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Boot CD for recovery won't see external USB hard drive

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I have a HP8570w laptop PC with Windows 7.

ATI-2015 is installed. I created boot media (both CD and USB-stick).

I created a backup and stored it on an external USB hard drive.

My plan was to test Acronis by recovering the back-up stored on the external HD. I planned to just let it replace (overwrite) the existing OS on the laptop.

However, when I boot the laptop to the Acronis bootable media, I cannot see or access the external USB hard drive. I tried several USB ports, including USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, for both the bootable media and the external hard drive.

Nor can I use a USB attached KVM switch (for switching keyboard, VGA and mouse from one PC to another). To avoid the KVM problem, I just unplugged the KVM and worked at the laptop.

I tried booting from a Ubuntu USB stick (designed for trying-out or installing Ubuntu). This USB stick can see the external hard drive. I rebooted without installing Ubuntu; that was only to test the ability to see the external hard drive and use the KVM.

It appears that the Acronis bootable media does not support either the USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 ports on the HP8570w laptop.

In summary, my problem is that I cannot see the external USB hard drive when I boot from Acronis bootable media.

FYI...I also have a Dell desktop with Windows XP. I used the same job configuration to back-up and restore it without any issue.

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I downloaded the ISO file from Acronis, but it produced the same result.
When I start the boot CD, I have tried
- Home > My Disk
- Recovery > Refresh Backups
- Recovery > Browse for Backup
- Recovery > Disk Recovery
All results are the same.
The external USB hard drive is not available.
I cannot use the KVM switch, as noted above.
Yet, when I go to windows, I have access to the external hard drive.
I would appreciate any ideas.

This is the OP.

I just saw a forum post titled as follows:
2015 Rescue Media does not see my USB3 external hard drives

I suggest you search for this if you are having similar problems.

I asked for a refund.

Hello Thomas,

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