BIBM Can't See My USB Hard Drive

[CyberSimian]

I used BING for a great many years, and I have recently purchased BIBM to use with my new Lenovo Windows 10 laptop (an Ideapad 700-15ISK).

I performed the initial Windows setup, and then created the Windows Recovery drive on a 16GB memory stick. I decided that I wanted to create an image of the Recovery drive on a separate hard disk (just in case the memory stick went bad when I needed it). I am trying to use BIBM to do this (BIBM booted from another memory stick -- not installed on hard drive). This is what happens:

(1) I can boot BIBM successfully from a USB2 memory stick (uses a USB3 socket).

(2) BIBM can see the USB2 memory stick containing the Recovery drive (works in both the USB2 socket or the USB3 socket).

(3) BIBM cannot see the USB2 Seagate hard disk that I connected to use as the destination for the partition image. I have tried both a USB2 socket and a USB3 socket, but without success. I have also tried a different USB cable, just in case the first one was faulty. The disk has its own power supply.

I am stumped! Windows XP on my old Sony laptop see the Seagate without problem, as does Windows 10 on the new Lenovo laptop. So why can't BIBM see it? The disk is formatted NTFS.

BIBM actually sees these disks:
(0) 128GB NVMe SSD (internal)
(1) 1TB SATA HDD (internal)
(2) 16GB Recovery memory stick (external)

Thanks for any help

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[Brian K]

Can the USB HD be seen from the BIOS option in BIBM?

[TeraByte Support]

For USB3 controllers it needs to use the BIOS support via BIOS option.

"CyberSimian" wrote in message news:11988@public.bootitbm...

I used BING for a great many years, and I have recently purchased BIBM to
use with my new Lenovo Windows 10 laptop (an Ideapad 700-15ISK).

I performed the initial Windows setup, and then created the Windows Recovery
drive on a 16GB memory stick. I decided that I wanted to create an image of
the Recovery drive on a separate hard disk (just in case the memory stick
went bad when I needed it). I am trying to use BIBM to do this (BIBM booted
from another memory stick -- not installed on hard drive). This is what
happens:

(1) I can boot BIBM successfully from a USB2 memory stick (uses a USB3
socket).

(2) BIBM can see the USB2 memory stick containing the Recovery drive (works
in both the USB2 socket or the USB3 socket).

(3) BIBM cannot see the USB2 Seagate hard disk that I connected to use as
the destination for the partition image. I have tried both a USB2 socket
and a USB3 socket, but without success. I have also tried a different USB
cable, just in case the first one was faulty. The disk has its own power
supply.

I am stumped! Windows XP on my old Sony laptop see the Seagate without
problem, as does Windows 10 on the new Lenovo laptop. So why can't BIBM see
it? The disk is formatted NTFS.

BIBM actually sees these disks:
(0) 128GB NVMe SSD (internal)
(1) 1TB SATA HDD (internal)
(2) 16GB Recovery memory stick (external)

Thanks for any help

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[CyberSimian]

Well, this is weird. The problem disk is a 400GB Seagate external USB2 disk (Windows shows it as a "ST94811U2-RK"). As it happens, I have a second one, so I connected that to the USB2 socket on the laptop, but BIBM could not see that one either.

I then tried an elderly 36GB Maxtor disk in a Belkin enclosure, and also a modern Western Digital 2TB "My Book" disk. BOTH disks could be seen by BIBM.

The final bit of weirdness is that soon after I got the laptop, I used the trial version of BIBM 1.31f to image the laptop's partitions onto the first Seagate disk, and that was successful. I am currently using a licensed version of BIBM 1.32, but I reloaded 1.31f onto another memory stick and booted that, but it could not see the Seagate disk.

Does any of this provide a clue as to what the problem might be?

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

Have any BIOS settings for the USB controller(s) changed? Any other USB devices plugged in that weren't before?

[CyberSimian]

TeraByte Support(PP) wrote:
> Have any BIOS settings for the USB controller(s) changed? Any other USB
> devices plugged in that weren't before?

I wondered about the BIOS settings. The laptop was supplied with the BIOS set to "UEFI Boot" and "Secure Boot enabled". Soon after I received it, I changed it to "Secure Boot disabled", "Legacy Boot", and "Legacy First".

Earlier today I changed the BIOS back to UEFI boot, but then I could not find any way to boot BIBM. I tried both with secure boot enabled, and with secure boot disabled, but it still would not boot BIBM (it kept booting Windows). The Lenovo has a "BIOS Boot Menu" that allows the user to choose the device to boot from, and although it listed the BIBM memory stick, when I selected it the laptop still booted Windows. There do not seem to be any other BIOS settings for configuring the USB controllers.

I did these tests with the Seagate disk plugged into the USB2 socket, and the BIBM memory stick plugged into a USB3 socket; the other USB3 socket was vacant.

-- from Cyber "perplexed" Simian in the UK

[CyberSimian]

I have done some further tests. I was curious to see what my 12-year-old Sony laptop would make of the problem Seagate disk. The Sony has BING installed on the hard disk, in a multiboot configuration.

Well, BING sees the Seagate disk without any problem, and it shows the correct values for disk size and free size.

I then booted BIBM on the Sony. The only external device that the Sony will boot from is a Sony-branded USB floppy drive. Luckily, I already had a copy of the trial version of BIBM 1.31f installed on a floppy, so I booted that. And... BIBM is NOT able to see the Seagate disk.

What to make of this? I don't know, but it suggests that there is something not quite right with BIBM's USB support.

(1) The 12-year-old Sony has different USB controllers from the brand-new Lenovo.
(2) BING on the Sony can see the Seagate USB2 disk.
(3) BIBM on the Sony CANNOT see the Seagate USB2 disk.
(4) BIBM on the Lenovo CANNOT see either sample of the Seagate USB2 disk.
(5) BIBM on the Lenovo can see other USB2 disks.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

Do you have any different settings configured in BING vs. BIBM?

[CyberSimian]

TeraByte Support(PP) wrote:
> Do you have any different settings configured in BING vs. BIBM?

I have just been comparing them. There were some differences, but nothing that looked as though it might be significant. For example, "BootNow support" was enabled in BIBM, but disabled in BING. So I disabled it in BIBM too, but it does not seem likely that that would cause the problem. Nevertheless, I altered the BIBM settings to be as similar as possible to BING, and retested... without success.

Just for fun I tried booting the BING floppy on the Lenovo. Although BING does not support the GPT, I believe that GPT disks contain a "protective" MBR that defines the entire disk as a single partition, so it should be benign. BING started to boot (BING displayed the EMBR version number), but then it seemed to get stuck, with nothing obvious happening. A similar thing happened when I tried to boot a PC DOS floppy several weeks ago.

I am actually quite puzzled now as to how I created the BIBM partition images of the Lenovo partitions. It is possible that the images were written to some other disk, and then copied to the Seagate, but I don't remember doing that. If I didn't do that, something must now be different, but what is it?

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[Brian K]

CyberSimian,

Did you try the BIBM BIOS option instead of the BIBM USB option? Sorry if you have already reported the result.