Windows 8.1 - Will External Drive In Docking Station Boot
Apr 26, 2014
Just replaced my OS (Win 8.1) Drive, and was planning on using the old drive as a back up.
This new (and old) drive have just the OS, all my programs and media etc are on other drives.
Can I put my old OS drive, with Windows 8.1 still installed, into a USB Docking Station, and use it as a back up boot drive. In other words will this drive boot from the Docking Station if I keep it up to date (Copy Disk regularly) in case of internal hard drive failure?
I'm currently using a Dell Inspiron 3520 laptop with Windows 8 on it. I have an external hard drive from a Windows 7 desktop. It recognizes the external hdd right away and I can access it but I can't figure out how to boot Windows 7 as the primary. I've tried changing boot order in bios but I've had no luck as it still boots Windows 8 first. Is there a way to use the Windows 7 as the primary drive ? Even a way to temporarly turn off the Windows 8 hard drive will work. I just need to access the Windows 7 hard drive without having to navigate through program files to have to open something.
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Essentials, it's filled with tons of old photos, movies, docs, games, and I'm scared to think of what else. The SATA to USB connector broke on it, so I took the drive apart and put it inside my computer. I opened up device manager because it wasn't showing up automatically and the 2TB is showing up as unallocated, I'm freaking out now because I'm scared the data was somehow deleted.What do I do?
edit: I realize also this isn't directly related to Windows 8 (besides the fact it's the OS I'm on), but I don't know where else to post it. I'd also like to say that I had a really deep feeling the drive was going to break continually for about two weeks before it happened, so if you have a similar feeling about something, don't ignore it!
the " toshiba service station " recommended an update called " bios update version 1.50 for qosmio x70/75 " and they said it is recommended so i did download and he said dont remove the cord or anything so i did that and installed it and everything was going smoothly but when he finished the update and was restarting it shut down and didnt boot up again. whenever i click the power button the keyboards and power button lits up for a second and then the laptop shuts down it is windows 8 and it does not boot up for me to go into the bios menu
A few months ago my laptop broke and it needed repairs. The HDD was replaced and i got my laptop back with one new HDD inside and one "broke" HDD in a bag. Later the "Repaired" Laptop crashed again so i bought a new one and took the HDD out of the old laptop. I bought a HDD case with USB connection and both of the HDD's where intact. The oldest HDD contained windows 7 and the replaced contained windows 8. Now i want to sell the Windows 8 HDD so i want it to be clean of personal files but i want it to keep windows 8. I thought the solution was to run the windows 8 on the HDD so i can use the program deletation program of that windows 8. The problem is i dont know how to run windows 8 of a hard drive. I have searched the internet but with no success.
My wife just got a new PC running Windows 8.1 Pro and she wants to re-connect her external hard drive that has all her game files on it to the new PC.
While the new PC recognizes the drive it states that it needs to be initialized , doing so would wipe the data currently on the drive which would be unacceptable. How to get the new PC to recognize this drive and its data?
I was downloading files from an external drive that iI had used as a back up for windows vista. Now where they landed in my windows 8.1 computer and if they were only photos, music and videos. I'm having a hard time with windows 8. How do I locate the downloads. I thought of doing a system restore but I would rather locate those files.
I successfully managed to create a virtual hard drive on my external drive to try boot windows 8 off it. I managed to boot it up and the login screen also appears as normal. I have a successful login, But on the second time login I am faced with black screen and the cursor. I'm aware that Microsoft has released a fix for this. I have attached the executable in the zip. I tried running this fix but it didn't work . After the black screen appears, even in safe mode I cannot run explorer.exe or open any folder to try running any executable files
how I get Samsung LC27A750XS USB display drivers (win7x64) to work on a Samsung NP900X1b with the Windows 8 CP installed?
The drivers won't start at all. The built in USB3.0 hub is recognized and working flawlessly, but the USB display driver continues to report it can't be initiated as there's reg keys missing.
