to internal disks, external disks, network drives, or free cloud(Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive) and CD/DVD. It is suggested to save the images to the internal/external/network drives to save time as those kinds of disks have a better read-write speed. It is suggested NOT to save the image on the source disk, because once the disk is damaged, all the files on the disk will become unavailable and you will be unable to restore the image.
- As a company network administrator, what features should I use to protect our internal computers?
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It is recommended that you use the SQL Backup feature to back up your company's SQL server and Exchange Backup feature to back up the Exchange server. In addition, you can execute System Backup to back up the system and boot partitions on every computer and set a plan to execute the backup once a day or twice a week to ensure that the computer can be restored timely when it has boot issues. File Backup feature can be used to back up important user data. If there are a large quantity of computers, you can purchase EaseUS Backup Center to manage the backups on the client computers centrally.
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About EaseUS Todo Backup
Be it a file, system, partition, or disk, EaseUS Todo Backup will help you back up or clone the item and provide you with multiple backup plans.