acronis ti 8.0 and pc hard drive and USB drive compatability

My wife's pc runs WinME (FAT32 hard drive format) and Acronis TI 8.0. She has a NTFS format external USB hard drive used for backup.

My question involves whether TI 8.0 is compatible with both my wife's pc hard drive, as well as her external USB hard drive?

If not, what would the easiest fix be?

 

TI 8 is compatible with both FAT32 and NTFS, but Windows ME is not compatible with NTFS. So, TI 8 running under Windows ME cannot read or write to a local NTFS formatted drive.

Your options are:

1. You can upgrade the Windows ME computer to Windows 2000, XP or Vista so that it can read the NTFS drive. That's expensive and would probably require hardware upgrades!

2. You can reformat the USB hard drive to FAT32, and use it with both Windows ME and XP machines. You will lose the data currently on the drive if you can't copy it to another location.

3. You can boot from the TI Recovery CD to make the backups. The Linux operating system on the Recovery CD can read and write to both FAT32 and NTFS formatted drives. It's not as convenient as making backups under Windows, and you can't schedule backups.

Take your pick.

 

Thank you very much. That's exactly what I needed to hear.

Since her backup USB drive is an external, and doesn't yet have anything on it, reformatting it seems like the prudent choice. That way everything can play nicely together.

 

I hoped that would be a good solution.

What is surprising is that the drive is formatted NTFS. Most new USB drives come formatted FAT32 since that is usable with Win 9x, Win XP, Mac and Linux. I haven't seen one that came formatted NTFS.

 

Well by golly---there's a thought! The USB external drive won't be here until next week. I just blithely assumed all newer stuff would be NTFS format, since WinXP is. Maybe this one will already be FAT32 when it gets here. Guess I should just plug it in and take a look at properties. That won't hurt anything will it (with the WinME pc)?

 

Just plug it into her ME machine, and if you can see the drive, it is FAT32. Of course, right clicking and then selecting Properties will confirm that.

I'll guarantee it will be FAT32 and ready to go.