Macrium Linux Rescue CD - external USB drive problem

I have a new Win 7 64-bit system that I purchased for my wife and I have made a backup image to an external USB hard drive. I can see the drive and save images to it while in Windows but once I boot from the Linux restore disc the USB drive isn't recognized.

While still under the Linux recovery environment if I unplug the drive, hit refresh in the Macrium options, then plug the drive back in and hit refresh again, the drive will show up. Sometimes after this I can briefly see the images on the drive (until I try to switch folders) but generally I can't open the folders the images are in on the drive.

I have used Macrium on my other computers for quite a while and have never had any problems. Anyone have any ideas of what the problem might be in this instance?

 

Hi Firebytes

For this problem, the general consensus over on the Macrium forum seems to be that you should:

1. Try creating the Linux disk in 'Compatibility Mode' (under Advanced on the CD burn page)

2. If that doesn't resolve things, try a different external drive.

3. If still no joy, try a BartPE disk - see here.

If it makes you feel any better, I have a Samsung Q330 that simply will not boot to the WinPE recovery environment no matter what I try

 

Thanks for responding philby.

1. I already tried compatibility mode and it didn't work.

2. I hate to buy another drive and it possibly not work either.

3. I don't think BartPE works with Win7 64-bit.

Maybe I am just out of luck. I seem to run into a lot of things that have no easy solution.

I really appreciate your help though.

 

You're quite right about BartPE/64bit.

Maybe you could buy the WinPE license - still cheaper than a new drive...

Sorry I couldn't help more - hope you get it resolved.

EDIT: If it's just that one machine where Macrium is failing, and you don't want to buy the WinPE license, you could settle for creating / restoring the system image with Windows' native backup - that's what I've had to do on the Samsung. I'm sure you knew that already though...

 

A solution is to create a bartPE project using windows XP source, if you still have a copy of that around. With win7 x86 you could use something like Win7Rescue project.

There is sometimes confusion regarding bartPE. Not that you are confused, as I have no way of telling. But I have seen mention many times that bartPE is not for win7, or thoughts similar.

Just for clarity, it does not matter if you use a bartPE disc based on XP to restore a windows 7 machine, nor does it matter if you use a win7rescue disc based on win7 to restore an XP machine. The PE environment is its own OS, and as long as the macrium plugin works in the environment, and can see the drives with the image and the drives to restore, it will work.

Don't know if that helps, hopefully so. I made bartPE discs from XP Pro and used win7rescuePE with macrium plugins, works very well as long as the PE finds all my hardware properly.

Sul.

 

I believe I have found the solution to my problem. The USB ports on the laptop didin't have enough power to run the external hard drive properly.

I have a powered USB hub connected to my desktop due to its own lack of enough USB ports. I connected it to the laptop and ran the external hard drive from it and I could see the drive and navigate it with no problems. I believe that the laptop was just not supplying sufficient power to the external hard drive on its own. I have only had time to try it the once so far but it seems to have been the problem.

My hypothesis - Toshiba has some software running in Windows that to my understanding manages power to the USB ports. When booting Macrium's Linux rescue disc that software isn't running and the USB ports are underpowered.

 

Firebytes,

Does your USB external HD have a cable with 1 or 2 USB plugs? Some HDs don't get enough power unless they are plugged into 2 USB sockets.

 

It only has the one cable and one plug.

I am content though, as I can now perform backups as long as I use it with the powered hub when restoring an image on the Toshiba.

On my other systems it functions fine right off of their USB ports with no need for the powered hub.

 

Hi,

This is FOUR years later.. I hope you are still reading.

I have the same problem.
Created a macrium rescue CD.
Got an external HD drive with USB connections.
Re formatted the External drive to USB to overcome the 4GB file limit of a single file.
Made two different Partition backups onto the external drive.

Booted from the Macrium disk.
- Observe startup window.
- "Restore Wizard" starts and asks for image of previously restored image
- Select the drive shown that has the label of the partition.

At this point, it fails.

The backup image is not loaded into the table with the labels:
"Backup Date", "Type", and "ID".

If I select/pound/hit/mash Next, a pop-up comes up and says to
select a location containing valid image backup image

Yes, I tried a dual power plug USB cable.
Yes, under Windows XP, I can see the files.

At first, I thought that the rescue disk could'nt read an NTFS-formatted disk - but, then, when expanding a selection, it displayed sub-directories.

I'm stumped.
Do I need to drop Macrium?

I paid $$ for Acronis. But when loading it, it wiped out Dell's system recovery partition to load itself.
Egad. Paid more $$ for online help. Gave up after 6 messages.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Jay

~ Removed Duplicated Text ~

 

I have not had much luck on two of my computers with the Macrium Linux CD.
You might want to give Todo Backup a try. It has file backup capability and also a scheduler to time your backups. I have found that the Restore CD of Todo to be better. The other option is to pay for Macrium and then they give you a iso based on WINPE which will probably see your drive.