Backup Task on eSATA drive which is not connected

As far as I know one of the major features of Acronis True Image Home 2009 is that a backup task which has a removeable target drive like an eSATA disc will check if the target drive is connected and will do the backup when the drive is reconnected to the PC.

This does not work for me. I have a daily backup task. When it runs and the eSATA drive is not connected it shows an I/O error message. When the drive is reconnected the task seems not to start automatically. Unfortunatly I can not find any detailed help in the manual if some special settings have to be done or if this is a build-in feature of the tasks.

 

It's not what you want to, but have you tried rebooting with the esata drive conected?

 

Or, you may want to try having the device manager check for new hardware. The reattachment must be recognized by the Bios and in Windows for TI to know it's available.

 

This is unfortunate. Is the disk being recognized by Windows when you plug it in? For example, you can access it with Explorer? If not, then it sounds like a prob with the esata port driver. If Explorer can access the drive but ATI doesn't do what it's supposed to do, I'd recommend contacting Chat to see if they can get the product to work as advertised. ATI offers more features than other brands but if they don't work reliably, that'snot much of an advantage.

 

I still consider eSATA a hit and miss affair and although I stopped playing with them a while ago, I never had any luck with them other than when connected at boot-up. They sure weren't living up to the hype. I hope that sufficient time and development has passed for things to have improved.

 

Thanks for the information.

The eSATA connection works fine in windows. My question is mainly about the feature of True Image to start the task if the eSATA is reconneced.
First the tasks produces an I/O error message if the tasks starts without the connected eSATA drive and if I try edit the task the target is no longer my eSATA drive but C:\mydocs etc.. This is not what I expected. Maybe everything is fine but I could not verify if this is the correct behavior of True Image.

 

What build of TI 2009 are you using?

The problem with TI changing the destination path for the backup when it can't find the drive is a known one (and an irritating one).

I haven't tested the feature to start a missed task when the drive becomes available. From the guide, it seems that this only works with USB flashdrives:

I've sent you a PM about the task failing if the drive isn't connected.

 

USB3 should be start showing up this fall and then eSata might fade away. While SATA was a def improvement over parallel IDE, esata hasn't go anything on USB3. USB3 should be able to achieve typical speeds that are ten times USB2 typical speeds (forget about the nonsense "burst speed ratings" which will never affect your live -- it's the typical speeds, about a tenth of the max speed ratings, that count -- see table below). Let's hope the friggin connectors are durable and reliable.


USB2 Firewire400 USB3
Printed Data Rate 480Mbits/s 400Mbits/s 5GB
Sustained Data Rate (READ) 33MB/s 38MB/s ~400 MB/s
Sustained Data Rate (WRITE) 27MB/s 35MB/s ~400 MB/s
Architecture Master-Slave Peer-to-Peer Master-Slave

 

The build is 9769. So it should be up-to-date. I have just tested the USB connection of my external drive. Still no luck
Where did you find the information that it only works with USB flsh drives?

Thanks for the PM maybe I will give it a try if the build in feature does not work...

 

It was in the TI 2009 manual in the New Features section at the start.

 

My German manual says somethign different in the new features section.
I try to translate it:

Automatic backup on removeable drives:
This feature controls the behavio rof Acronis True Image Home if the selected target of a tasks is on a removeable drive (USB/Firewire/eSATA). If a planned task fails because the external drive was not available when the task started the backup will automatically start once the drive is reconnected. However the removeable drive must be the same as the one used for the preceding backups - if an other removeable drive is connected the backup will not start.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

This option can be applied to the USB sticks only.

Brain,

The latest user guide available on the German web site doesn't contain the above words, maybe, this phrase is related to the old version of the user guide. Anyway, the content has been improved.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

That's true. My printed manual contains the USB/Firewire/eSATA parts on page 7. In the latest PDF manual only the USB backup is mentioned.
I have trusted the printed manual and bought a eSATA drive....

So are there plans to include this feature in the future?

 

That's what Acronis calls "improved"

 

Hello Brain,

Thank you for your response.

We have the appropriate enhancement concerning this option. I will add your request to this case.

Meanwhile, you can create a non-scheduled task and run it manually when the eSATA drive is attached.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee