How are you trying that?

Booting up from the recovery cd and then want to restore your system from external drive to the harddrive in the computer?

Yes.

The usb disk should be visible.

Do you have created the recover iso on this same computer?

You can load drivers in to the recovery environment, if disks are missing:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforwindows/userguide/baremetal_source.html?ver=50

Installing Drivers for Remote Storage Devices

A removable storage device with the backup file may not be displayed in the list of devices. This can happen in two situations:

• The driver for the remote storage device is included in the Veeam Recovery Media but failed to be installed automatically for some reason.
• The driver for the remote storage device is not included in the Veeam Recovery Media.

This is probably the best advice for the situation.

Yes, I created the iso on the same computer but it can’t see the external drive where the backup is.

Did you try to load the drivers as described in the helpcenter article?

Is the external disk USB3 in a USB3 port? Might be missing USB3 drivers, have seen that a long time ago.

Good point as the drive might not be getting power possibly?

It’s a usb 2.0. It is getting power because I had hooked it up to the laptop to run the veeam backup on it.
I think it could be a driver issue. Would anyone know how to add a driver to the recovery media?

Yes, read my provided link to load drivers in the recovery session or add it on this step:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforwindows/userguide/image_create_options.html?ver=50

Is the external disk USB3 in a USB3 port? Might be missing USB3 drivers, have seen that a long time ago.

Good point as the drive might not be getting power possibly?

It’s a usb 2.0. It is getting power because I had hooked up to the laptop to run the veeam backup on it.
I think it could be a driver issue. Would anyone know how to add a driver to the recovery media?

Yes, read my provided link to load drivers in the recovery session or add it on this step:

 

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforwindows/userguide/image_create_options.html?ver=50

 

 

This is the best place to start for sure.  I have done this with my own work laptop. 

Is the external disk USB3 in a USB3 port? Might be missing USB3 drivers, have seen that a long time ago.

Good point as the drive might not be getting power possibly?

It’s a usb 2.0. It is getting power because I had hooked up to the laptop to run the veeam backup on it.
I think it could be a driver issue. Would anyone know how to add a driver to the recovery media?

Yes, read my provided link to load drivers in the recovery session or add it on this step:

 

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforwindows/userguide/image_create_options.html?ver=50

 

 

This is the best place to start for sure.  I have done this with my own work laptop. 

I will try that and report back. Thanks

@texastig , what file-system was being used on the external drive? NTFS - REFS - FAT32. Can you read the disk on another computer?

Maybe your motherboard don’t see all usb as active, have you tried all ports?
Second question: check for file-system as mentioned by @Nico Losschaert 

And, try another cable. Surely it’s not that, but it’s right to explore all possibilities.