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

Hi EFHASK,

1) Rescue Disk:

I'm another customer whos spent a significant amount of time on Dell Backup and Recovery.... ;-)

I'll be summarizing my conclusions in a later post but to give you my direct opinion as a result of my personal experience:-

1) RESCUE DISC:

Summary: You can only do a Rescue disk to an external bootable HARD DISC. I've used a Seagate backup plus external usb HARD DRIVE. This appears to have worked. I've checked it several times.

Detail: Ignore the help documentation indication that some USB key/flash drives can be used...I tried a SANDISK Cruzer Glide USB2/USB3 MS 8.1 Flash drive that apparently succeeded (two drives displayed etc) with the rescue backup and it still passes the Rescue disc check BUT I do NOT trust is as a system backup to same appeared to succeed and failed to be recognized later. That is why the Dell B&R text in the Rescue disc creation window has been updated to state you can only use an external hard drive. If I was to risk a USB flash drive it would be a 'Windows to Go' certified flash drive....they are listed on the MSoft web site....and relatively expensive....but I definitely wouldn't risk it....

2) Dell Backup and Recovery Premium:

Summary: In my personal opinion do NOT purchase....find an alternate product if you want the functionality.

Detail: I upgraded to Dell back & Recovery Premium....I cannot not recommend this to anyone else....It has caused issues....also of interest is that the product does not APPEAR to be a DELL product but possibly a 'Cleverbridge' product (small software company?).

It appears to have no support....to describe this in detail....Dell Hardware support could not recognise the order reference number (its a 'Cleverbridge' ref number) and said it was a software support issue, and software support stated it was a hardware support issue....catch 22. If you click on the purchase email link for the stated web support the link takes you to DELL support where I have strived and not found any reference to the Premium product. So you have to ask...would you rely on a system backup tool with no apparent support and which has issued generic error messages to some other users?

3) Dell Backup and Recover (non Premium)

My personal good news is that despite initial issues with USB flash Vs external hard drive I appreciate the non-premium product...it looks good... just requires help text updates re USB flash drive etc. and improved device validation, and improved user interface/user path testing.

More than happy for a Dell / Cleverbridge(?) staff member viewing this blog to update/correct/clarify. :-)

Regards....

Hi David, my version is 1.75.60 of Dell Backup and Revovery...

Appreciate the reply David. I hope to have time to reply in more detail but as a starter the version is reported as the latest when I check, I'll get back with details when I have a minute, I've not seen 1.8xxx in notifications or update check yet...is it supposed to be visible now?when is it due?

Cheers... :-)

An additional comment on the use of the Premium Edition is that if the backup partition becomes corrupted, a backed up system image can no longer be recovered, and once the backup partition has been corrupted, there is no way to restore it without restoring the original factory image.   James

I know this is much later than the posts, but I just returned the same PNY 128GB USB to Amazon. My Dell Inspiron 7737 had trouble reading it. Then when it did read, it still returned an error. I then formatted the USB, and it returned "509 MB free of 509 MB'"--obviously something very wrong with a 128 GB drive. So I'm not sure if it's Dell format/recovery program or the usb.

But how could Dell not specify on the Create Recovery page that you need a "certified" usb for Windows 8.0? That's just ludicrous. The same problem with updating to Windows 8.1--Dell made no mention that it's 8.0 OS couldn't be updated to 8.1 because it is an OEM version of Windows that Microsoft doesn't recognize for updating (Administrator problems). So I'm stuck with an absolutely obsolete machine that will stay obsolete until the day I get rid of it.

I must say that I've had nothing but problems with this machine anyway (I purchased it a year and a half ago). I've used Dell PCs (and bought them for my Dad) for 20 years. Next time, I'm seriously thinking Mac.

David:  Can you help me with my issue.  I just purchased a dell XPS890 and have attempted (twice on 2 different 32 GB USB drives) to create Recovery Media (in accordance w/ instructions provided in Dell Quick Start Guide).  Every time i attempted to perform recovery to USB, i got the same error, which is "We can't create the recovery drive , A problem occurred while creating the recovery drive."  I was able to utilize these same USB drives with another computer (Dell 720H2C) to create a recovery disk with no problem.  Please help me understand how to deal with this problem.  Thank you - Trudy

Dear David

I just purchased a dell insperion with windows 10 home bulit in.

I try to creat the OS  USB bootable recovery disk, I download the ISO  recovery image from your WEB few times and every time after connecting the USB disk as instructed by the appication while creating the recovery disk got the message that the image is damaged or faulty.. I try to download the image again and again few times got the message that the download in completed but did not suceed to creat the recovery disk. Please advise, thanks in advance.

I also have a PNY usb flash drive with, originally, the same issue.

I solved it by making the drive bootable.

You can find instructions to do that at the following link:

technet.microsoft.com/.../jj200124(v=ws.11).aspx

It involves using the program diskpart (included at least in windows 8.0) from the command prompt.

Once that is done, "Dell Backup and Recovery" will see your usb flash drive and will be able to use it.