losing track of usb flash drive

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by florida_guy, Sep 8, 2007.

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  1. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    I have a Kingston 4GB portable USB flash drive that I take from home to work. I have a scheduled backup of it every night.

    Both True Image and Disk Director are saying they can't see it after I unplug it and plug it back in. If I reboot they see it fine. Windows XP sees it fine without me having to reboot.

    Is there a way I can get True Image to see it again after I plug it back in without rebooting?
     
  2. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    florida_guy:

    I don't think so. Acronis has designed TrueImage and Disk Director in such a way that they don't support removable devices. Normally this means that you can't back up a removable drive with TrueImage or partition a removable drive with Disk Director.

    Some PCs will map removable drives as hard disks if they are present when the PC boots. You are lucky enough to own a PC that does this, so you are able to "see" your USB flash drive in TrueImage and Disk Director IF the drive was plugged in while the PC was booted up.

    At one time Acronis stated in a response to one of my posts on the Disk Director forum that they would probably support removable devices in a future update of their products.
     
  3. farmerlee

    farmerlee Registered Member

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    I just tried that out on my system running xp home and trueimage 10 is able to see it after i've unplugged it then plugged it in again. What version of TI are you running?
     
  4. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Well, knock me over with a feather! I'm running ATI Home 10 build 4942 and haven't tried looking at removable drives in Windows since I last ran ATI 9. Back then you had to boot into the recovery version in "safe" mode and have a PC that mapped USB devices to hard disks in order to be able to work on the removable device, so I got used to doing it that way.

    You are correct; I can now see a removable USB flash drive come and go as I plug and unplug it while viewing the "Create Backup Wizard" screen in ATI 10. So Acronis must have done what they said they were going to do a year ago and added support for removable drives.

    The other big surprise is that removable drives are now also supported in Disk Director, even though I have not updated that program (I'm currently using DD10 build 2160). Acronis must have changed a common file or DLL that is shared between the two apps.

    That's good news but it doesn't explain why florida_guy is having problems unless he is running an older build of TrueImage.
     
  5. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    I am using build 4,942.
     
  6. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    I tried this and it lost it, couldn't find it again, and locked up the wizard in the process.
     
  7. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    Are you always plugging the flashdrive into the same USB port?

    I've had problems before with USB devices (a media reader for one) that was solved by plugging it into a different port than the one I usually used. This made Windows redetect and reinstall it.

    If you haven't already, maybe you could try a different port and see if you get different results.
     
  8. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    Yes.

    That would be very inconvenient.
     
  9. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    ...but I will try it and see what happens.
     
  10. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    I only suggest it as it may help. It also may not make a difference.

    Newer computers usually have several front ports and several rear ports. I don't know how your computer is setup or what you have plugged in.

    Also, if you have a hub, sometimes plugging into a different port on the hub will cause a redetection to take place too.

    -----

    Another thing you might try... plug the device into the normal USB port you use for it and then open the Device Manager and expand the Disk drives section. Right-click on the USB device and select Uninstall. Then remove the device and restart the computer. Plug the device back in and hopefully it will be reinstalled.
     
  11. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    I tried plugging it into a different USB port but that didn't work.

    Thanks for the suggestion but this doesn't really help me because it requires rebooting which is what I'm trying to avoid. If I reboot even without uninstalling the device the problem goes away.

    My testing of your suggestions did confirm my initial analysis though. Unplug USB drive, replug, True Image can't see it. XP can.
     
  12. CatFan432

    CatFan432 Registered Member

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    florida_guy,
    Almost certainly you're doing this: Are you closing TI in between plugging in your flash drive? Close TI, plug in the flash, restart TI.

    Something else to try would be using Task Manager or a substitute program to kill the Acronis processes:

    TrueImageMonitor.exe
    TiMounterMonitor.exe
    schedhlp.exe
    schedul2.exe

    Then plug in the flash and restart TI.
     
  13. farmerlee

    farmerlee Registered Member

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    You shouldn't need to restart the TI program or services from my experience. Whenever i insert a flashdrive while TI is running it automatically picks it up.
     
