Run a full Disk Check on the external on a PC which sees it.
If it won't run install Partition Wizard and run Check File System. If it has problems then also run Surface Scan.
This will sometimes force a balky external to be seen by correcting a key file system error.
You can also copy the image to another drive which is seen by the PC.
I've checked the external a few times, and it works perfectly in every other way and on every other machine I have except this one.
The image file is 32 GB in size, can I copy it to the hard drive on the laptop, maybe on another partition to where it can then be seen? My only other option seems to be putting on a shared folder on my home network somehow...
I was going to suggest that but you said it can't be seen even by the Win 7 DVD, so to copy it into another partition on the HD would need to be done using another boot disk or by slaving or installing the HD into another PC.
If you're going to do this I would go ahead and use Partition Wizard bootable CD to delete all partitions and create new, including a NTFS Primary partition at the end of the HD for the image. Otherwise you'd need to copy the image onto another partition besides C and I would delete whatever is on it first.
First of all, thanks for continuing to work with me on this.
But here is an interesting tidbit. On a whim I tried a USB flash drive to see if it could see it in the recovery process (thereby eliminating the USB drivers as the problem). It could. And then, when I unplugged the flash drive and plugged in the HD, it worked.
How weird is that? Maybe the drivers for the flash drive made it possible to see the HD?
That is strange and anomalous. May have refreshed the USB controller.
You're enough of an enthusiast and diehard that I'd make sure you have a perfect install similar to the one detailed in the link in the signature pic below. That one will be worth keeping as an image, even applying to any other PC using the methods I've described.
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