Can't Boot From Bootable CD -- Bios Set Correctly

I don't need a 32 GB drive.

However, I saw a 256 GB flash drive at USB 2.0 on sale Black Friday and Saturday at Best Buy, and the same size at USB 3.0 at Office Depot, both at the same price of $39.99. The 2.0 one is San Disk, and the 3.0 one is Lexar.

I've been telling a friend that he needs to get one that size so he can make a bootable clone plus an image and backup his laptop. I told him about these sales.

Hi there. How have you been? I hope you survived your winter nicely.

Well, we now have another big update for Windows 10. Ugh, another huge download, and I can't even do a download of that size now, so have to stop all OS updates until I can.

But in the meantime, I want to get ready to do it. And for that, I want to make a current backup image of my internal drive. And in trying to prepare for that, an issue has arisen that you might be able to help me with.

To refresh you:

I am using that external USB-IDE hard drive for the backup. I originally cloned over my OS 8.1 drive to the external. I next did a backup image of that 8.1 drive. And when I went up to Windows 10, I did a Windows 10 backup image to the external drive -- I'm sure you recall that big trouble we had with that, which in the end turned out to be Acronis True Image being far, far off in estimating the size of the image, and so while we thought I had well enough space on the external drive, in fact I was short by a good 15 GB or so. But I killed things out and got it done.

So, now to make room on the external hard drive for a current image of my Windows 10, I want to kill out all those cloned files - we learned I can't boot from them via external IDE drive anyway. That should leave me with more than enough space to make a new, current image backup image.

I tried doing that manually this morning. But it won't let me kill them all out, a LOT of volume of files remains, not letting me kill them out. I get either a message that I need administrator permission to do anything to them, or I need System permission, or I need Trusted Installer permission. Gee, I've never even heard of Trusted Installer!

I was able to kill out all the other files from that clone, but these that I can't take up a lot of GB of space, far too much, leaves me with only about 79 GB of empty space when I will need at least 110 GB, probably more, for the new image.

I am the only user, I am the administrator on this laptop. So I really don't know why it stops me for needing administrator permission, I am that. I do not log in with a password, I have it set with no password. But the user and administrator are one and the same. So, what is the problem here, what do I need to do?

As for needing System permission -- huh? I've never heard of needing System permission before, only administrator permission.

And I've never even heard of Trusted Installer. What is that, how do I get Trusted Installer permission!?

I note, I did the original clone using Partition Wizard 9.1, which you had referred me to during our troubles. I had found in there a way to do a clone. Do you think I need to boot from that - and that will be the administrator it wants privileges from? And the System? And maybe even the Trusted Installer, although I didn't install the OS with it, I only cloned it? If so, gee, I hope that has a function that will allow me to pick and choose files to kill, as I don't want to kill my old OS 8.1 image nor the original OS 10 image (not 10 until AFTER I have this new image, and maybe keep it for some time anyway).

So, any direction you can give me would be appreciated. Thanks.

I note, I did right click onto various of the files, go to Permission in the window that opened, and tried to do something, anything to in effect override the permissions on it. Nothing worked, including trying to kill out Trusted Installer for having any permissions, or System, or anything else that there was a function to do to address things in there.

I am down to only the nuclear approach: drag and drop the image files from the external drive onto my internal drive. Then reformat the external drive, which will erase EVERYTHING. And then drag and drop the image files back onto the external drive. But I don't want to drag and drop those images, as while it MIGHT work, every time you do that you risk a possible corruption, and that could make the images useless. And I would be doing that twice, once off the external and then back onto it. This is an issue of doing these backups with images, you can't test them to make sure they are OK, like you can with a bootable clone if you can boot it. So, I really want to avoid having to do the nuclear approach.

Thanks for any help.

Hi,

Hope you are doing well also... Off and on I wonder how things are going out there...

I have a lot of SoCal webcams saved in my Favorites...

The winter wasn't too bad... rather mild... but the cold keeps lingering...

For your problem... You have two options... You can boot with some type of Linux based program like Partition Wizard, or some other, and delete your unwanted files...

OR change the permissions of the folders you want to delete... Which may not be as difficult as it sounds...

Just using drive C:\ as an example... you can change the Permissions of C:\ and apply the changes to all folders within C:... You don't need to do everyone...

I don't know if Partition Wizard has the ability to delete individual files or not... That is something I have never looked into...

There is a similar program called Parted Magic that has a "File Explorer" that will do what you need... There is a bit of a learning curve as the drives are labeled differently, but are not to difficult to figure out... This would be on the left side of the window...

Once you select a drive the contents will display on the right part of the window as they would in Windows... I will include a link for the version I use as the newer ones are no longer free.... It downloads as a ISO that burns to a CD that will be bootable...  Nothing installs...

http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/getmirror/parted_magic,1.html

I will need to do some checking for the instructions I have written for changing the Permissions... I think they were written for Win 7, and the steps may be slightly different... I will post another reply with them yet today, or tomorrow sometime...

I will also check to see if Partition Wizard will do this... I started writing before I had all my info together !

Thanks about the suggestion to change the permissions of the folder. But that is what I was trying to say at the end, I already tried that, I can't.

I did the right click and then selected Permissions from the menu. The Security tab seems to be where to do that, but it won't let me do anything. That part is greyed out for those folders and files.

I click into the Security tab. and there even is a line saying, to change permissions, click Edit. But when I click Edit, I get a window with a box at the bottom where I could either check or uncheck the permissions wanted. They are all greyed out, I can't do anything there.

I agree, that should be the way to do it. But I can't. Am I missing something?

I'll try booting from the Partition Wizard disk tomorrow. I guess if that doesn't work, I will have to try your download. I hope I can select individual folders and files with that, not erased the whole disk.

This should not be so difficult! This should be fast and easy, completely routine. When you have to ask how to do something like this, it means the software developers screwed up royally.

All is in high bloom now. I wanted to get out to see the poppies, but didn't manage it, and they are on the wane now. But I got out to Elysian Park this week for a spectacular mustard and other bloom all over, truly amazing, very thick.

We had a ton of rain this winter, drought is over. A warmer winter too.