{"id":625,"date":"2014-09-13T12:42:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T11:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owltech.co.uk\/?p=625"},"modified":"2014-09-13T12:42:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-13T11:42:09","slug":"usb-flash-vs-usb-storage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/?p=625","title":{"rendered":"USB Flash vs USB Storage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting situation arose today with a Client who had a Windows 8 tablet and he wanted to make a system image backup to a 64GB USB Mass Storage Device and it wouldn&#8217;t work &#8211; the error message was &#8220;drive not valid&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Before I go on, here is a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.daniweb.com\/hardware-and-software\/microsoft-windows\/windows-vista-and-windows-7-8\/tutorials\/473271\/discovering-and-using-windows-8.1-system-image-backup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">link<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that helps guide you through the making a system image process on Windows 8.1.<\/p>\n<p>So our discoveries,<\/p>\n<p>Windows 8\/8.1 has a slight anomaly when connecting USB devices &#8211; it will only backup to certain ones, depending on their type.<\/p>\n<p>We connected a Windows 8 tablet to a USB OTG cable and connected a USB Mass Storage Device (Cruzer). The tablet wouldn&#8217;t see the USB device as a valid drive\/storage device.<\/p>\n<p>We tried other USB OTG (On The Go) cables, an external Hard Drive and a USB Flash drive and they all worked &#8211; it was just the USB Mass Storage Device that didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>At this stage we tried a Windows 7 machine. \u00a0Now, Windows 7 recognises the difference between a Hard Drive and a Device with removable storage &#8211; Windows 8 does not do this and it will not backup to a USB device that it detects as a Device with removable storage instead of a Hard Drive.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m assuming this is a &#8220;feature&#8221; to only allow backups to be done to &#8220;legitimate&#8221; Hard Drives. This is a bit confusing why they have done this, but they have done\u00a0it so we need to accept and move on\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/owltech.co.uk\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-edit\/plugins\/emoticons\/img\/smiley-laughing.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So, if you have a Windows 8 PC, Laptop or Tablet and wish to take a backup system image in case of catastrophic failure, make sure you use a USB Hard Drive and not a &#8220;Mass Storage Device&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t forget to follow the link above for a &#8220;how to&#8221; on backing up Windows 8 system images.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to get really technical, I have put a few links below that will help you understand the 3 different technologies<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/USB_On-The-Go\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">USB On The Go (OTG)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/USB_mass_storage_device_class\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">USB Mass Storage Devices<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/USB_flash_drive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">USB Flash Drive<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hard_disk_drive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hard Disk Drive<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting situation arose today with a Client who had a Windows 8 tablet and he wanted to make a system image backup to a 64GB USB Mass Storage Device and it wouldn&#8217;t work &#8211; the error message was &#8220;drive not valid&#8221;. Before I go on, here is a link\u00a0that helps guide you through the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,33,35,39,40],"tags":[44,49,65,110,111,112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,125,126,127,128,129,130,131],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-repair","category-tablets","category-usb","category-windows-8","category-windows-8-1","tag-8-tablet","tag-backup","tag-disk-image","tag-system-image","tag-tablet-systems","tag-tablets","tag-universal-serial-bus","tag-usb","tag-usb-drive","tag-usb-flash-drive","tag-usb-flash-drives","tag-usb-flashes","tag-usb-hard-drives","tag-usb-mass-storage-device","tag-usb-on-the-go","tag-usb-storage","tag-usb-technology","tag-window-8-1","tag-windows-8","tag-windows-8-pc","tag-windows-8-system-image","tag-windows-8-tablet","tag-windows-8-1","tag-windows-to-go"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}