External USB drive not recognized at bootup, only from desktop

Hi, I'm new to this board. I bought 8.0 a year ago, but didn't install until recently.

Problem:

On reboot, the motherboard does not recognize my external USB drive. Neither does the Acronis Boot CD. I have tried turning off the "USB host controller" in the BIOS but that didn't work. The BIOS has no "USB legacy" setting. Once I get to the desktop, the USB drive is easily recognized by everything. So, I can only clone (in either direction) from the desktop....and if the C drive crashes, I won't be able to restore from an attempted boot.

I did a search but haven't found any specific answer.

I'm using Acronis 8.0, which only requires a reboot to make a clone. I tried Build 937, but it required the computer to be switched off before cloning could occur, so I went back to 8.0. (Full clone only takes 20 minutes.)

My system info is:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Version 5.0.2195 Service Pack 4 Build 2195
System Manufacturer NVIDIA
System Model AWRDACPI X86-based PC
Processor Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1 Authentic AMD ~2162 Mhz
BIOS Version Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Boot Device \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
Locale United States
Total Physical Memory 1,048,048 KB
C drive 80 gig Western Digital
USB drive 40 gig IBM in Vantec NexStar 3 enclosure

The motherboard is 2 years old and I would have thought it should have a setting for USB drives, but it only has ones for USB keyboard and USB mouse.


Thanks for any advice.

 

By "motherboard does not recognize my external USB drive", are you expecting it to be showing in what is called the "Power On Self Test" screens along with the main hard drive and CD (if any)? If so, then the answer is it will not because at that time the USB drivers are not loaded yet. Only until Windows loads will it show up.

Your other problem with TI not showing it could be because that version does not have the usb drivers for your enclosure. Try the latest version 9 build 2323 - even just the trial version boot CD should recognize your external usb device.

 

Yes at the time I was, but not now.

Tried it, and it worked. I went ahead and ordered the upgrade ($17.99) and installed it. It didn't seem logical that my ATI 8.0 would omit recognition of USB external drives, but it was in fact deficient.

Thanks for the help.

 

Glad to hear the problem is solved.