Disk data lost

[oettrich]

I used Acronis True Image to create an Image from my internal harddisk. I stored the image to an external hard-disk. The imange-creation process worked well.
While the process was running I tried to access my external hard-disk and got an error message like: "The disk is write protected, because in use by another process" (I tried to create a new folder). Once the image was created I could verify the image (also this process ended correctly).
>:( Pittily after leaving the Acronis True image application all my data on the external disk was LOST. I suppose the allocation table was corrupted, because after a lot of work and lost time I could get back almost all my data from the 'corrupted' disk.
I had this experience twice (after recovering the data I tried again, because I hadn't made the connection between the image-creation and the data losing, this time without data on the external disk, but I had to re-format it afterwards).
Richard Öttl

[mareke]

My experience with external hard drives is that they are subject to data loss if while being written to or while some process is occurring on the disk, it is disconnected especially if you are using Windows ME or Windows 98. With Windows XP sudden disconnection is not as likely to lead to a problem as long as the drive is set to 'Optimise for quick removal' rather than 'Optimise for performance'. If you are using Windows XP you might like to check the properties of the drive to see what your setting is. If it is set to ‘Optimise for performance’ changing the setting to ‘Optimise for quick removal’ might help. I've had to format and start from scratch after an external drive was disconnected while it was doing something. All the data on it was lost. I've not heard of Acronis causing the problem you have described though and if it was a consistent fault it would have shown up on many people's computers where Acronis is used to write an image to an external drive. Since it has not been reported before it more likely to be a fault specific to your computer but is still worth pinpointing the cause.

[oettrich]

As far as I'm aware off, I hadn't any 'disk disconnection'. By the way I'm usin Windows XP and the settings were on 'Optimise for Quick removal'.
Thanks, the same.
Richard

[Acronis Support]

Hello Richard,

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

Does the problem appear even if you do not try to access your external hard drive? Please try to launch copying some large file to the external drive and when it starts copying try to launch copying of another large file (files of several gigabytes would be perfect). After that please let us know whether you are able to access your external drive. Also please try to create the image and store it to your internal drive and copy to the external drive after that.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman