External HD and Archives not detected?

In the course of preparing to use Paragon Drive Backup to secure my data I tested the Recovery CD created with the program. It booted up nicely but the only drives I could see were the local drives I made images of. The archives themselves are on on my external USB drive (Seagate Free Agent). I was unable to see them. Either that or I was unable to recognize them, but I don't think so. Is there a way to handle this?

By the way, I would have sent a screen shot, but I didn't have access to screen scraping software in the recovery environment so I didn't. Sorry.

GL

 

Which produst are you using ?

You would get better hardware support with a winpe disc.

 

Hi SIW2

So far I'm testing the free version. I'm an advanced user but I'm a rank beginner as far as imaging and backup and recovery go. I have to confess I don't know what a winpe disc is.

Not to be disagreeable, but I wouldn't go out and buy one just to make the product work. Just being honest. I would think it would the goal of Paragon to have their software work for all or nearly all commonly encountered environments.

Thanks.

GL

 

The difficulty with the Linux cd that come with any of the free apps. ( not just the paragon apps. ) is they don't have the kind of harware support you get from a WinPe boot disc.

The linux cd's work fine for most setups most of the time - but not for everyone.

WinPe is a mini version of windows. You see it when you install windows ( it's the bit that loads into memory when you boot the install dvd and it runs the rest of the install process from there ).

You also see it when you boot the Vista/7 recovery disc - that loads into memory and runs the starup repair and other repair apps. In that case it is called WinRe.

It is the same environment - a mini version of windows , it is called WinPE ( for preinstallation environment ) or WinRE ( for recovery environment).

The great thing is you can put your own apps. into it , boot it up and perform all kinds of operations from there.

That's what Paragon does - e.g. put a copy of partition manager into a WinPE disc. It runs beautifully , no restarts required as you are operating outside your installed windows and have complete control. It also includes a lot of drivers ( and you can add others in ) so should be able to work with and recognize any hardware.

Unfortunately, tho WinPe is free to individuals, a commercial concern has to pay a license fee to MS to use it in their products. That's why you don't get it with any free products.

You can make your own free and quite easily.

Simply copy and paste the contents of the win7 32 bit recovery cd onto your drive ( e.g. C ).

D/l this http://cid-b0a22789320e3247.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/pe/Parpecreators2.zip


Then rt click and Run As Admin on the 7 pecreator .cmd ( if you are in win 7), or the XPVpecreator.cmd ( if you are in XP or Vista ), and it will make one for you in a couple of minutes.


NB It doesn't matter what bit version your installed o/s is - you use the 32 bit recovery disc to make it.

If you haven't got one to hand , d/l from here: http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

 

Thank you for that detailed description! I'll give it a try. GL