Yes Andrew, these are the usual suspects. I made sure to use a direct USB A to USB C cable; length about 30 cm so as not to lose too much oomph. Prior experience shows that using a 2 meter cable reduces transmission speeds substantially compared to a 30 cm cable, say, on a USB C SSD drive. The BiaB installation drive did not get recognized, though.

With respect to a different casing -> I had the drive completely dismantled and made sure to have the connectors fixed properly. This exercise helped once around Christmas Time with this very drive, yet now there is no way to have this drive resuscitated. I even checked on previous BiaB installation drives as you suggested. Most of the drives did not get recognized by the Surface Pro 8. One drive got sort of recognized (BiaB 2016), I mounted the BiaB 2022 installation disk into this housing and got a warning message that there is a problem with the drive. Installation was not possible.

After retrying a couple of times, I got the drive to install BiaB 2022. Midstream I had a couple of file errors, which I could ignore, because I installed over a folder that is a copy of the BiaB 2022 installation on the previous Surface Pro (2017). I thus needed essentially the installation of the program itself, basically because I now assigned different drive letters to the installation, which needed to get appropriately assigned via some installation procedure - and fonts and stuff . . .

The whole rigmarole appears to be somewhat flimsy, though. This touchy drive connection between the BiaB installation USB A disks and the USB C Surface Pro 8 sure is annoying.

Thanks for chiming in, Andrew. I had a live chat with your distinguished colleague Ember on this issue during the weekend, asking for a potential download link of the installation files coming to rescue. Since I do now have a running BiaB 2022 version on this Surface Pro 8, this request is now kind of obsolet. The drive itself ist still unreliable, though. Next time around I'd sure prefer a download version that may go onto some SSD with rock solid USB C ports.

Thank you very much for your support, Andrew. And extend my best compliments to Ember who was likewise very supportive during this weekend.


Martin