Western Digital My Book External Hard Drive & Acronis True Image

I recently purchased a 250GB Western Digital My Book external hard drive. It came with USB and Firewire 400 connections. This is not my first USB device, but it is my first external hard drive. Because I had some frustration trying to make the drive work with my computer (get recognized) and also experienced frustration trying to get the drive to work with the TI 9.0 Rescue boot disk (get recognized), I wanted to share how I got this drive to work. The solution is very easy, but it took me some trial and error to figure out. If you are now in the same boat I was in a few days ago, this post may save you some frustration.

Before I start, I want to mention that my plan for the My Book is to use it as a place to store my backup images. I plan to keep the drive on a shelf or in its box when it is not needed for images or restores. I do not plan on having the drive permanently connected to a PC.

When I got the drive, I followed the Western Digital instructions to install the basic software/drivers and to make the connections. I did not install the WD backup program or any other non-essential programs. The PC recognized the My Book and everything was fine. I wanted to make sure, I could easily move the drive between my two (2) PCs and have the drive be recognized by each PC. This is where I ran into my first frustration. After the initial setup on each PC, I could not get the PCs to recognize the My Book during a normal boot. The problem was I thought I could connect the My Book at any time and have the PC recognize the drive. What I was doing was connecting the My Book to the PC and then turning on the PC. Based on my reading of the manual, I believed the PC would turn on and recognize the My Book automatically. What figured out was that the only time the PC will automatically turn on the My Book and recognize it at boot up is when the My Book was attached to the PC when the PC was last shutdown. If you plan to pull the My Book from a shelf for a back up (and the My Book has not been connected to the PC for a while) the process is different. To get the My Book recognized by the PC, you must first fully boot your PC. Then you need to fully spinup (turn on) the My Book. Then you have to connect the USB/Firewire cable to the My Book, and connect that wire to the USB/Firewire port. After a short time, the PC will load the Western Digital Button Manager (blue system tray icon) and the My Book will be useable. When you are done with your imaging/restoring with TI in the windows environment and you are ready to disconnect the My Book from the PC, you can "Safely Remove" the My Book through the System Tray icon and wait for the PC to automatically turn off the My Book before disconnecting the drive, or you can turn off the My Book by pressing the button on the front of the drive and wait for the drive to turn off. Then you can disconnect the drive.

With this fully understood, I was able to get the My Book recongized by the PC, create an image of my internal drive with TI in the windows envirnoment and have that image saved to the My Book external drive. Because of what I learned through trial and error, I thought I knew all I needed to know to create an image using the TI 9.0 3677 build Rescue boot disk, but I was wrong.

I wanted to verify that I could create an image using the non-windows environment by using the TI Rescue boot disk. I felt that it was important for me to know that if my hard drive became corrupt and windows did not load that I would be able to restore an image from the My Book using the TI boot disk. Being able to create an image with the TI boot disk and saving that image to the My Book would let me know that the My Book would get recognized/function when I booted with the boot disk. I proceeded based on what I learned about getting the My Book recognized by my PC during a normal boot (without the boot disk). I booted from the TI Rescue boot disk, selected Full Mode, and waited for the TI program to fully load. Then I turned on the My Book, and then connected the cable to the My Book and then to the PC. However, the PC/TI boot disk did not recognize the My Book as the PC had during a normal boot. What I figured out was that the way to get the My Book recognized during a TI rescue disk boot is different than the steps you take during a normal boot. To get the My Book recognized by the PC/TI Rescue disk you have to turn on the My Book and connect it to the PC before you boot the PC with the TI Rescue boot disk. When the My Book is turned on and connected before you boot with the boot disk, when you get into the TI Rescue program, the My Book will appear as expected as a separate drive when you begin to create images or do restores. Once I understood this, I was able to do full image backups of my internal drive and save the images to the My Book external drive.

Like I said initially, the solution is easy. However, no one told me that the My Book setup process was different depending on whether you were doing a normal boot to windows (without the boot disk) or booting with the TI Rescue disk. I am not blaming anyone, as my difficulties were likely due to a lack of knowledge of how these things work and I feel all experiences (good and bad) add to my understanding.

