GA-Z170X-UD3 Motherboard - Is a USB drive detected from a clean boot

[paulgood]

Dear Sirs,

Firstly I'd like to thank the other users that have helped my first enquiry.

If I have a clean formatted 250GB SSD drive & install Winodws 7 64 Bit Pro on it, will it see an external USB hard drive from my bios before windows boots up?

My question is because with a clean windows 7 install, i'm not sure if the bios will see that new USB external hard drive. The reason is because if the system gets a virus/ malware, I would format the SSD drive & install a clean new windows 7 install. This takes around 40 mins (a bore!), but once it's done, then if I could re-boot & then from the bios see that external USB hard drive, I could restore my working copy of windows 7 from that USB hard drive.

Simple idea, but not sure if a clean windows install sees the necessary drivers in the bios to allow me to restore my pic.

Thanks for your help

Regards Paul

[dmdilks]

You are working to hard at this. First of all windows & the bios two different things. Bios will always see the USB drive. A old or new install will always see the USB drive. Get a program call Acronis True Image 2016.

Make a bootable recovery disk. If you run into trouble just clone your USB drive back onto your SSD. If you want to be on the safe side clone your SSD to your USB once a month that way you will not lose to much.

When you clone your SSD it will clone it as it is with all the drivers and everything else. When you clone it back it will be the same as if you never clone it at all. There is no need to reinstall any thing unless you added some thing in between clones.

 

[paulgood]

Ok got that, many thanks. The odd thing is after afew weeks of buying the new pc it got a virus/ malware. So after speaking to the pc builder, they advised me to wipe/ format the SSD drive C:\  totally clean with a new clean windows 7 install which I did.

Here's my problem; Before installing a clean windows 7, they advised me to download the latest drivers from the gigabyte website for my motherboard. I did this & the Lan & USB drivers were crucial they said as I wouldn't be able to do anything before installing these. I understood why, as the internet is crucial to activate windows & my external USB hard drives were not being recognised with that clean wondows 7 install. I thought this odd in this newish motherboard & thought that gigabyte would have had working drivers in the bios to see these 2 crucial items.

So after downloading Lan, USB 3.0 & 3.1, Chipset, VGA drivers etc everything connected to the PC came to life & was recognised Halleluyah!!!

But, the basic things such as lan & USB drivers need to be in the bios so you can restore the PC from an external hard drive & also connect to the internet immediately as soon as you restore from a USB external hard drive. I do understan that if I create that cloned SSD onto the external hard drive now, everything will probably work. But ideally, with a basic clean windows 7 install, wouldn't it surely be alot easier if both Lan & USB drives were working from the very start.

The reason I'm asking this is, because if I have to format the SSD & install a fresh copy of winodws, it would be easy to restore everything from the external hard drive if there's a problem & if I'm forced to do it that way.

Regards

Paul

P.S. How come you're so well up on this. Do you work for a major manufacturer, or are you just clever? I appreciate your help with my queries.

[dmdilks]

P.S. How come you're so well up on this. Do you work for a major manufacturer, or are you just clever? I appreciate your help with my queries.

Been doing it for 30 yrs. If that is all you want to have is a clean copy of windows. Then what I would do is install windows. Update drivers and that is even windows updates. Then Clone it to a USB drive. Put it away some place.

If you run into problem re-clone back to your SSD drive and you are back and running. Nothing to install other then some updates and put some programs back on.

Plus to help you out to try and stop virus/ malware. Install Malware-bytes and use windows defender or Microsoft security essentials. Windows defender & Microsoft security essentials are really the same thing. 

[ElectroStingz]

Your understanding here is incorrect.

But, the basic things such as lan & USB drivers need to be in the bios so you can restore the PC from an external hard drive

Lets say straight after performing the Windows installation without doing the drivers you wanted to image the SSD to your external USB drive.

Yes you can do so without issues, Boot from the Acronis CD straight after and it will work just like that.