I've reinstalled the win7x64 drivers over the Windows 8 defaults but nothing is resolving. I'm trying to use either for extended viewing or as the primary display while at my desk.
I plan to get a new Windows 8.1 laptop soon. I want it to have 8gb RAM and an internal 128gb SSD drive where I keep all the OS, driver and other system files. Then I want all my media files (documents, music, vids, etc) on an external USB 3.0 hard drive. I recognize that keeping files on an external drive may cause slow behavior in some situations. My my guess is that USB 3.0 is fast enough so this won't be a problem in most situations. And I plan to get an external drive that has USB 3.0.
I'm not a power user. I don't edit video or do fancy rendering or stuff like that. I just browse the net, create some docs and spreadsheets, listen to some music and watch some vids. I play around with Audacity once in a while and that's about it. I'm an average user.
So, any problems with keeping all my user files on an external drive?
I have bought a 2TB western Digital external USB3 hard drive and installed the Asmedia drivers but windows never picks it up. See the screen capture. The drivers are the ASMedia USB 3 host controller but it seems to show up after a few seconds as USB Root Hub (xHCI) with a triangle. I have tried updating from there and directing it to the drivers and uninstalling and then reinstalling and the drive shows up long enough to copy but then disappears again.
I literally have run out of options.
It seems to be a common theme on the web and especially with Western Diital drives although I think it is windows struggling to recognise them and implement correctly.
Seagate 2TB drive mounted in a Thermaltake, Max 5 enclosure. The drive does not show in Windows 8. Does show when running Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) but shows as "Unallocated" without a drive letter. If run the Seagate drive tools, it shows up as unallocated, with drive letter "C". But there is obviously already a drive "C".
Disk Management does not present a means by which to assign a drive letter
I am having problems with system imaging my Windows 8 machine to an external hardrive via a usb (??) cable.
First, as mentioned in another thread is the exceptionally long time. The external drive is a WD 1TB BTW. I have two older hardrives on the computer. Just installed the second, which at this time is not being used. Trying several several programs, Paragon Free, Easeus, Macrium Reflect and the built in Windows Backup I was getting 14 hour estimates.
The actual issue I wish to resolve is that during a over 9 hour backup of the primary drive with approx. 34GBs, I noted what appears to be a folder with the Windows backup icon called the name of my computer on my external drive. It contains approximately 3GBs of data in multiple folders. Windows backup is turned off. I did not have this file on the external hardrive and I didn't initiate the OS to perform this. It showed no indication of running and occurred during the Macrium backup.
Running Windows 8.1 and File History was working OK for my computer, actually on two different computers worked just fine. (I never could get File History to work with Windows 8). Then suddenly this feature just up an quit. Got a little "red" flag in the Action Center. Using the control panel an "setting" up File History my system says that file history is turned off. I never did turn it off, it seems it just up an turned itself off.
But here is the thing, I select my external drive to use for file history and the system says the service can not be started because its disabled or no enabled devices are associated. It "sees" the drive but will not enabled this drive. I have used various windows programs, such as system services..to "turn" on file history. But there seems not to be anything that will fix file history.
It seems all the support is non specific to file history not working. I have yet to see a simple fix to "make" Windows 8.1 to again run file history. I would just like to point and click to backup the computer...but windows is now becoming NON-USER friendly to manage these types of things.
I had a windows 7 laptop which finally died but before it did a made a system image backup to my external hard drive so I have all the files. How do I load that onto my new windows 8.1 laptop so I have all my files there?
I recently purchased a WD 1TB external portable hard drive.When I first got it it was immediately recognised by my laptop (a 2 day old Asus Ultrabook S400C). This is my first time with Windows 8 so I am still learning to navigate it.
The first thing I did was transfer 650gb of movies and music across. I didn't format the hard drive first, maybe that was my first mistake. My files were still recognisable on my laptop and my WD TV Live media centre. The next day all of a sudden my media player wouldn't recognise it and when I plugged it back into my laptop it also cannot see it.