I hope the above is helpful and saves at least one person some time and frustration.

 

I have noticed some My Book Users posting one these pages so I am sure you will have reached some interested parties.
Because of the way you are using your MB drive I just wonder what it would be like with the WD software uninstalled. Like you I have to fire up my external drives before booting from the TI rescue CD and this is normal. When booted into Windows I can connect/power up these drives at any time the only condition being that they should be running before opening True image.

 

Hi TryBackup

Yours was a very interesting post because, like you, my WD 80GB USB 2.0 External HDD is not my first USB device but it is my first external drive, and I too am having problems. Although I have had the drive about two years I have hardly used it, but have recently bought T I with the idea of storing my backup images on it. The problem I have had is that sometimes in Windows Explorer the drive is shown with its proper name of 'WDC USB2' and any files on it are displayed in the r/h panel, whilst on other occasions it is shown as 'Local Disk (F' and its contents do not appear in the r/h pane. I have also noticed that if one disconnects the drive in the proper manner (Safely Remove Hardware) and then shortly afterwards re-connects it, it fails to be recognised and shows as 'Local Disk'. If however the drive is powered down then powered up again before re-connecting the USB cable then generally it is recognised.

I did eventually get as far as making an image of my C drive (which is one of four partitions on my main HDD) and was able to see it on the WD external drive. However when making the image I forgot to set it to validate the image immediately after making it (that setting is 'off' by default in T I), so I then selected the 'Validate Backup Archive' option on the Pick a Tool menu. When I progressed to the point of selecting the backup image to be verified I received the message that the file was not a T I Archive file!!

I have submitted details of my problem to WD's Support as I feel there is something wrong with the drive rather than T I which I feel is a first class piece of software.

 

Hello Nosmas and Trybackup,

I have 2 WD Essential 120gb Externals. I call them "Twin Towers".
These models came out before the "MyBook" models did. The only difference is... the "MyBook" turns off when the computer shuts down. The models I have don't do that. They go into "Hybernation", or "Spin Down" after 10 minutes of "Inactivity", but they don't actuallly turn off.
I don't have any WD software on them at all. I just Reformated them, and then moved my files to them.
I do have to turn one ON...before booting up the Recovery CD for it to be recognized.

You guys should try Reformating your External Drives, and don't install the WD software back on them. Be sure to create a new folder on your Desktop, and then MOVE your files and folders from it to that folder. After Re-formating, move them back.

If you need the Data LifeGuard Diagnostics software, you can get it here. http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

 

Xpilot,

I think the hardware and software manufacturers are trying to save a few pennies at the expense of the end user. It shouldn't be necessary for users to figure these things out on their own. Like I said, I learned something by going through the process. However, every other person may need to go through the same process because the manufacturer didn't take the time to write it down once for everyone's benefit. When I installed my Seagate 160GB hard drive, the installation manual had me go from page 3 to pages 7 through 11, then back to page 3 and then to page 6 to get the drive installed. All this page flipping saved Seagate several pages in their manual, but the drive lists for $200 (I paid $130). Let them save money by not using glossy paper and then use the savings to make things simpler for the user (many of which have never previously opened the PC case).

When after I first connected the drive, I saw the several files that the drive came with. To my knowledge, I installed the bare minimum that is required to get the drive recognized by PC, plus the WD Drive Diagnostics utility. I did not install the WD backup program or the other non-essential program (may have been a Google toolbar). Since I have to use the drive on 2 PCs, I followed the instructions when installing on my main PC, looked at the drive contents (no install CD was provided, all files were on the drive ), then I tried installing the drive on the 2nd PC with no file installation, then with one program installed, etc. What I found was the PC would not recognize the WD drive (or turn on and turn off properly) unless the WD Button Manager was installed. And the drive would not get recognized using the firewire connection unless the WD provided firewire driver was installed. The other files/programs WD provided were not needed so I did not install them (except for the WD diagnostics utility). I burned a copy of the needed files from the drive to a DVD (as a backup) and deleted all the files from the WD drive. The WD drive worked with both USB and Firewire 400 connectors.

Again, thank you for the help you provided while I was having a problem getting the drive recognized by TI, it certainly helped.

