External hard drives/USB devices with 8204

Question for other 8204 owners.

So what I'm attempting to do is make a nice Ghost backup image of my PC, so far mostly this isn't a problem, but I've discovered that the 8204 seems "picky" about which USB devices it will recognize for booting and which it won't.

For example, I have a USB key from work that I can boot from (without issues) I have a Corsair Voyager key which on bios screen is recognized as USB 1.1 but when toggling to the Boot menu isn't shown as a boot option, I found I could boot from an external 3.5" hard drive that I have, but my external 2.5" hard Drive refuses to appear on the boot menu (it does show up again on the BIOS screen as USB 2.0 but on the boot menu it's not an option).

Anyone know anything of this? Appears to be very little rhyme or reason for it, just some devices work, others don't.

 

Check the bottom of the first page and the second page of this thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=71518

 

Yeah I'd read that, but it didn't seem to have much actual information in it (same as my post above really) wasn't sure if anyone had tried anything more on this... or if it was just accepted that USB devices aren't all built the same (including the USB ports on your motherboard).

 

No, after reading your post, I am convinced that certain flash drives will not work with the Acer BIOS'. Corsair Voyagers being one of them.

Talon

 

But it's not limited to flash drives, as I stated, my 2.5" External Hard Drive enclosure won't work with the Acer BIOS, but my 3.5" External Hard Drive enclosure does seem to.

 

I just connected four USB drives to my Acer 5672, all at the same time. A Western Digital 250GB external hardrive, an iomega 80GB external harddrive, a 2GB Lexar JumpDrive flashdrive, and a 1GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro flashdrive. They all show up in the BIOS as USB HDD: The one time it didn't work is when I connected the Western Digital up via Firewire but then the BIOS doesn't support Firewire boot disks.

I don't think the problem is with Acer, Phoenix makes the BIOS for Acer and for many computer makers. I think the problem is with the USB drive manufacturers, I have four drives (2 different types, hardrive and flashdrive) from four different manufactures and they all work. Talon Sr has one flashdrive that works (Transcend) and one that doesn't (Corsair). Arla has one harddrive that works (3.5"), one that doesn't (2.5") and a flashdrive that does (from Work) and one that doesn't (again a Corsair). There are lots of usb devices; mice, joysticks, gps, sound, etc. that do not show up as usb boot disks so there must be some information that needs to be communicated between the drive and BIOS telling that it's a storage drive and is bootable.

Arla are the 2.5 and 3.5 external enclosures from the same company. I'd be curious to see if the 2.5" drive works in the 3.5" enclosure.

 

They aren't the same company, I'd have to check, out of interest when you say "show up in the BIOS" what do you really mean? Does this mean that if you use the F12 boot menu that you can choose the USB hard drive to boot from?

 

Yes (Dam I need at least 10 characters to post)

 

Okay thanks, then yes, I believe it's probably potential incompatability between how some makers setup USB devices, and how the BIOS on the ACER reads those devices, I tried an X-Micro USB hard drive on my laptop and it worked fine, my unnamed flash drive works, my compusa 2.5" hard drive enclosure doesn't work, the other one I have (Ice-Cube I think, it's getting quite old now) does seem to work... wierder and wierder.

 

Does the option to 'Boot from an USB device ' appear in the BIOS irrespective if you actually have such a device plugged to your machine?

 

I too now believe it is an incompatibility between the drive and the BIOS. But what seems strange is that in my discussions with Corsair, they are assuring me that their models will boot. So much so, that they want me to send them my Voyager back and they will replace it with another. Now why would you do that unless you've already tested the suspect drive on a model notebook that is in question. You would think that their test labs have tried this on a number of desktops and notebooks(especially) that have the same BIOS maker that we have(Phoenix). There aren't THAT many major BIOS mfgs out there.

Talon

 

Maybe a bad batch? Tell us if the new Corsair drive works.

 

Another clue as to the differences. I noticed that when I plug in the Corsair, I hear two device recognition tones and with the Transcend only one. I figured that both were being recognized as a USB mass storage devices and would show up as Disk Drives under Device Manager. But what was the other tone for that the Corsair evoked. I went into Device Manager and expanded all the trees and tested both flash drives. Sure enough both got recognized as disk drives and their names appeared on that list. BUT it turns out that when the Corsair is plugged in, it also seen as a Generic USB Hub!! Yep, watched the name pop on and then off when I plugged/unplugged it. Why? Why is the Corsair being seen as a USB Hub? Weird.

Talon