Windows 8.1 Recovery Won't Recognise External Hard Drive

[KYHI]

But no option to select it? Bios finds it on restart - MBR the same -

don't know what else to tell you..

is the image in a certain folder? maybe move contents to the root?

I use a small SSD for my windows drive and use a second HDD both internal and external as a DATA drive.. That way if windows ever goes poop, my data is not on the same drive as windows..

Not sure how to or if we can use the windows system image - but you still have access to the DATA files on the old HDD

 

[coleyman]

But no option to select it? Bios finds it on restart - MBR the same -

don't know what else to tell you..

is the image in a certain folder? maybe move contents to the root?

I use a small SSD for my windows drive and use a second HDD both internal and external as a DATA drive.. That way if windows ever goes poop, my data is not on the same drive as windows..

Not sure how to or if we can use the windows system image - but you still have access to the DATA files on the old HDD

The image is in a folder named WindowsImageBackup, which Windows created during the recovery process. This folder is in the root of the external HDD. There's a couple of folders inside this (one for my PC name, then in there 4 more folders and a file named 'MediaId').

One of the folders is called 'Backup [date and time of backup]' and appears to contain the image. Should this be moved to the root? I assumed that since Windows created this folder structure it should be able to pick up images inside it.

 

[KYHI]

it should find that drive and that folder or at least one would think it should..

maybe somebody else with more knowledge of windows system backups can help..

I do not know what else to tell you..

 

[David Bailey]

For future reference---

The backup is over 400 GBs in size ...

A picture--{It seems you cloned your entire system ?}[unless you have a lot of music & videos ?]



KYHI is doing pretty good helping.
I was just curious about the size of the backup.

 

[coleyman]

it should find that drive and that folder or at least one would think it should..

maybe somebody else with more knowledge of windows system backups can help..

I do not know what else to tell you..

That's fair enough, thank you for the help!

For future reference---

The backup is over 400 GBs in size ...

A picture--{It seems you cloned your entire system ?}[unless you have a lot of music & videos ?]

View attachment 57067

KYHI is doing pretty good helping.
I was just curious about the size of the backup.

Well, I have a lot of Steam games installed on my old hard drive, so it's very likely that the backup actually is 400GB in size!

If I had backed up the free space, then surely the image would be the full 1TB in size?

 

[KYHI]

Your old DATA is still on the old 1TB HDD copy it over..

 

[David Bailey]

Just a thought.

Would enabling boot menu in BIOS help ?
Have the external drive connected, press the assigned F key to bring up Boot Manager & select the drive to boot from ?

 

[coleyman]

Just a thought.

Would enabling boot menu in BIOS help ?
Have the external drive connected, press the assigned F key to bring up Boot Manager & select the drive to boot from ?

So try and boot from the ext. HDD?

 

[KYHI]

see post 19
http://www.eightforums.com/performa...e-restore-usb-external-drive-windows-8-a.html

also
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754015.aspx

 

[KYHI]

Just a thought.

Would enabling boot menu in BIOS help ?
Have the external drive connected, press the assigned F key to bring up Boot Manager & select the drive to boot from ?

Yes there is an option to make image bootable media,

restart pc press F12 to get to boot options menu and see if ext HDD there

 

[David Bailey]

Just a thought.

Would enabling boot menu in BIOS help ?
Have the external drive connected, press the assigned F key to bring up Boot Manager & select the drive to boot from ?

So try and boot from the ext. HDD?

Unless you have already tried it.
It is something to try.

 

[dexx]

This is an annoying problem on Windows 7 and 8 (and 8.1) systems. You create a system image on an external drive but when you boot from a Windows recovery disk, it claims no backup exists. Yet you can start a command prompt from the recovery disk and see the external drive is accessible and the image is there. The only solution ive found is to reinstall your OS and, once its booted, then you can restore the system image. This effectively makes Microsoft's recovery disk useless.