create Disc Image failure: 'drive full'

[jeffowen]

In Windows 7 pro I am trying to create a Disc Image on my Seagate 3Tb external hard drive. I can copy files by dragging and dropping to the drive and it has about 750Gb on i.e. 1/5 full.

When I use the Windows backup program to create a disc image it starts to prepare the transfer but stops saying there is not enough memory!

My PC has a 1Tb hard drive and is currently 3/4 full so there should be more than enough space on the external drive (~ 2.1Tb) to create a disc image.

I have had the Seagate drive for a couple of years now and I have never been able to use the built in backup programs properly so I deleted all the supplied programs and just used the drive to copy my files manually. Is it possible that there is something still on the drive that is not showing?

 

[beers]

I'd do a chkdsk /r F: against it just to verify that the file table contains the correct information.

Personally I'd just use something like dd if you wanted to make a complete mirror of your drive. You can boot from a Linux LiveCD, mount your internal hard drive as read only and then dd copy your drive to a file on the external for a 1:1 bit level backup.

 

[jeffowen]

I am not familiar with the dd copy command so I did some checking and got somewhat confused particularly about the warnings about getting the correct copying protocol.
I will do a chkdsk on my F: drive and see what it says. I have absolutely no faith in my Seagate drive and will probably get a replacement to do the disc image work.