Dell Backup and Recovery's Bootable Backup Won't detect USB Flash Drive

ekatchmar,

We are trying to reproduce this issue based on the information you and others have provided in this post.  Would you be willing to provide us with some logs and screenshots to help us troubleshoot?

Thanks,

One year later, without knowing any of the previous discussion, I upgraded this week to Backup Premium 1.75.64  only to find that the 128gb flash drive I bought for the system backup won't work - guess you folks and the folks at Microsoft haven't fixed this problem.

I tried looking for a windows 8 certified flash drive, and all that come up are over $200 and are 64gb or less. 

I'll use an external HDD but reluctantly since I would have expected the flash drive to be more stable and long lasting.

Jmbensky,

As mentioned above, we have been trying to get to the bottom of this.  Can you provide some details about "won't work"?  Do you get an error message?  Does it create a backup and then show as not detected?  We have a new version coming out in a few weeks, with lot's of improvements.

Thanks,

I too bought a PNY 128GB Turbo USB 3.0 Flash Drive specifically to use to create the rescue disk for my Dell XPS 8700 with Windows 7 Pro.  Dell Backup and Recovery software says the USB drive cannot be partitioned and therefore it will be formatted with only 32 GB available and the rest of the disk space will not be accessible.  I bought this drive because the software said I needed at least 100 GB for the rescue disk.

Also, I tried to create the Factory Backup using DVD disks.  It said 3 were required.  It wrote the first DVD (Philips DVD+R RW) but during the verification process it reported "an error occurred," but it didn't tell me what the error was.  I tried it again with another DVD of the same type and got the same error.  I tried again with the PNY USB drive and got the error about partitioning.  Here is the exact message:

"You have inserted a USB device that cannot be partitioned.  Continuing with the current process will result in only 32GB of space being used on your device.  The remaining space will not be formatted or usable."

Please help with these two problems.

Rather than wait to see if the upcoming Backup program improvements fix my problem, I bought a portable hard drive and tried that.  While Backup said it "recommended" a recovery disk before a system backup, it would never let me proceed without making a recovery disk, and always produced an error while trying to create the recovery disk.  I then noticed my new hard drive was formatted FAT32, so I tried a quick reformat to NTFS - that worked, for both the recovery drive and system backup.  Maybe the Backup instructions should suggest the backup media be NTFS format, at least for Windows 8.1, which I am running?

The point is it is a USB flash drive and will be formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS, this is required in order to boot in a UEFI BIOS with SecureBoot and a GPT partition scheme. This is the Factory Backup (Bootable USB Flash Drive). For this a 16 GB USB Flash Drive suffices. You are wasting money by converting a 128 USB flash drive to 32 GB (and only using <16 GB of it) with the FAT32 partition scheme. Format this as NTFS and use it for something else.

The external hard drive on the other hand gets multiple partitions, one small one as FAT32 for booting and one larger one for the rest of the external hard drive. This is the Rescue Disk (Bootable USB External Hard Drive). You want a proper external hard drive for a Rescue Disc and not a large capacity USB flash drive (it won't work for this purpose).

DVD backup is not recommended at all due to issues burning and the inability to boot from a UEFI BIOS with SecureBoot and UEFI.

I made a guide demonstrating the creation of both a Rescue Disk (Bootable External Hard Drive) and Factory Backup (Bootable USB):

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/dell-backup-and-recovery/

As mentioned the 2 are slightly different in the way they work. Hope it clears some things up.

This problem began because, for a System Backup,  the paid-for Dell Backup & Recovery program asks for an external  "device" of at least 100 GB.  No mention of what kind of device or the format of the device.  Had the Backup software specified HDD or USB Flash Drive or NTFS or FAT32  - or whatever - I would have known and not had to spend days trying to figure it out through this forum.  Should the average user need to know about UEFI/BIOS, etc.?  

I only  bought the paid-for program because my Windows 8.1 crashed with no warning, and once I had gone through Refresh and a factory reset, I learned I would have to go through all the Window 8 updates before I could download and reinstall 8.1.  That took all day.  The Dell website said that only Backup premium would allow me to create a backup of 8.1, since the factory install was only 8.

