Unable to boot from external optical drive.

bobbytreefish

Honorable
Mar 4, 2013
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10,510
Just last week my Lenovo T430u's 500GB Toshiba HDD was afflicted with the clicking of death. I therefore called for a replacement and the recovery disks. The laptop has no internal optical drive so I bought the an external one, an Asus sdrw-08d2s-u to be more precise. It has a Y connector, the ugly double USB thing for the extra power instead of having an adapter. The laptop does not want to boot from the optical drive. It lights up and spins as if actually reading the disc. The optical drive appears in the boot manager, but just like when I select the empty HDD it tries to boot from it but then immediately goes back to the boot manager.

What I have tried:

1) I have checked the BIOS without having the optical drive plugged in. It clearly shows I have "USB CD" as having priority in the boot sequence.

2) With the drive plugged in, it is recognized and replaced "USB CD" with the name of the drive in the boot sequence. It is still first to boot.

3) Some would suggest not enough power, I dont know what I can do for that. The drive is plugged in with both USB plugs in the only 2 USB outlets I on the laptop. It does not appear to not have enough power, it spins and lights up just as it should. I have tried with only one of the USBs plugged in and it doesn't light up or spin any less.

4) I am sure the optical drive works. I have plugged it in my desktop computer, arranged the BIOS to have it boot first and it did so successfully while loading the Windows 8 install manager.

After all of that, I do not know what else to do or try. I feel like my laptop is just being damned stubborn. Thanks for any advice you could give!
 

Chicano

Distinguished
Aug 29, 2011
193
2
18,910


If I understand correctly (bold text), this would be normal!!... if you select an empty HDD, nothing can happen.. you need to boot from the disk, but not a recovery disk... If you want a clean Windows installation over a formatted drive you need a Windows installation disk

How to Do a Clean Installation with Windows 7
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

The subject on Recovery disks is widely discussed in the linked pages.

How to Use a Recovery Disc
http://www.ehow.com/how_5185336_use-recovery-disc.html

Using the recovery disks for a clean install?
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-Edge-S-series/Using-the-recovery-disks-for-a-clean-install/td-p/470545

Windows 7 - Clean install using factory restore discs?
http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-restore/86869-clean-install-using-factory-restore-discs.html
 

bobbytreefish

Honorable
Mar 4, 2013
2
0
10,510




I only made the comparison with the empty HDD to show that selecting the optical drive to boot didn't do anything. Just one question, are you saying that the Operating System Recovery Disc (Windows 8) they gave me is not what I need to do a clean install on the new hard drive? I'm confused, because from what I read a recovery disc may be used to reinstall windows on an empty hard drive.