This question seems to keep coming up in Microsoft Answers. Unfortunately, it never seems to be solved... on Microsoft Answers. Hopefully someone here will have a better idea.

I'm trying to create a system image. It's not working.

I have just re-installed windows as of a few hours ago. I have an admittedly older Western Digital 148 GB USB portable HDD which is not just completely empty, but I even did a long format with the NTFS file system just to be sure. The reinstallation of windows and a couple of programs take up 40 GB (seen below)

When I try to create a System Image onto the USB HDD, I am told that there is not enough room. Obviously, this is wrong. The screen captures show exactly the steps that are happening to lead me to 0x80780119.

I haven't done anything but put on Windows 7 (32bit; SP1) and install some programs. I haven't even done anything with them. There's almost zero in the way of data, and I checked that yes, the HDD works to accept data, send data and work with data. I've used the drive successfully for a long, long time.

What's going wrong?