Dell desktop boots only one USB drive

[George Shaw]

I have a Dell XPS 8900 with a Samsung SSD internally and a Segate 5TB USB drive for backup storage externally. If I then also plug in a RS USB stick and cycle power, and make all the legacy BIOS setting changes, the boot menu lists only one USB storage device and will attempt to boot from the Segate and fail. If I remove the Segate and try booting only to the one listed USB storage device, it will boot into RS and run.

Any suggestions on getting multiple USB drives to show up in the boot list? Since drives must be plugged in at boot, that means I can't run RS on the external USB drive. Or is there a way to plug a drive in after boot and have it recognized?

 

[PHolder]

The BIOS will probably only support USB against the device it boots from. There may be DOS based drivers you can add to a boot disk to allow other devices to be recognized. @millQ has some experience with DOS USB drivers and may be able to supply help/hope.

 

[millQ]

RS will not benchmark anything connected to USB (will detect something is there..but ignore it)..that is what you're trying to do?

The only thing I could think of
is to plugin the USB stick and your 5TB Seagate in different USB ports to see if there is a combination that will make them both show up in the boot menu(RS will still not benchmark the 5TB drive).

 

[DanR]

Any suggestions on getting multiple USB drives to show up in the boot list? Since drives must be plugged in at boot, that means I can't run RS on the external USB drive. Or is there a way to plug a drive in after boot and have it recognized?

You cannot run ReadSpeed on an external USB drive. Yet. That RS capability is, unfortunately, a ways down the road. (UEFI boot capability will come first)

So, disconnect the external 5 GB Seagate USB. Keeping it connected will accomplish nothing except to cause problems.

Then just connect the RS USB stick and see if that works to boot and then ReadSpeed the internal SSD.

 

[B767Mike]

Had a similar problem with my Dell computer. Wouldn't boot from the USB. Seems it was just confused. Unplugged the 2 other USB drives leaving the RunSpeed thumb drive and it booted correctly. RunSpeed ran without a problem after that.

 

[AlanD]

I think FreeDOS only detects bootable USB drives, so it sees the RS Boot USB, although it won't benchmark it. The benchmarks, to date, only look at internal IDE and AHCI drives, including PATA, SATA and eSATA. USB and NVMe drives should be in a later release of SpinRite

 

[George Shaw]

Thanks all. Yes, I'd wanted to run RS on the USB drive, but that would not have been possible.