 

By the way Trybackup,....which WD MyBook (Essential, Premium, or Pro) did you get??
You shouldn't have any problems at all taking your External from one computer, to the other.
http://westerndigital.com/en/products/productcatalog.asp?language=en

 

Nosmas,

Let me start off by saying that anything I say in response to your post should be verified with any of the numerous knowledgeable posters in this forum. I have only been around here for a couple of weeks and could easily steer you in the wrong direction.

That said, it sounds like when Windows Explorer shows the drive as 'Local Disk (F' that the PC is not fully recognizing the external drive, or maybe the backup file is really corrupt and the drive is sometimes not being seen for that reason (but I do not think a corrupt file would keep your PC from recognizing the physical drive properly however). I do not use Windows Explorer much, what do you see when you click to the drive through the My Computer desktop icon? Is there any consistency as to when the drive is recognized as 'WDC USB2' and the file is recognized, and when the drive is recognized as 'Local Disk (F' and the file is not recognized? If you move the tib image file off of the external drive onto your desktop or to another PC location, does the PC consistently recognize the drive properly? If you move the tib backup off the drive and copy a boring/uncomplicated file like a text (.txt) file to the external drive, does the drive get recognized consistently? Have you tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the external drive (maybe something went wrong during the initial installation? Has the external drive always had this problem (if not maybe the installation got corrupted after the initial install or some other change in your PC corrupted the install)? My problem was resolved by powering up/connecting the PC and the external drive at the right time. I had to power up the PC and the drive fully, and then connect the USB cable to the PC. Only then did the external drive get properly recognized. Do you always powerup/connect the drive the same way? Do you get different results if you powerup/connect in different ways?

I have read in this forum that some problems have been seen with certain USB backups. Either the chipset in the drive or USB port creates a conflict or maybe there are other issues with the drive and port conflicting. Another thing I have read is that backup file size may be a cause of the problem. Some have recommended tell TI to split the backup into file sizes of no more than 100MB each, others recommend file sizes of no more than 650MB or 700MB so you can burn the image files to DVD, and others have recommended file size splits at the roughly 1GB level. One thing you can try (since you said you have a few partitions) is to create a TI image and save the image in separate folder in one of your other partitions (tell TI to split the image into files no larger than 650MB). If your problem is a USB port/external drive conflict, this will allow you to see if you can get a good validated TI image by bypassing the USB drive/port. The last thing I am going to suggest is probably the first thing I should have mentioned. Many posters and Acronis strongly recommend that you have the lasted TI build installed (build 3677) and to create a new TI Rescue boot disk with the new build. I don't think you mentioned it, but if you are creating images through a normal boot in windows, you may want to try imaging using the TI boot disk. It has been recommended that any TI build update install be preceeded with an uninstall of the currently installed build through control panel>add/remove programs. And don't forget to burn a new TI Rescue disk after the lasted build is installed.

I hope this helps or gives you some ideas. If not, as I said there are some very knowledgeable experts who frequently post to this forum who may be better able to help you.

Lastly, I am glad to hear that you found my post intersting .

 

starsfan09,

I have the WD My Book 250GB Premium Edition (Hard Drive with backup software). The box says it is Order #WDG1C2500N and Model #WD2500D032. The retail price for the drive was $200, I bought it for $130 on sale from Best Buy. I bought it locally so I could return it easily if the connectors did not work with my PC or if there was some other problem (external drives are new territory for me and I did not want to fight with an online vendor if I had to return it). I am sure it can be had for a lower price online. It comes with both USB and Firewire 400 cables, backup software and Google Desktop software. In my short experience, images are created and validated twice as fast when I use the Firewire 400 cable instead of the USB cable.

Personally, I could easily live without the auto shutdown. This is especially true when sometimes the drive gives me a problem when I try to manually shut it down using the drive's button. Mine also spins down (hibernates) after maybe 10 minutes or so and there is a slight delay when I access the drive while it comes out of hibernation. Some have said that the drive runs cool, but I have found at times that the drive is hotter than I would like. This is my first external drive so maybe the temperature is normal. Since I will not be using it everyday, and not for long periods of time when I do use it, I am not too concerned about the temperature of the drive. Also, as mentioned, it does hibernate so the drive cools down when not being used.

