DD 10 and finding hard drive woes
I have 4 hard drives. 2 are internal 640 GB hard drives and 2 are external 1000 GB hard drives off of a built-in Raid controller. The external hard drives are not setup as Raid drives, just as regular non-raid drives.
What follows are the situations in which DD can find the hard drives and display them so I can use them:
1) Under Windows Vista Ultimate x64:
a) DD finds all 4 hard drives.
b) OS Selector only finds the 2 internal hard drives.
2) Upon boot from OS Selector:
a) DD from within OS Selector only finds the 2 internal hard drives.
b) OS Selector only finds the 2 internal hard drives.
3) Rescue Disk:
a) DD Full finds no hard drives at all.
b) DD Safe mode only finds the 2 internal hard drives.
c) OS Selector only finds the 2 internal hard drives.
This is poor that DD can not find all of my hard drives all the time. Here are some reasons:
1) I use the external hard drives to copy partitions for backup and, in case of emergency, need to be able to access them in order to copy a saved partition back.
2) I want to be able to keep my bootable OSs from seeing partitions on my external hard drives since they have the same serial numbers and labels as the original partitions from which they are copied. I can not do this if OS Selector can not see the external drives and allow me to make their partitions hidden from OSs. In particular in Linux I use UUIDs everywhere and not allowing a Linux distribution to see these external hard drive copied partitions must be done or Linux will not boot correctly.
3) I need to copy my Vista root C: drive to my external drive to back it up. But I can not do that from DD 10 in Vista, which is the only place DD 10 actually can find my external drives. See my topic "7335: Copy of C: drive does not work in Windows Vista Ultimate x64". So I can not backup my Vista root partition with DD 10.
These are serious problems which essentially keep DD 10 from working correctly in my environment . I do not think any of the usages I have listed fro DD 10 in the 3 above items to be unusual in any way. All of them are mainstream needs.
Does anyone have any suggestion or solution of how I can get DD 10 to find all of my hard drives in OS Selector or on bootup or the Rescue Disk from DD 10 ?
Thanks !
The problem with DD not finding the drives can probably be solved by getting an updated ISO from Acronis that includes the necessary drivers.Have you tried the ISO you can download from your Acronis account?
Are you using the latest build (2,239 or later)?
The OSS problem is more difficult. It accesses the drives through the BIOS (same as DD's Safe Mode). Since you're not running RAID, have you tried changing the mode of the controller (IDE compatible, AHCI, etc.). You could also try disabling CD-ROM support in OSS and see if it helps (that option seems to affect quite a few things in OSS). Otherwise, if OSS can't see the drives, there's probably not anything you can do except to submit a support request.
Do the external drives get enumerated in the normal BIOS drive list or are they in a separate list in the boot-up sequence?
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What I do (and many others do) is put DD into a BartPE/WinPE/VistaPE build and include any necessary Windows drivers. This won't help with OSS, though.
I installed the latest release of DD 10 and made DVDs of both the normal recovery disk and the latest ISO downlaod recovery. Neither one of them when booted will show my ESata drive(s).
I did get the latest DD 10 to backup my Vista root drive to one of my ESata drives with the latest release. This time when I did it under Vista, DD 10 rebooted and was able to successfully lock the drive and back it up before I log in to Vista. But that does little good in an emergency if I can not access the ESata drives through either of the recovery disks.
I will look into the BIOS and/or the Raid controller's bootup to see if anything there can be changed so that DD sees it at computer boot time. I would like OSS to see those drives also so that I can make sure I can control whether or not their partitions are hidden or not from the various OSs I boot.
I do not seem to have CDROM support in OSS since OSS does not show booting from my DVD drive. How is CDROM support in OSS turned on or off ?
The external drives do not appear in the BIOS drive list but can be seen in a separate Raid controller configuration when I boot.
What's a BartPE/WinPE/VistaPE build ? How would I find Vista drivers for my ESata drives ? Look in Device Manager for them ?
How is CDROM support in OSS turned on or off?
When you're booted into OSS (or running OSS in Windows), go to the Tools menu and then Options.... In the Startup Options section, check the Do not load CD-ROM drivers option. Then click OK to save the change.
The external drives do not appear in the BIOS drive list but can be seen in a separate Raid controller configuration when I boot.
If trying different options doesn't help, you'll probably have to submit the information on the controller to Acronis Support and see if they can find a solution.
What's a BartPE/WinPE/VistaPE build? How would I find Vista drivers for my ESata drives ? Look in Device Manager for them?
BartPE is based on XP. A WinPE build (such as MustangPEBuilder) is, usually, based on the Vista WAIK. VistaPE (created using WinBuilder) is based on Vista and/or the Vista WAIK. These are all preinstallation environments of Windows (the same "OS" that runs when you install Windows).
You may not need to add any drivers. They only need added if your drive(s) can't be found after it boots. BartPE would use XP drivers, WinPE and VistaPE would use Vista 32-bit drivers. The drivers would be for the controller, not for the eSATA drives. As far as I know, you'd need to create the builds on a 32-bit system.
How is CDROM support in OSS turned on or off?When you're booted into OSS (or running OSS in Windows), go to the Tools menu and then Options.... In the Startup Options section, check the Do not load CD-ROM drivers option. Then click OK to save the change.
I see it. Thanks !
The external drives do not appear in the BIOS drive list but can be seen in a separate Raid controller configuration when I boot.If trying different options doesn't help, you'll probably have to submit the information on the controller to Acronis Support and see if they can find a solution.
Contacting Acronis Support is probably what I will have to end up doing, but I will try everything else to solve my problem before that.
What's a BartPE/WinPE/VistaPE build? How would I find Vista drivers for my ESata drives ? Look in Device Manager for them?BartPE is based on XP. A WinPE build (such as MustangPEBuilder) is, usually, based on the Vista WAIK. VistaPE (created using WinBuilder) is based on Vista and/or the Vista WAIK. These are all preinstallation environments of Windows (the same "OS" that runs when you install Windows).
You may not need to add any drivers. They only need added if your drive(s) can't be found after it boots. BartPE would use XP drivers, WinPE and VistaPE would use Vista 32-bit drivers. The drivers would be for the controller, not for the eSATA drives. As far as I know, you'd need to create the builds on a 32-bit system.
I am running a 64-bit computer. I d not see how a 32-bit boot solution would help me but I will look into it, since I really need to be able to access my ESata drives on boot.
I just wanted to report that the latest 2239 build of DD 10 does find my ESata drives on bootup, both in DD 10 and in OSS.
I am looking forward to DD 11, where I am hoping ext4 partition recognition is supported as well as installing DD 11 under Windows 7.