USB Drive Not Seen Using Recovery CD, and Work Around
My 2003-vintage computer running XP died last month, and I got new one running Windows 7. For years I had used True Image version 8 with excellent results on that old computer, so I naturally bought version 2010 (build 6029) for the new computer. TI2010 installed normally, made a bootable CD, and I tested that the CD would boot the PC and could see the internal hard drives.
Yesterday I had a bad install/uninstall and tried to use TI2010 to restore the computer. While it eventually worked, I ran into several unexpected behaviors.
I attached the external USB 2.0 drive containing the image, inserted the TI2010 CD, then rebooted. I went to the main TI screen and choose restore image. A list of images appeared. This was new since TI8, and could be a nice idea. Studying the contents of the list I realized that it cleverly listed only the images on the attached hard drives, both internal and external. (I have multiple external hard drives, and it knew which one I had attached.) Up to this point I was impressed.
But, when I selected an image and attempted to perform a restore, it said that it could not find the image. I studied the error message and realized that it was looking for a drive letter "Q", the windows designation for the external drive. Of course, LINUX designations are usually different, thus it could not find the image. If that were the only oddity, I would not be writing this note.
I then used the browse option to go find the image. I was shocked to find that no external hard drive was listed ! Fortunately, I do not panic easily, and started thinking why TI2010 was missing the same physical USB drive that TI8 could see on my old computer. I was not using some new protocol (like USB 3), and LINUX has been handling USB 2 for ages. Then I ran a quick test.
I backed out a few screens to the main menu and went down the create image path just far enough to see what drives and partitions were listed. This time the external hard drive and both of its partitions were visible. So, TI2010 could see the USB 2 drive, but not in the browse menu associated with the restore screens. I took a guess that the browse function was limited to the least common denominator of what it had been expecting, based on the Windows drive letters, and what was actually attached, based on the LINUX drive letters. So, I tried an experiment.
I clicked on the LINUX letter of the external partition on the create image screen, then backed up to the main menu, then down the restore menus to browse. This time the external drive was visible, and I was able to navigate to the directory containing the image I wanted to restore. From there the restore proceeded normally.
Note that I get the same behavior with other external USB 2 drives. And, finally, note that my old TI8 bootable CD can see the external USB drive on its restore screen. (I realize that TI8 cannot be used to restore a Windows 7 image, but it shows that the USB 2 on the PC is the same sort of USB 2 that LINUX has handled for years.)
Obviously, I would prefer to see all attached drives and all partitions on them as the default. I tried reading the TI2010 manual, but found nothing to help explain this behavior, nor some setting to change it.
If there is a setting I missed, please explain how to configure TI2010. If not, please add this to your list of little bugs to fix.
My computer is an ASUS CM5570, dual-core Pentium E5300 @ 2.60 GHz, with 6 Gig of RAM, running Windows 7 Home Premium. The internal hard drive is SATA-II, 750 Gig, with 5 partitions. The external drive is SATA-I connected inside a USB 2.0 enclosure, 500 Gig, with 2 partitions.