When I first installed the drive, I reformated it to NTFS. No files need to remain on the external drive to have it function. I did install the WD-provided firewire driver, the WD button manager, and the WD diagnostics utility, but all the files only have to be on the internal drive, not the external drive. I did not install the WD backup program or the Google desktop. To the best of my knowledge, the external drive could not be recognized by the PC (using the USB cable) until I installed the WD button manager. And when connecting the Firewire 400 cable, the PC would not recognize the drive until I installed the WD-provided Firewire 1394 Hid Driver. Although I deleted these files from the My Book, I burned them to a DVD should I have to reinstall them.

 

According to Western Digital

Quote:-Easy to set up, easy to use -- This drive is all about simplicity. Plug it into your computer’s USB 2.0 port and start saving.

I was thinking of buying one on the understanding that they are Plug and Play why would you need to go through all the steps described by TryBackup

 

starsfan09,

My problem was a lack of understanding as to how to get the My Book drive recognized first by the PC/WD Button Manager, and secondly by the TI Rescue boot disk. What I learned was that the process for powering up and connecting was different depending on whether I was booting normally or booting with the TI Rescue disk. I figured it out through trial and error, and now I can easily and reliably connect the My Book to either PC via a normal windows boot or TI Rescue disk boot.

 

Trybackup,
From what I gather, you're using the Firewire connections. Try using the USB 2.0 connection. USB is "Plug n Play". I'm not sure about Firewire.
You should NOT have to install any software of any kind to get the Power button to work. You should be able to press the button...to turn it ON, and then turn it OFF...MANUALLY. (However, if you want it to automatically shut down, then I understand installing the software.)
If yours doesn't allow you to shut it Off manually, then you may have a faulty drive that may need returning.
Also, you shouldn't have to disconnect the cable from the computer in order for Windows to recognize it. This action sounds crazy.

I leave my 2 WD Essentials (older model), plugged up at all times using USB 2.0. I never have to disconnect them.

 

como,

Western Digital's instructions will get the My Book installed and functioning in Windows. After the initial installation, as long as you leave the My Book connected to the PC, when you shutdown the PC the My Book will automatically shutdown. When you turn on the PC, the My Book will automatically turn on and be recognized by the PC.

The WD installation instructions are very brief:

=================================================
Windows FireWire Installations
------------------------------
You must first connect the drive using the USB cable to install the FireWire device drivers. If your system has only a FireWire port, go to support.wdc.com, click All Downloads, locate your product name, and download the FireWire device driver installer onto your computer desktop.

Installing the Drive
--------------------
1 - Turn on your computer.

2 - Connect the drive's power cord and USB cable as shown.

3 - Driver utilities are installed automatically. If a security alert is displayed during this installation, click Accept or Continue.

4 - When finished, a menu displays a list of choices including WD Backup and free Google software. To install the software, simply double-click your choice on the menu; otherwise, click Quit to begin using the drive.

5 - If you want to use the FireWire connection at this time, turn off the drive and reinstall it using the FireWire cable.
=================================================

One note regarding the WD installation instructions. I did not get a "security alert", but a window opened asking me to select an application (Media Player, MusicMatch Jukebox, etc.). My response to this was to scroll down the list and select "No Action" or "Take No Action". Maybe this was the right thing to do, maybe it wasn't. Since the instructions did not address this, I felt it was safest to have the PC take no action. After making this selection, the rest of the install went fine.

Beyond the installation instructions, WD tells you that the drive will turn off automatically when you turn off your computer. WD also says that you can Safely Remove the My Book from your PC by turning off the drive manually by pressing the drive's front button, or by right-clicking the WD system tray icon and selecting the listed My Book drive (this will turn off the drive, which can then be safely removed from the PC).

However, Western Digital's instructions do not address how to move the My Book from one PC to another and have the drive get recognized by the other PC (note: I did install the WD-provided Button Manager and Firewire driver on both PCs and during the initial installation the My Book was recognized by both PCs). After the initial installation and Safe Removal from both PCs, I could not get the My Book re-recognized by either PC.

