For my new Dell Inspiron 15 laptop with WIndows 8, I am trying to create a Factory Backup (~30GB I would guess based on how much of C:\ is used) on my 110GB Western Digital external USB Hard Disk Drive, and I am trying to create a Rescue Disk (~13GB) on 16GB PNY USB Flash Drive, but I can do neither task.
In the Dell Backup and Recovery, with my 110GB drive USB connected, I clicked on Recovery Media, which brings up the Factory Backup / Recovery Media screen. I set the radio to USB Flash Drive instead of Discs (Discs = DVDs). Pressed Continue. There is a spinning clock (akin to the familiar hour-glass), but it just spins forever. Most of the time, the clock just spins forever, but 1 time I instead saw an error like "no USB key found."
In the Dell Backup and Recovery, with my 16GB drive USB connected, I clicked on Rescue Disk, which brings up the Create Rescue Disk screen. Under Drive Content, I checked Recovery Media but not System Backup. Almost immediately, I see the error "No external hard drive detected."
Interestingly, I am able to create the Rescue Disk on my 110GB drive, but that is a waste of space since only 13GB is needed, so I want to use the 110GB drive instead for the Factory Backup.
Yet, both the 110GB drive and the 16GB drive are detected in Windows Explorer as a drive letter, and I can create a text file on them just fine, so Windows recognizes them. To be sure the drivers were up to date, I right-clicked on Computer in Windows Explorer and selected Manage. Under Device Manager | Disk Drives, both drives are listed. For each, I right clicked and selected Update Driver Software | Search Automatically, but the result was "best driver software for your device is already installed."
I know that I can use DVDs instead of USB media, but I would prefer to have all data in 1 place (well, 2 places: 1 for the Factory Backup and 1 for the Rescue Disk); moreover, using multiple DVDs will be time consuming and seems riskier to me.
Please help! Thanks.