Restore to USB Drive, Drive not shown in mappings

[Catsrules]

I am trying to clone my laptop to an external hard drive. I have backup my computer to a network share. Now I am trying to restore the backup to an external drive via usb. However the drive does not show up in the drive mapping, I just see Disk 0 (my internal drive). I can see the external drive in my computer as well as Disk management (Listed as Disk 1).

I have tried to uses the Veeam Endpoint within windows as well as the bootable CD interface, no luck.

Anyone else having this issue?

Thanks

Specs
Windows 7
Internal drive SSD 256GB
External drive (old laptop drive 300GB) With an Anker 6618 SATA to USB converter.
Endpoint Backup RC version.

[Gostev]

Hi, actually I don't believe restoring to external USB drives is even supported today - at least, we have not considered this use case. In fact, they may be excluded from the list of available disks intentionally, to prevent the user from accidentally restoring over the backup files let's wait and see if Dmitry knows the story behind this. Thanks!

[Dima P.]

Hi Catsrules,
It's not supported and yes, Anton is right – all removable devices are excluded from the list of restore targets for volume operations. Could you explain why you want to restore it as a volume instead of using the file level recovery directly in the USB volume? Thanks in advance

[Catsrules]

Sorry I didn't respond, I thought it did but I guess it didn't make it for whatever reason.

In this case, I am just doing testing/learning on Endpoint Backup. I am on a laptop, so I only have the 1 internal drive. I wanted to try a volume restore from within windows, I couldn't restore to my original disk because that is active drive. So my only other options was a USB drive. (Obviously I could used the endpoint boot disk, but I wanted to see what I could do using the restore within Windows it self.)

I agree with you on why the USB drives are disabled, that could cause some major problems. So USB should be excluded by default. However I would like a option to turn off that exclusion. In my mind a Hard drive is a Hard drive no matter what interface it is using, I prefer having my options open.

If your looking for a use case here is one I have done in the past with other products. That would be restoring Computer A with Computer B. For example if you are having problems restoring on Computer A, for example can't boot from the restore disc or there isn't a good network connection at the computer to transfer 30+ GBs. I can always grab Computer A's hard drive drop it in a UBS to SATA converter plug it into computer B Restore to the drive.

I admit that is not the norm, and I could easily use a e-sada or plug the drive in internally on computer B but like I said I always like to have the option to do it.

[Dima P.]

Thank you, that is an interesting senario. The only problem I see - drivers: it’s risky to restore the system volume in the way you described, as the drivers from computer A are applied, it will be ok while the drive is still connected to the A. Once it is attached to computer B the system will go crazy, moreover such restore could cause BSOD.

So such functionality seems to be ok for restoring the regular volume with data (which can be done via FLR, as I mentioned before) but for system volumes it can cause serious issues

[Catsrules]

Ahh,I didn't know that Veeam applies the drivers during the restore. For some reason I always thought the drivers were installed during the first reboot of the computer after the restore has taken place. But your right, it will not work then. Owell.

In the scenario I described, I believe I used Acronos and "generic imaging" was not enabled, so it was basically a pure copy for copy.

Now you got me curious I will have to try this with Veeam, just to prove to my self it will not work.

[Dima P.]

Now you got me curious I will have to try this with Veeam, just to prove to my self it will not work.

Please, don’t forget to share the results.

[sdet00]

I know that this is an old thread, but it's one of the first results on Google so I figured this is a fairly visible place to post. I've noticed the same thing as the OP. Is there any way to override this, perhaps through a config.xml file? I have situation where I have a PC with 200GB of data that is normally connected to Wi-Fi and backs up to a network share, and only has USB 2.0. I need to travel to the system and I want to minimise the time I need to stick around. It's trivial to remove the SATA SSD and I have it plugged in via USB 3.0 to my laptop which is connected to the network share via gigabit, but in my testing I won't be able to restore to it. Any ideas? The only solution I can think of is to disassemble my laptop and plug it in via SATA somehow, and use recovery media, but that seems like a bit of a hassle.