Of course the first thing I tried was to re-read the installation instructions hoping that, short of reinstalling the drivers, I could follow the installation instructions to get the drive re-recognized by each PC. The problem was that the instructions did not say to turn on the My Book. During the initial install, the My Book turned itself on after being connected to the already-booted PC. When trying to get the My Book re-recognized by either PC, the My Book either did not automatically turn on or the My Book turned on but did not automatically get recognized by the PC. The re-connection instructions applicable when moving the My Book from PC to PC (which were not provided by WD) should have read: fully boot your PC in Windows, fully turn on your My Book, then connect the My Book to the PC. Doing this will get the My Book recognized by any PC (with drivers previously installed) anytime you move the My Book between PCs.

The other thing that the WD instructions did not address (and likely this was not WD's responsibility) was the fact that to get the My Book drive recognized when booting with the TI Rescue disk the process is different. When booting with the TI Rescue disk, all connections need to be made and the the My Book needs to be turned on before the PC is turned on.

In summary:

- If you plan to install the My Book on one PC and leave it connected to that PC exclusively, then the WD installation instructions are sufficient. The My Book will turn on and shutdown in concert with the PC. Nothing special needs to be done. You can even do TI image backups and restores while in windows and do nothing differently. However, just remember to manually turn on the My Book before booting with the TI Rescue boot disk.

- If you have installed the WD My Book drivers on more than one PC and plan to move the My Book from PC to PC, the process of getting the My Book recognized is different. When booting normally to any of these PCs, fully boot the PC, fully turn on the My Book, then connect the My Book to the PC. In a few seconds, the My Book will be recognized by the PC. When booting the PC with the TI Rescue disk, turn on and connect the My Book to the PC, and then boot the PC with the TI Rescue disk.

My initial long post documented my experiences on the way to finding a solution. The "In summary" part of this post provides just the resulting soluton. If this works for everyone, then this part of this post is really all that anyone needs.

 

starsfan09,

I use the FireWire connection on my main PC (50% faster than USB when I do images on my main PC) and the USB connection when I create images on my 2nd PC (2nd PC does not have FireWire port).

When I connected the My Book initially to the 2nd PC, before installing anything, my recollection was that the drive did not get recognized. I could be wrong about that but my intention at the time was to try to put as little software on the PC as possible. The current process works very well as long as I let the PC shut off the drive during a normal PC shut down or after I click to initiate a Safe Removal. I will certainly try not installing anything, as you suggested, if I have to reinstall the drive at some point.

 

Sounds like the "My Book" models are a real pain to use. You could purchase one of these, and do some testing. Then take back the "MyBook" if it works out. Best Buy will give you a Refund if you have the Receipt.
I personally use Pic#2 and Pic#3, and have No problems what-so-ever with them.

You can get a look at all WD HD's by clicking here

 

starsfan09,

Now that I have figured out how to get the drive recognized during a normal boot and during a boot disk boot, I am happy with the My Book. I only hope WD spent as much effort making the inner workings solid as they did coming up with the design.

 

TryBackup

Thanks for the detailed explanation, as I only have one computer I should not have the same problems.

 

I purchased a WD My Book 320GB Premium last week which I want to use for backups. It works OK in windows with USB or Firewire and I can create backup images with ATI (I have version eight) within the Windows XP environment.
However, when I read 'trybackup's' post I decided to try the Acronis boot CD to see if it worked.
I normally have the Firewire cable connected permanently.
But I have tried it using both USB and Firewire but ATI does not recognise the My Book when using the boot CD.
I dont think ATI loads the drivers for the My Book when using the boot CD.
I woulld appreciate any suggestions.

 

Como,

If you purchase the My Book I hope all goes as expected. I have seen my My Book be consistently recognized by the PC during a normal boot as long as the My Book is always connected to a USB or Firewire 400 port. The only time you should have to do anything different than normal boots and normal shut downs is if you use a TI Rescue boot disk, as mentioned above.

 

cliffg,

As I mentioned in another post, I am very new to imaging software and external drives, so please verify for yourself or with the very knowledgeable poster in this forum anything I say.

