USB drive not seen

I have Acronis 10.0. I want to use my WD Passport 120GB USB drive. Windows XP SP2 sees it fine. I can create a Secure Zone on it and back up to it using Acronis True Image. I can backup to a file on the drive too. But when I boot from the recovery CD (in full mode, not safe), it does not see the WD USB drive. How can I restore from it if it can't be seen?

I have two objectives: 1. Clone my current laptop HD to another one (I was going to use the Passport as the intermediate drive). Acronis clone from recovery disk does not see my USB drive either (I can write to it when I boot from my C: drive). 2. Perform regular full image backups of my laptop internal HD to my Passport drive and be able to use the backups to restore to the same or a new HD in the laptop if needed.

 

Yes, I also have the same problem in my new Intel Core 2 duo machine, the extenal USB drive is not recognized.

I guess that Acronis cannot detect the USB ports in those new brand computers?

 

The CD runs Linux and that is what lacks the latest drivers to be able to access your hardware. the linux used on the CD always lags windows. Sometimes Acronis will offer updated drivers via custom iso file that you can burn to CD -- but generally, driver updates come with new builds of ATI. Drivers for Win oare usually produced much earlier. The lag in linux drivers is probalby the biggest weakness in ATI, the underlying reason for many if not most problems that are reported re can't recognize drive, can't validate archive, can run backup, can't restore.

 

The workaround (I know, you shouldn't have to do this) that many of us use is to create a BartPE cd that includes the True Image plug-in. When you boot with the BartPE cd and run True Image from it, the usb drives will be seen.

 

What is a BartPE CD and how do I create one? Alternatively, are there other similar products that do work with USB drives that I could switch to?

 

Read this Begginer's Guide to Creating a BartPE CD.

 

I tried this but it failed during the slipstream. Perhaps because I have Windows XP PC Tablet Edition SP2 (not really Win XP Pro or Home).

Does Ghost have this same problem?

 

i have the same problem with my usb external HD. windows xp sees it fine (as do other utilities) but true image does not. are there any other methods to help true image recognise the hard drive?

 

I got Ghost 12.0 and it works fine with my USB drive. Norton Save and Restore will probably work fine too (I believe it includes Ghost 10 or 11).

Lionel

 

ok...i didn't know that you needed to boot from a recovery CD, so i made one and it does recognise my usb external - sort of.

i booted in full mode and attempted to clone my C: (250gb) to E: (300gb). after scanning thru C: with no problem, it ran into some read errors on E: "failed to read sector 727,050,355 on hard drive 2". i got about 10 of these and "ignored" them.

it then displayed the 2 hard drive stats and their partition bars on the bottom, but as i attempted to go from there, it suddenly froze and restarted my computer. it's done this a few times and i don't know what to do because the hard drive is only about 6 months old and passes all scan disk tests.

any suggestions as to other options in True Image or possibly a superior formatting program to that of winodws ?

anything, thanks