The device can be seen in device manager (when I click on properties it says it's working corectly), but not in the drives list in my computer. It is showing as "Disc 2" 'Not Iniitialised' and when I click on 'Initialise' and choose 'MBR' and hit OK it comes up with this error msg: 'The request could not be performed due to an I/O device error'.
So recently had my old Windows 7 desktop crash on me. Got a new Windows 8 desktop and since then have gotten an external enclosure to try and scrap the files off of the old hard drive, but when trying to connect the Drive into the new computer I get this issue >>
406da2a65a966887ab9d90c8eaf63677.png >> cfe542bf267bd7d2e3d07b5d317c97f4.png I have tried many troubleshooting options and everytime I try to change permission I just get this error message. a66c2f145769b4fdc1c99b4efc8356a4.png >> b95f4478b90c4265e3eba041043caf3a.png
I am running Windows 8 Pro, with two USB external drives attached. One drive is "dormant", and the other is used for file backups. I have noticed that when the computer exits from sleep mode, either one or both external USB drive folders will open on the desktop. I can only guess this signifies that these drives may have been accessed while the computer was in sleep mode.
I created restore disks for my new laptop. It gave me the option of using a USB drive, but I chose the option to create DVD disks instead. This went fine up until disk 6. I was able to finish, but the system has a problem reading the 6th disk. I cannot recreate the disks because HP, for some reason, made it so you can only do this once. I want to recreate the image on an external USB drive. Is there any way around this? HP will sell me a recovery set, but apparently only on disks.
I purchased a Seagate 1Tb external drive that came with "Seagate Dashboard" software to manage back-ups. What I would like to do is create 2 500Gb partitions and use my Acronis software to make mirror images of both my desktop and laptop. Is this do-able? Would it be advisable to delete the "Seagate Dashboard"?
I have two USB 3.0 ports on the front of my Dell XPS 8500 Dell desktop. Once again I have caused the USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller to stop working because I did not disconnect the external hard drive before shutting down, it seems. It reminds me of leaving in a floppy drive but at least the computer would not boot in that circumstance. Now, there is no warning whatsoever. Dell technical support's answer is to refresh or reset the machine.
Any way that would be less time-consuming than having to reinstall all of my applications.
I have an external hard drive connected to my PC via hard drive dock on USB 3.0 port. Whenever I turn my PC on with the hard drive connected, my PC won't boot up because it is trying to boot up from the external hd where I have an image of both my Win 7 & Win 8 OS. How can I stop my PC from booting up from the external hd?
I have a 500 GB external USB drive that I can't access on my wife's Windows 8.1 laptop. I have confirmed that is in good operating condition on my XP PC where I can access all my files but in Computer Management on the Windows 8.1 laptop it displays as Disk 1 with a red arrow pointing down and it says Unknown and Not Initialized.
System Info Utility version 1.0.0.2 OS Version: Microsoft Windows 8.1, 64 bit Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4500U CPU @ 1.80GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 69 Stepping 1 Processor Count: 4 RAM: 7908 Mb Graphics Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family, -1984 Mb Hard Drives: C: Total - 940362 MB, Free - 902392 MB; Motherboard: Dell Inc., Inspiron 5537 Antivirus: McAfee Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware, Updated and Enabled
Windows 8.1 failing to boot when any usb storage drive is plugged in during boot. My only solution is to unplug everything each boot unless I use my KVM switch which does not support usb 3.0.
I have this problem were external hard drive do not show up on my PC.
First my I put my friends in and it did not work, then I went out and brought one myself (different brand) and it does not show up.
Windows automatically installed the drivers it said it even know what time of external it was. But now it doesn't appear in explorer. What should I do. It appears in the device manger list, but how do I access it?
I notice that when my computer is in sleep mode, I can unplug the external hard drive and the computer will power on again. I never had this issue with Windows 7. Right now I have Windows 8 Pro 64-bit.
Is there any way for me to disable this feature so that I can unplug the external hard drive without turning the computer back on again?
