Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect  

I wonder if there is a small hidden partition on your external(s)


Have you ever looked at layout with something like minitool partition wizard?

Excuse me for butting in and if I didn't see it mentioned but assigning a letter to a removable external drive or it's partitions doesn't work as windows will assign a it first available letter (excluding A, B, and C) letter every time it's plugged in

CountMike said:

Excuse me for butting in and if I didn't see it mentioned but assigning a letter to a removable external drive or it's partitions doesn't work as windows will assign a it first available letter (excluding A, B, and C) letter every time it's plugged in

I don't think that's true Mike. I believe if the drive letter was manually assigned in the first place it will try to use the same drive letter if it is available. This from HTG How to Assign a Persistent Drive Letter to a USB Drive in Windows

kado897 said:

I don't think that's true Mike. I believe if the drive letter was manually assigned in the first place it will try to use the same drive letter if it is available. This from HTG How to Assign a Persistent Drive Letter to a USB Drive in Windows

manually changing the drive leaves a trace in the registry, plugging it in should re attain the letter
if not in use . I use k for the sd card still is k even though I have removed it several times.
I have several external drives which remain the same drive letter after many reboots.

thomaseg1 said:

manually changing the drive leaves a trace in the registry, plugging it in should re attain the letter
if not in use . I use k for the sd card still is k even though I have removed it several times.
I have several external drives which remain the same drive letter after many reboots.

That's why I said "Available" but no disk, internal or external keeps it's letter on disk itself, it's always assigned by OS. OS may identify it by serial number assigned to it when formatted and try to assign same letter but that's not 100% certain even if connected to same port.
Try to connect it to another PC with that letter in use and see what happens. Best just to give it a distinctive name like for instance "Backups2, Backups MR, Pictures, Movies" etc. Those show up even in Linux. Easiest way to avoid mix-ups.

CountMike said:

That's why I said "Available" but no disk, internal or external keeps it's letter on disk itself, it's always assigned by OS. OS may identify it by serial number assigned to it when formatted and try to assign same letter but that's not 100% certain even if connected to same port.
Try to connect it to another PC with that letter in use and see what happens. Best just to give it a distinctive name like for instance "Backups2, Backups MR, Pictures, Movies" etc. Those show up even in Linux. Easiest way to avoid mix-ups.

done

thomaseg1 said:

done

Quite descriptive. Specially J:\

CountMike said:

Quite descriptive. Specially J:\

the 1st letters there just in case the drive letter does change

I looked up the HP specs on your HP6200 and I'm wondering if you really only have 4 GB RAM. I saw specs of either 8 GB or 16 GB RAM. It makes a difference to those who will be along to give more expert help than I can.

I also note that there is no USB 3 port on the 6200. Most external USB drives are USB 3 but will work on a USB 2 port.

I didn't see anything as to the age of the computer, but sometimes, an older PC will be limited in how much of a hard drive it sees. Did you check to see how much of the Toshiba External the other desktop sees?

Finally, can you give us screenshots of your problems. That will be very helpful for the true experts.