  14. CatFan432

    CatFan432 Registered Member

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    This is true in almost all occasions for me also, but occasionally one of my external drives won't show up, and closing and restarting TI makes it appear.
     
  15. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    florida_guy,

    Uninstalling the USB device from the Device Manager and rebooting is a ONE-TIME event. It's just a test to make Windows reinstall the device when you plug it in the next time. I was not suggesting you do this every time. It would either help or it would make no difference.

    I think it's still not clear exactly where the problem is. Do you have TI or DD running all the time? In the first post you're talking about scheduling. Are you getting an error message from TI because the scheduled backup can't find the flashdrive?
     
  16. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    Oh. O.K. Well I did uninstall and reinstall the device when you first suggested it. I know it worked because I had to reassign it my custom drive letter. However I'm still having the problem.

    As for the folks suggesting I close and open TI in between I just did a test

    Manually run my scheduled task that backs up the drive. Works fine.
    Close TI.
    Unplug drive and watch it disappear from Windows Explorer.
    Replug drive and watch it reappear in Windows Explorer.
    Open TI.
    Manually run my scheduled task that backs up the drive. Fails.
    "Can not find a partition with the path \local\hd_sign(002A2955)."
    "No source is selected for the operation. Terminated."
    "Operation has completed with errors."
     
  17. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    It the scheduled backup a regular scheduled backup or is it using a Backup Location?
     
  18. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    I'm not sure if I'm answering this correctly but I'll do my best. The place where I am backing up to is defined as a backup location. I don't see anywhere in the wizard where I tell it to use a Backup Location though.
     
  19. Menorcaman

    Menorcaman Retired Moderator

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    Me too and I'm using TI 9.0 Build 3677.

    I've tried changing numerous Windows Services from Automatic to Manual and applying various tweaks via X-Setup Pro but still couldn't replicate florida_guy's symptoms. Very mysterious I must say.

    florida_guy - clutching at straws now but have you tried a different make/smaller capacity flash drive?

    Regards

    Menorcaman
     
  20. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    I don't have any others to try.
     
  21. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    What format is the flashdrive (FAT16, FAT32, etc.)?
    Have you tried a different format? (It shouldn't really make a difference, but you never know...)

    Do you have an external USB hard drive?
    If so, does it exhibit the same problems?
     
  22. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    My USB drive is FAT 32. I have not tried changing it and don't want to do it right before taking it to work this morning.

    I have my brand new Maxtor Free Agent 500GB USB external drive NTFS. I did a test.

    Create scheduled backup to Free Agent.
    Manually run scheduled backup to Free Agent. Works fine.
    Unplug Free Agent and watch it disappear from Windows XP explorer
    Replug Free Agent and watch it reappear in Windows XP explorer
    Realize that I forgot to close TI and see the status bar says analyzing partition.
    Wait for analyzing partition to finish. It never does.
    End Task for TI because it is locked up.
    Reopen TI
    Manually run scheduled backup to Free Agent. Works fine.
     
  23. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    Disk Director only gave me one choice in the convert menu "FAT 32".

    Partition Magic 8 didn't even see the USB drive.
     
  24. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    If you wanted to try a different format on the flashdrive, you'll need to reformat it, not convert it. So you'd have to copy off any files on the flashdrive you want to keep, reformat it, then copy the files back.

    I don't know if you can use the whole drive if it's FAT16 since your flashdrive is 4GB. NTFS is the only other option.

    I really doubt it's the format causing the problem. Especially, since the USB hard drive had some problems too.

    If TI isn't running when you disconnect/reconnect the USB hard drive, does TI recognize it okay when it's restarted or a scheduled backup runs?

    You may want to consider contacting Acronis Support and requesting some updated Windows drivers for your computer. I suspect that's where the problem lies.
     
  25. florida_guy

    florida_guy Registered Member

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    It does for the Free Agent 500 GB External USB Drive but it doesn't for the Kingston 4GB USB Zip Drive.

    O.K. I hadn't thought of drivers as an issue. Thanks once again for your help.
     
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