Trying to create a system image for my new Windows 7 build and what makes no sense is that it wants to format my DVD-R disc before writing to it. If it were a DVD-RW disc, it would make sense, but my DVD-R's are a 1 time burn type disc. At the END of burning the first disc I get the folloing error complaining about  the media as SHOWN in this screenshot. Do you really need DVD-RW's to create an image using the built in System Image utility???

What stinks also is that my Ghost 2003 can not image this Windows 7 system as well, and I refuse to buy $$$$Enterprise$$$$$ Symantec Ghost to have all the features that 2003 has. Was hoping the built in system image utility of Win 7 would be the free solution....

[recovering disk space - old attachment deleted by admin]It could just be a problem with the disks.

Have you tried Macrium Reflect? A quick Google search using the words of that error message revealed that many people have had trouble using Windows 7 image backup feature with DVD disks. The "formatting" message can be ignored, but the crapping out part way through a disk seems to be quite common. Especially with some hardware (Dell got mentioned). Some have suggested the problem may be that the burn is done too fast for many disk brand/burner combinations. I use image backup once a week with each of 2 USB external HDDS alternately.
Well update to this is that I ENDED up putting an old external USB 80GB HD to good use and was ABLE to create an image to that drive. At the end of this it gave option to create a bootable DVD disc that can be used with the external drive now and the 11GB image to build the system back from.

My hardware is 2003 model Compaq Presario computer tower case with brand new Biostar motherboard with Athlon II X2 2.5Ghz, 4GB Ram, 550 Watt PSU, 500GB SATA HD, and the burner is a SATA LG Brand 16X DVD-RW Burner. (Skimped on the case for my new computer build, but all guts including PSU are new) * The original single core AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2.08Ghz) just wasnt fast enough anymore for my needs and was retired after almost 8 good years of operation.