Windows 7 System Image Recovery: Can't see external hard drive

[adamsonm]

I used the Windows 7 backup to create a system image of my 128GB hard drive. I stored the system image on a USB 3.0 external hard drive. I then replaced the 128GB hard drive and put in the 256GB hard drive that I am upgrading too. I inserted the Windows 7 USB bootable device to boot into Windows installation. I clicked the option "repair your computer" and then chose the option to restore from image.

It started looking for the external hard drive that I had plugged into the laptop however it couldn't find the external hard drive.

So I went back to the option "command prompt".

I typed in diskpart, then I typed in list volume to see what hard drives it was recognising and it was only showing the Windows 7 USB bootable device.

Why is it not recognising the external hard drive that has the system image??

I tried using a different external hard drive and I get the same issue. Both external hard drives use USB 3.0. Could that be the issue, do I need to use an external hard drive with USB 2.0 support??

Any other ideas?

Note: I am trying to upgrade my Samsung Series 9 X4D.

Note 2: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...-recovery.html

I think I have found the solution to my problem. The link above has the solution. However there is something in the solution that I don't understand.
In step 1, it says "Copy your SATA driver to a disk". I have Intel(R) 7 Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller. I think I have the latest drivers for this chipset, so I'm not sure what else I can do.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

[bewarned]

This maybe a way round it, but not one you may want to do. You could open the external HDD, remove the hard drive and connect it to the PC via SATA (presuming your system has that connection) it should then pick it up without issue.