Vista won't recognize external drive when doing a backup

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Vista won’t recognize external drive when doing a backup??? Why? I can write to it, read from it, see it in “My Computer”

2

Did you try changing USB ports? I had that problem on my Nephew’s PC.

3

No, it is an ethernt connector on my network

4

What backup software? Is it a feature of the program for network backup?

5

It is from the Vista software. I did have “Smartware” but did not like it so I uninstalled it (Too much of a resource hog)

6

I’ll try and look later when I have more time. I’ve got Vista on a virtual machine. I never used backup on it, if it’s part of windows. It may not be built for network backup either. I’ll have to look around a bit.

7

I’ve been doing a little searching. You may be out of luck http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/31426-cant-backup-network-hard-drive-using-vista-backup.html

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/31426-cant-backup-network-hard-drive-using-vista-backup.html

8

When I do attempt to backup via Vista windows the option to backup to a network drive is there but grayed out because it is not recognizing either of my external hard drives, one is USB and the other is either net plugged into my wireless router

9

The Windows backup will not write to any partition that has been marked as “Active”.

10

And so is there a solution to this??

Thanks, Joe

11

I don’t know much about this but look in the Disk Maganer and see how the drives are marked. My USB drives are marked Primary partition . I don’t know what changing partition type will do you’ll have to look into that.