That's why I stress in my guides Rescue Disk (Bootable External HardDrive) and Factory Backup (Bootable USB Flash Drive). Personally I left feedback to name them in the brackets. UEFI and SecureBoot are becoming more important and are steps users change or bypass because they don't setup the media right. Theres advantages installing in these modes and I have updated my guides recently to explain how to set them up in more detail.

I actually advise clean installation of Windows 8.1 directly, see here:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/

The way Microsoft released Windows 8.1 and forced the update via the Store was both extremely annoying for the end user and detrimental in terms of performance.

After clean installation deleting all the partitions then installing all the drivers:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/a-clean-install-of-windows-8-1/

Dell Backup and Recovery can be installed and it will make a new Recovery Partition from the clean installation effectively giving you new Windows 8.1 "Factory Settings". The performance of such a clean installation will be much better.

One of the fixes in the more recent versions of Dell Backup and Recovery (which is why I recommend updating to the latest version before making media) is the fact that it does not format all the data on the external hard drive.

As always its never good to rely on a single drive therefore its recommended to keep a separate backup of the data in the slight chance something goes wrong with that drive.

The external hard drive will only create a "Rescue Disk" (Bootable USB External Hard Drive). "The Factory Backup" (Bootable USB Flash Drive) and the "Rescue Disk" (Bootable USB External Hard Drive) carry out the same function for the free version of Dell Backup and Recovery, both are a means of restoring to the factory image...

The Recovery Drive can have more data written to it and can likely be used for multiple backups with the Premium Edition however I've never used the Premium Edition.

Personally I create both, once I have the Factory Backup (Bootable USB Flash Drive)  its not used for anything else. The Rescue Disk (external hard drive) may be used for other things as such there may be an element of user error for example if the user mistreats their external hard drive (not saying you do) and has to format it for instance.

My USB 3.0 WD My Passport 2 TB external hard drive already has data on it.  If I use the drive for the Rescue Disk or the Factory Backup, will the data be deleted?  Can I use that disk for both the Rescue Disk and the Factory Backup?

All,

Good news is that we have identified the root cause of the detection issue and fixed it in our next update.  Look for an update to v1.8.x.x later this month.  You should receive an update notice in the application when we push it.

Bad news is that the 32GB limitation is a Microsoft thing and not likely to change.  It only applies to USB keys and is the nature of the beast when creating a bootable partition on that media.  Has to do with the way the device is detected (fixed drive or removable media).

Thanks for your patience,

Ok Chaps, Sorry about this don't take it personal but it has to be said...  :-(

The average user will not stand a chance following this technical advice and instruction, your software should be intuitive, simple and easy to follow without the user requiring a technical understanding and encountering incomplete info.

Honestly chaps this is quite simply a classic example of why people are turned off a company and a reason why I will unfortunately NOT be able to recommend Dell to any one else, company or otherwise. I'm also now concerned about what I may encounter in the Dell software. Before you wonder....I am a commercial 'techy'....

The actual user interface, in my opinion, provided by the Dell Backup and recovery software is poor, fails to be direct in its instructions/information, for example, as noted in the thread above re backup media.

In short, and this conclusion is surprising, I should not have purchased the premium software and just stayed with the MS facilities....and that's saying a lot....

So chaps how about getting an average Joe in and designing a system they can actually use? Else take a look at any Apple product......and no I'm not an Apple employee....

Regards,

'Average Joe 2'

Also, it should be made possible to restore a corrupted backup partition without having to reinstall the factory image, thereby erasing perhaps dozens of installed programs.  I am unable to recover a saved system image because at some time the backup partition became corrupted making it no longer possible to recover a saved system image.  The program for my chief purpose is no longer usable.

Average Joe 2,

We've done a lot of work on the interface and added a quided setup for first time use.  We've addressed the 'drive not detected' errors' and many other issues. Please accept the update to v1.8.x.x when you get the notification from the app (or check for updates manually in the app) and let me know what you think.

BTW, what version of Backup and Recovery do you have?

As for the rest, not dissagreeing with you at all and working to improve it all the time.

Thanks,