I have an external 500GB USB3 drive. I need to install USB3 drivers from my motherboard disk before Windows will see the drive.
Will this drive work during a restore? Is it better to create a disk image and save it on an internal SATA HDD instead?
From personal experience, I haven't had any luck trying to restore system images from a drive hooked up to USB 3. I can create the images, but when it comes to restoring them, the USB drive doesn't show up as available, when I go to select the drive where the image is saved. Maybe some of the newer versions of programs like Macrium Reflect will do it, I'm not sure.
If your PC has USB2 ports, too, there's no problem.
USB3 devices are backwards compatible. You can test this simply by connecting your USB3 device to a USB2 port. You should get the usual warning about the device being able to perform faster if connected to USB3 port, but it works perfectly also on USB2 port. Just slower.
If you then need to boot to recovery options to restore an image stored on a USB3 drive and USB3 drivers / ports are not working, simply connect your external USB3 drive to a USB2 port. I have done this multiple times, restored an image from a USB3 drive.
Kari
So if I need to restore an image from the drive, I can plug it into a USB2 port (while the computer is off), turn on the computer and do a restore from the image. How long would this restore take if say the image is from a HDD with 100GB of data?
I'm going to look at the Marium website and see if you can use USB3. I don't think it will as the drive will only be recognized if Windows is running (with drivers installed).
It is impossible to say how long restoring an image takes. Using Windows native tools, I have done it sometimes in 15 minutes but I remember needing almost an hour last time restoring home server.
As I mentioned in my previous post you can easily check that your USB3 drive also works on USB2 port by connecting it to one.
Kari
My USB3 drive does work in a USB2 port but as you said it tells you that it will work faster if plugged into a USB3 port.
I did a little checking and I think Macrium reflect will work with USB3 but "additional drivers" are needed. I downloaded the free version, I'll see if I can create an image and also restore from the same image using the USB3 drive. I don't know if the free version supports additional drivers though.
This procedure may help. I use it for a Windows image restore when the drivers aren't installed on my System Repair CD/USB.
Problem recoverying from backup via USB 3.0 external drive
Towards the of the thread above I described how to add the USB3 drivers to the Macrium Winpe. It assumes you have the base image from the WAIK download. You can also load these manually.
Last edited by mjf; 23 Jan 2013 at 21:56.
I think what I'll do now is install a new C drive and create a system image on my current C drive.
(right now I only have one internal drive and wanted to but a new one for some time now)
I haven't tried Macrium reflect, that option might still work, but if I have the space I should use it.
Some of your USB ports should be 2.0 that does not require windows drivers to work and the 3.0 ones might not until windows loads. Stick a bootable USB drive in until you find the ones that work. I only have 1 USB of my 4 operational with a new formatted hard drive. With windows installed and drivers the USB 3.0 ports do work for me. As in I can boot from them. So you just need to find the right ones to use at first. And the easiest way I know is to boot from them without windows and with windows installed to see your results.
Im doing what you decided and just shove them on different partition and call it good. Then put a backup of that backup on your external drive to copy back over if you need. Regardless I think you should try figuring out the USB way cause its bound to happen you'll need to do it that way for whatever blond moment you have in the future.
Did you read my link?
Installing USB3 drivers for Windows is a one time affair. The restore OS is totally diffrent to the installed Windows OS and the restore OS (System Repair CD) must have the USB3 drivers loaded. You should not settle for USB2 speeds for image restores when you have a USB3 ext HDD.
I'm a bit confused about "create a new C drive". C is normally your Windows OS. Putting an image on another partition of your OS drive is not a sound recovery strategy.
Quote