I am using the TI 9.0 3677 Build (the current 9.0 build). Others have recommended that having the current build is important when people have certain problems. Is it possible that version 8 is not programmed to recognize the My Book (I do not know how long My Book has been around)? My Acronis-provided boot CD was out of date when I opened the software, have you gotten the most recent build for TI 8 and burned a boot CD with the most recent build? My TI Rescue disk boot load times have been much shorter with a CD boot disk (used to boot with a DVD and the Acronis splash screen showed for 3 minutes, with the CD boot disk the splash screen shows for only 1 minute), I recommend burning to CD rather than DVD.

Here is the step by step process that works for me using either the USB or the Firewire cable:

1 - With the PC on, insert the TI Rescue boot disk in the PC's CD/DVD drive

2 - On my PC the PC automatically opens a window and shows the contents of the CD. When this happens, I just close the file folder.

3 - Turn off the PC. If the My Book is turned on and connected to the PC, wait for the My Book to automatically turn itself off (could take a few minutes)

4 - Turn on the My Book and, if not connected, connect either the USB or Firewire cable to the My Book and the PC

5 - Turn on your PC (PC will boot from the boot disk previously placed in the CD/DVD drive)

6 - When the selection screen shows, select the TI Full Version

7 - Acronis splash screen then shows for approximately 1-3 minutes (time could vary for different PCs)

8 - Acronis loading shows on black screen for a minute or so, maybe longer ( I used to see an "IEEE SBP2 Aborting SBP2 Command" error at some point on this screen until I learned to turn the My Book on before booting with the boot disk)

9 - Main True Image screen shows with backup, restore and other selections

10 - Click backup, the next screen should have as one of the selections the My Book drive


If after following the above steps (once with the My Book connected to a USB port and once with it connected to the Firewire port), the My Book does not show as an option on the drive selection screen, then I agree that the process I use is not working for you.

If my understanding is current, it is critical that everyone be successful with the boot disk. Otherwise, how will everyone get their images restored to a corrupt or new hard drive when they can not access TI through windows?

If the steps above did not make it possible for you to access your My Book with the boot disk, I think you should consider moving to the current TI 9.0 version and/or store your images to DVD. Due to problems some are having when trying to create images and have them burned directly to DVD, you may want to do some reading on this topic. I have read that if you want your image to be housed on DVD, the best way to do it is to create the image with the external drive (splitting the image into file sizes of no more than say 100MB, and then after the image is done, use your DVD burning software to burn these image files to DVD disks). This way, if you need to use the TI Rescue boot disk to restore a backup, you will be able to restore from your DVD, if you still can not access your My Book with the boot disk.

 

Hi TryBackup
Many thanks for your reply and the various suggestions you have made. I only bought a retail boxed version of T I last week and soon found out from Acronis' website that whereas my build was 2302 the latest build is 3677. Having read their Support answer in one of the threads on this forum that it was not necessary to uninstall the original before installing the updated version I went ahead and downloaded and installed 3677. Subsequently I found that Device Manager was showing TWO identically named drivers but with different dates. I contacted Support who then advised uninstalling everything and re-installing 3677!!

Since making my post above and before reading yours and the other subsequent posts, I did quite a bit of research on the Internet concerning the problems I was having. I think you were quite right about the drive not being recognised. One suggestion I came across was that either the USB cable or USB port might be the cause, so having nothing to lose I moved the cable to a different port and Hey Presto! everything seemed to work perfectly. I now find that the drive is properly recognised every time I plug it in and the contents are displayed in the r/h pane of Windows Explorer. Furthermore if I disconnect the drive using 'Safely Remove Hardware' but DO NOT power it down, when I reconnect the USB cable it immediately recognises the drive. Having got the drive to function properly I have not needed to carry out some of the tests you suggested, but thank you for putting them forward.

I have now successfully made an image of my 'C:' drive on the external HDD, and have restored that back to a second internal HDD (my original 10GB system disk) without any problems. I have also mounted the partition image as a 'Virtual Drive' using the Plug Image Wizard which, if I had wanted, would have enabled me to copy individual files from the virtual drive to the real drive.

