Lee B

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How are you using Ghost 2003--from its Windows interface?  Or, from a boot disk or disc in DOS?

If in DOS, what DOS USB driver are you using to mount and assign drive letters to your external USB device?

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I presume here you are saying nothing helped--got the same negative results that the external USB HDD was still not shown as a destination drive.

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How is the external USB drive formatted (is the external HDD formatted?--Ghost can *see* an unformatted partition/HDD as a source, but will not be able to write an image to a file system that's missing or not recognized?)--FAT or NTFS?  The 1:1 and 1:2 only apply to NTFS partitions--FAT partitions should have a DOS drive letter assigned.

And, it may just be an oversight when composing your post, but the internal HDD is likely 1:1, but the external HDD should be 2:1 if it's NTFS--it's a second physical drive and each physical drive will have a new number for that first number of the drive designation--so 1:2 would be the first physical drive and the second NTFS partition on that drive.

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Again, same questions on how you were successful:

How are you using Ghost 2003--from its Windows interface?  Or, from a boot disk or disc in DOS?

If in DOS, what DOS USB driver are you using to mount and assign drive letters to your external USB device?

Most likely, there is some incompatibility/conflict between the Western external USB HDD, the on board USB Controller, BIOS support on the Dell Vostro 1500 for USB devices in DOS, and any USB DOS driver that may be loading.

The fact that you where able to use a 8 GB flash drive successfully shows that if the device is compatible with the DOS USB driver, everything can work. 

What is the file system on the flash drive?  How was the flashdrive shown in Ghost's Destination list--2.1 or a DOS drive letter?

Have you tried other external USB HDD's?  What size is the Western Digital HDD (maybe there's a size incompatibility!).  In Windows, I presume you and read and write files to the Western HDD?

As you can see--lots of potential variable that may be creating a problem--sometimes we can sort them out--other times--not so lucky!  Let us know some more details and maybe the problem will reveal itself.

Recently had this problem creating image of an old HP Pavilion desktop.  The HP came with usb 1.1, had a usb 2.0 pci adapter, and Ghost 2003 wouldn't recognize external drive on any usb port.  Also I noticed Ghost wouldn't recognize external drive while imaging a Dell laptop unless the Dell were turned off with Ghost boot CD in CD drive, and then restart the Dell.  Selecting restart while booted to Windows with boot CD in CD drive would result in Ghost failure to recognize external drive.  You might give this a try if you haven't already. 

Finally I tried using Bart PE CD created by Seagate Discwizard Bart PE plugin that recognized the external drive but only when connected to the HP usb 1.1 ports.  FYI Discwizard was exactly twice as fast as Ghost both creating and restoring image when I tested it on the same Dell laptop, and Discwizard compression was greater requiring less space to store image.