My old Sony Vaio broke the other day, so I've just got a new laptop. The Vaio was Vista, but now I'm on Windows 8.
I'd been backing up my Vaio to an external harddrive, but all I ever did was run the backup and let it get on with it. So for example, within the external harddrive now it just has a list of the dates I ran a backup, followed by 'Backup files 1', 'Backup files 2' etc. I'm hoping these include some of the documents/files I had on there, but I can't be sure. What exactly will have been backed up here?
I've been trying now to restore these files on my new laptop, but I can't seem to find a way. Is it possible?
I've connected a MyBook 256GB external storage drive to my newly built computer. Half of my pictures are all rotated to the right. How did this happen? The pictures weren't taken in the way they appear right now. There has to be a better way of fixing this than to select the ones which are rotated and rotate them back to the original position.
I have a Lenovo S10-3t convertible touch tablet/netbook that I am creating a multiboot scenario for.
To cover all the details, here are my disks and my partition setup. 640GB HDD as the primary drive 32GB SDCard as the secondary drive.
Primary HDD has these partitions: MBR PARTITION SCHEME Partition 1: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (492.33GB) NTFS, with Win 8 bootloader Partition 2: Mac OS X Snow Leopard (79.28GB) HFS+ Journaled, with standalone mini-chameleon bootloader Partition 3: Linux Mint 15 64-bit (23.28GB) EXT4 Journaled, with GRUB2 on this same partition Partition 4 (in extended partition): Linux Swap (1.27GB) ...swap space
The SDCard has these partitions: MBR PARTITION SCHEME Partition 1: Dedicated to ReadyBoost (5GB) FAT32 Partition 2: Android x86 4.2.2 (24.84GB) EXT3, legacy GRUB SHOULD be in the MBR of this disk
I am using the Windows 8 graphical bootloader to manage everything, as it is a touch-screen tablet, and I like having the touch support for the bootloader. So I would PREFER to use it if possible.
I have currently added entries for OSX Snow Leopard and Linux Mint Olivia to the Windows 8 boot manager, and all three OSes chainload properly to their respective bootloaders and are happy with each other.
Is it possible to chainload the Legacy GRUB bootloader in the EXT3 partition on the SD Card that has Android on it with the Windows 8 Bootloader? And, if so, will you walk me through this process?
There's a couple of reasons...as this is a touch screen tablet I would prefer the convenience of having an option to boot Android from the touch-enabled Windows 8 Boot Manager instead of having to fold the screen away from the keyboard, press FN+F11 and selecting the SD Card as the primary boot device every time I want to go into Android. I could have android on a fifth partition on my HDD, but one of the reasons for having Android on flash memory is BECAUSE I have a mechanical HDD, and I use Android if I'm actively moving the laptop around in a rough environment (say, walking or in a moving vehicle for example, and the HDD would be off since it isn't needed). I know I could use an SSD, but I prefer having a mechanical HDD in my laptop for my own reasons.
I am using a combination of VisualBCDEditor and EasyBCD, and I cannot get either to see or acknowledge the existence of the EXT3 partition on the SDCard (though they all see the EXT4 and HFS+ volumes on the primary HDD, and the FAT32 partition on the SDCard...)
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro x86 WMC External Hard Drive: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex (No external Power Required) Problem: I can't access my External Hard Drive. See The Screenshot Below.
Solution Applied: Drive letter changed. (Not Worked)
Also tried Properties - Security - Advanced - Owner to Everyone. (Not Worked)
Checked the HDD in another PC Windows 8.1 x64. (Not Worked)
I connected the HDD then I installed the "Better-Explorer" through that i can access my external hdd normally but If I Reboot my PC then same Problem with the "Better-Explorer". & If I install The "Better-Explorer" Then if I connect my HDD Then from the beginning i can't access the HDD.
In Tune-Up Utilities Their is Disk Explorer through that I can explore my Ex HDD Drive. I right clicked on my drive from Tune-up & checked the disk for error and then repaired it (Windows Error checking tool) and then reboot my PC but it is still the same.
