I have an ASUS p8p67 pro v3.0 motherboard and 1 WD solid state drive (Windows 7x64 on it). I also have a internal 1TB sata drive and a 3TB USB 3.0 external drive.
The WD solid state drive is failing and needs to be replaced (It loses communications with the SATA controller every few hours or so). They are sending me a replacement.
I bought Norton Ghost 15 to backup all the files up in case the drive fails before the new one gets here. I was hoping to do a drive image copy when it does arrive to duplicate the bad C: drive when it arrives in a few days.
I did a complete backup of all my files (Including all the hidden boot partitions) to the external USB 3.0, 3 TB drive. So far so good.
Next I wanted to make a customer recovery disk to boot off of to make sure I can boot this computer in case the solid state drive with windows 7 x64 fails completely.
I run Norton and choose the create a custom recovery CD option.
It asks me for the location of a current valid recovery image. From what I am understanding I am supposed to use the Norton ghost CD for this as they did not put a dedicated recovery CD in the box. I also checked and could not find an .iso image on-line anywhere to download (if there is one please point me to it).
So I point it to drive D (My blue ray drive). It then wants a label and here is where it messes up: The option to burn the recovery disk to the blueray (Drive D) is ghosted so I cannot select it. The only option appears to be available is to burn an .iso image. I'm not sure why it can't make available the D: drive as the drive obviosuly works considering I installed Norton 15 from it and can burn disks in it all day. Any idea why it won't allow me to select the blue ray drive to burn to? It is a RW blue ray as well as RW DVD and RW CD. The blue ray is a:
SONY Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 8X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner BD-5300S-0B - OEM?
OK figuring something is incompatible with this blue ray, I then decided to try to burn the customer recovery cd to an .iso image. So I choose that option then it lists 4 drivers that it found but says it cant use any of them as they are all 64 bit drivers. Well of course they are 64 bit drivers, why is Norton running on 32 bit when you cant even buy a 32 bit computer anymore? Why is anyone writing 32 bit software now? Anyway... So I'm digging on line on ASUS website and here are the drivers in both 32 and 64 bit:
http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8P67_PRO/#download?
I download the marvel SATA driver and there is no .inf file in there so I'm not really sure what to do. I drilled down into the archive and found one file that it would accept in that archive. The file is called mv91.xx (Does not end in .inf like the requestor insists it needs but it took it anyway).
I then downloaded the the other SATA driver JMICRON and found a file deep within the archive it would accept. Once again its not a .inf file though.
It says there are two other drivers that are 64 bit that it needs 32 bit versions of. One is for the network LAN driver (Which I can most likely do without, but I tried downloading it it anyway but there are a thousand files within that archive, I have no idea which to load and none end in .inf.
It's also asking for me to install 32 bit version of another driver called WAN miniport (IKEv2) which I have no idea what that driver is for? I don't have a wireless network card in this computer unless its counting the bluetooth one?
I also wanted to download the USB 3.0 drivers as those will be needed if the external USB drive is plugged into the 3.0 USB ports, but I cannot find any file in that 32 bit driver the create a recovery disk will load (Ending in .inf or not, it won't load any of them). Supposedly USB 2.0 drivers are built into my motheboard but not 3.0 ones. I'd really like to find a way to add the 3.0 drivers.
Anyway it then loads bunches of files from the D drive (The same one it wouldnt list as avail to burn to above) and burns the .iso image to my 3T usb 3.0 drive. I then double click the .iso image and windows 7 burns the .iso image to the same D drive not available to burn to above.
I reboot with the new custom recovery disk in the drive and it comes up. As suspected it will find the full system backup I made on the 3T USB drive but only if it's plugged into a USB 2.0 port, not the 3.0 one. It also sees my hard drives.
So questions:
1. Why will it not burn directly to the blueray? I have to go through extra step to burn an iso image to somewhere then burn to a disk with windows built in burn a disk feature.
2. Any idea why I cannot load the 32 bit USB 3.0 drivers?
3. Any idea which file within the LAN network driver I am supposed to use to load that driver?
4. Any idea what a WAN miniport (IKEv2) driver is it says I need to find a 32 bit version of?
5. It now gives me two recovery options when I boot from the new custom recovery cd. Am I supposed to use the first or the second one to reimage a complete C: drive? One says full computer restore and one says file restore (Sorry not eact names).
6. If I have the main file and several (Incremental) recovery files backed up, am I supposed to select that main recovery file then load each of the incremental ones one at a time afterwards or do i just choose the latest incremental one and it will load all the previous ones?
7. Why is Symantex writing 32 bit software when you cant buy a 32 bit computer anymore? See all the extra hassles they make the end user go through to find different version drivers when it could just load them off the working computer.