usb boot, not seeing internal drive

[c_rex]

intent:  usb boot to image the internal drive

outcome:  not seeing internal drive

I use a 'suite' called easy2boot which lets a person run various .iso files like Linux, WinPE, etc.

My preferred method is Win8PE or Win10PE.  Neither shows the internal drive, nor do any of the linux distros I've tried.

System diagnostic reports the internal drive as fine.

[WAWood]

@c_rex 

Given the date of your post, I would have expected someone to respond to it before this -- but since that has not happened, I will take a shot at it ...

The Linux distros won't show the drive most likely because you are running Win10 and that forces hibernation on the drive when you shut down Windows and that prevents Linux from seeing it properly.

As to boot USB, the best one I've used can be made from a freeware utility known as Macrium  Reflect.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinRE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.

[c_rex]

I vaguely recall the ability of an OS to hide a drive.  There are 2 other things I can think which might be at the heart of the issue.

1. in BIOS, when I changed to legacy, upon reboot there was an option to down-convert RAID volume, which I did not do.  Could have been lack of pre-OS RAID drivers

2. UEFI (or BIOS?) component security

So i downloaded MR free, made rescue ISO from it, but I'm back to my old laptop which always showed internal drive.  I may be getting a newer HP before year's end.

[c_rex]

got new hp lappy.  seeing the internal drive.  previously, I didn't even enter windows setup (user name, etc) - just wanted to go straight to imaging the disk.

Have an arsenal of new iso's - linux, win10 PE's

and 4 new flash drives 😄