TI 10 Home NOT Seeing USB Drive

[whitedavidp]

I have attached a .zip file. It contains two files:

(a) Output from Acronis Report

(b) A Windows screen shot bitmap file showing Explorer (listing my USB drive "Kingston F:") and TI 10's Backup Location Creation Wizard (at the point where I am trying to browse to the USB drive).

In (b) You can see that under MyComputer in the wizard, NO F: drive is shown. Please note that I DID restart TI 10 AFTER I inserted the USB drive and it showed up in Explorer. I closed and restarted TI 10 at least 3 times and tried each time to find the F: drive - no luck.

I can see the Kingston USB drive listing near the top of the Acronis Report.

So what is going on here? Thanks.

[whitedavidp]

I don't see the attached .zip file on my original post. Trying again... Oh, perhaps I cannot attach .zip. I will try the .txt extension. But it WILL be a .zip file. So rename it to .zip. Thanks.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "I have attached a .zip file. It contains two files:

(a) Output from Acronis Report

(b) A Windows screen shot bitmap file showing Explorer (listing my USB drive "Kingston F:") and TI 10's Backup Location Creation Wizard (at the point where I am trying to browse to the USB drive).

In (b) You can see that under MyComputer in the wizard, NO F: drive is shown. Please note that I DID restart TI 10 AFTER I inserted the USB drive and it showed up in Explorer. I closed and restarted TI 10 at least 3 times and tried each time to find the F: drive - no luck.

I can see the Kingston USB drive listing near the top of the Acronis Report.

So what is going on here? Thanks." }-

At the time of writing there is no attachment. However can I confirm that the problems you are experiencing are under Windows TI as opposed to TI under the Recovery CD environment ?

Did you get a driver disk with your USB drive. If you did, can you check that the device is using the correct drivers ?

F.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "I don't see the attached .zip file on my original post. Trying again... Oh, perhaps I cannot attach .zip. I will try the .txt extension. But it WILL be a .zip file. So rename it to .zip. Thanks." }-

Is the problem that it is formatted as FAT16 ?

F.

[whitedavidp]

Hello and thanks. Yes, this is under Windows and NOT recovery mode. I am trying to create a backup location. Not sure if you can do that under recover mode. Also, I checked and Windows shows it to be a FAT file system, not NTFS or FAT32. Is this a problem? Thanks.

[whitedavidp]

Please note that this is a very small (32M) USB drive. It seems to be using the default Windows USB drivers rather than anything special from Kingston. But it works just fine reading/writing files via Explorer, etc.

I cannot find anywhere in the TI docs where it states that a drive cannot be formatted FAT. However, I did just try to format it to FAT32 and the XP Disk Manager says the volume is too small for that file system. This is news to me.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "Please note that this is a very small (32M) USB drive. It seems to be using the default Windows USB drivers rather than anything special from Kingston. But it works just fine reading/writing files via Explorer, etc.

I cannot find anywhere in the TI docs where it states that a drive cannot be formatted FAT. However, I did just try to format it to FAT32 and the XP Disk Manager says the volume is too small for that file system. This is news to me." }-

I have assumed thus far that you were talking about an external "USB drive". Are you talking about a USB flash disk ?

There are constraints in TI about what you can do with "removeable disks" - I'm not sure if creating a backup location is one of them.

Can anyone comment?

F.

[Menorcaman]

Hello whitedavidp,

Three questions:

1. Are we talking about a 32 MB flash drive or a proper miniture HD?

2. What does Windows report it as (right click and select Properties) - removable media or hard drive?

3. Last but no means least - why are you wanting to create an Acronis Backup Location in a mere 32 MB? In fact, as I don't use TI 10.0, I don't even know whether that's possible.

Regards

Oops! Sorry F. Seems I was still typing whilst you were posting. :P

[whitedavidp]

It is a flash drive, not a HD.

I believe Windows calls it a Removable Disk.

I am just testing how TI works. I am not backing up very many files at this time. This just happened to be lying around unused and I grabbed it.

I am simply surprised that it does not see the drive at all. It clearly is there.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "It is a flash drive, not a HD.

I believe Windows calls it a Removable Disk.

I am just testing how TI works. I am not backing up very many files at this time. This just happened to be lying around unused and I grabbed it.