I am now experimenting with trying to use the restored partition on the second internal HDD as the boot drive. So far I haven't succeeded but I am a tenacious individual and will eventually find the answer. All this is a 'belt and braces' exercise to know exactly what I could do if some calamity should befall my system in the future.

The thing I have not yet done but must do soon is to burn a new Rescue Disk as the bootable disk that came with the boxed version will be no good for build 3677.

Incidentally I notice that you and some of the other posts mention the 'installation' of their WD External drive. My model is a WD800B008-RNU 80GB USB2 which came pre-formatted FAT32 as one partition for the entire drive. It came as 'Plug and play' and therefore did not have to be 'installed'.

 

TryBackup,
In your response (post #19) to cliffg, you had a lot of good comments but one needs clarification. You said

Your reference to a 100mb limit may have been a simple typo, but, (generally speaking within OS file size limations) set the TrueImage spanning option to create the least number of files possible. For CD's, either the 700 or 650mb is preferable. For the DVD file size, many of the other forum members have recommended that you write in "1492mb" as the requested file size. This will allow 3 files per DVD and still stay within 2gig fat32 file size limit.

Just to avoid any mis-understanding, we are talking about creating the CD/DVD via a simple Data Copy procedure from the hard drive to blank disc. This is NOT a reference to a direct burn from TrueImage to the DVD or Cd.

For security sake, one of your *.tib backups should be using (& archived) the "backup the full disk" option. Should you need to replace your hard drive via the TrueImage restore procedure, you would need the "full disk" backup containing all partitions (including hidden)and mbr settings. After the new drive has been restored using the "full disk" version, you can then update it with the most recent single partition backups--if desired.

Full Disk Selection option
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=182030

 

Hi TryBackup,

Thanks for your response to my post.
I have tried your procedure but unfortunately it does not work with USB or Firewire when using the Acronis boot CD, although I have no problems with either connection in the Windows XP environment.
I think the problem may be that the WD drivers are not being loaded into memory from the Boot CD (because they are not on it). I have managed to get the drivers for the PCI Firewire card (nic1394.sys) and the WD driver (wdfwhid.sys) onto a recreated Acronis boot CD but unfortunately I am having to burn the CD with 'Sonic Record Now' and for some reason it won't boot. Can anyone help here....how can I get it to boot?

 

cliffg,
You might want to try this which is an extract from Acronis:

"Please boot your computer from the Acronis True Image rescue disc and press F11 key when the selection screen advising you to select either "Full", "Safe" or "Boot into Windows" option appears. After you get the "Linux kernel command line" prompt, please modify it in the following way:

quiet acpi=off noapic

click on the OK button then and choose "Full Version". That should allow you to use Acronis True Image in some special cases."

 

I have the 320gb MyBook Premium edition, and I have no problems getting it recognized by my PC or by my laptop. I can turn it off on my PC, unplug it and plug it into my laptop while the laptop is running and have it recognized automatically by the laptop when I hit the power button on the front. This works with usb or with firewire. I can also plug it into my PC while it is running and have it detected with no problems.

As for the Acronis boot CD, the environment booted is not like Windows in that it cannot detect drives attached after boottime. If I have the external drive attached to the PC or laptop when I boot the acronis CD, it is detected and is usable for backups and restores. In the PC, I have a $25 RadioShack use/firewire combo card and I can use both usb and firewire to create and restore images in windows and with the boot cd. The laptop is a Dell e1405 and I can use usb and firewire to create images in windows, and can use usb to create and resotore images with the CD. Firewire doesn't work on the laptop with the CD, but I haven't taken the time to really try to get it working yet, and haven't had the time to email support about it either.

 

GroverH,
I have Acronis 8 and this does not give the option of choosing 'full','safe' or 'boot into windows'.
Having said that I have found a way of getting Acronis to recognise my WD My Book external drive.
I have created the BartPE boot CD with the Acronis plug-in and now everything works OK when I use this instead of the Acronis Rescue CD.
The BartePE Cd is easy to create and the procedure is accessed by logging into 'my account', selecting 'support' and then selecting 'BartPE' from the menu...just follow the instructions.
Thanks to all for your suggestions.