I am simply surprised that it does not see the drive at all. It clearly is there." }-

Start a restore (Recovery) and see if it offers you that disk in the tree.

If this problem is related to Backup Locations (which do have constraints) I would expect the disk to be visible under restore/backup in the disk tree.

F.

[whitedavidp]

-{ Quote: "I have assumed thus far that you were talking about an external "USB drive". Are you talking about a USB flash disk ?

There are constraints in TI about what you can do with "removeable disks" - I'm not sure if creating a backup location is one of them.

Can anyone comment?

F." }-

I have just been through the relevant sections of the docs at <http://us1.download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage10.0_ug.en.pdf> and I don't see anywhere that there are limitations in the use of removable disks. Indeed, on Page 14,the read,

"3.5 Acronis backup locations
The performance, capacity and cost of modern hard disk drives make them a convenient and reliable place for storing backup archives. External and networked drives have become the most popular storage locations. Backing up a computer drive to another internal drive is another common solution. One can organize a storage area on an FTP server and access it via Internet. As opposed to removable media, a hard drive, whether local, external or networked, provides plenty of space and is always available for unattended scheduled backup."

Here they specifically mention removable media. There is no mention of any limitations. I further searched for "removable" and found only statements which indicate that removable media is supported. So I don't know where any "limitations" are stated.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "I have just been through the relevant sections of the docs at <http://us1.download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage10.0_ug.en.pdf> and I don't see anywhere that there are limitations in the use of removable disks. Indeed, on Page 14,the read,

"3.5 Acronis backup locations
The performance, capacity and cost of modern hard disk drives make them a convenient and reliable place for storing backup archives. External and networked drives have become the most popular storage locations. Backing up a computer drive to another internal drive is another common solution. One can organize a storage area on an FTP server and access it via Internet. As opposed to removable media, a hard drive, whether local, external or networked, provides plenty of space and is always available for unattended scheduled backup."

Here they specifically mention removable media. There is no mention of any limitations. I further searched for "removable" and found only statements which indicate that removable media is supported. So I don't know where any "limitations" are stated." }-

They do mention removable, and I don't know whether there are any constraints or not. However note that the spirit of what they are discussing is the benefits of hard disk drives over removable ones (i.e. Flash disks).

F.

[Menorcaman]

From the screenshot in your attachment above, I note that your CD drive (definitely removable media!) isn't visible/available when using the Acronis Backup Location Wizard. I would therefore hazard a guess and say removable media is a no-no as far as the Backup Location is concerned. However, as I said, I don't use TI 10 so I could be wrong.

Regards

[whitedavidp]

Not to put too fine a point on it, they merely state that removable media offers less space than most hard drives. This is true and obvious. However, it sure does not seem to me that there is a spirit or any other indication that removable drives are constrained or otherwise not supported.

I did just check if the drive shows up in the wizards for backing up (My Data) and Recovery. It does show up there. Just not, for some reason, in the Backup Locations wizard. This would imply that there is some issue with flash drives (or at least this one) that is simply stated nowhere in the docs.

[whitedavidp]

-{ Quote: "From the screenshot in your attachment above, I note that your CD drive (definitely removable media!) isn't visible/available when using the Acronis Backup Location Wizard. I would therefore hazard a guess and say removable media is a no-no as far as the Backup Location is concerned. However, as I said, I don't use TI 10 so I could be wrong.

Regards" }-

The CD in this computer is not writable - reader only. I would guess why that is why it is not shown. Thanks.

[prius04]

FWIW, I'm seeing the same behavior on two machines, both of which have USB flash drives; they do not appear in "Backup Location Properties".

They DO, however, appear in "Backup Wizard" and I can even get to the point where a full backup would apparently start if I clicked "Proceed". I wouldn't dare do so since the capacity on each drive is only 4 GB.

What's interesting is, when I select "Create Backup Location", I can actually see ATI analyzing my USB flash drives. They simply don't appear in "Backup Location Properties" thereafter. Pure speculation on my part but I suspect that, although backups to USB flash drives are allowed, the s/w considers such devices to be unsuitable for "automatic management".

[Acronis Support]

Hello whitedavidp,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Please be aware that rewritable media can only be used for Acronis Backup Locations in case it's formatted as a hard drive, not as removable media.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov