Disappearing Zip Drive

This one was driving me crazy. Sometimes the Zip Drive would appear in the "Selecting Partitions to Image" screen, and sometimes it wouldn't. I tried restarting True Image, even rebooting. And the answer was always the same: Sometimes.

The ability to put multiple True Image Files on one cd is a nice feature that Drive Image does not have.
But an intermittent problem like this is the worst kind. I had put 2 images on the cd, but could not put the third.

Finally figured out what was happening. There is a timer built into the Iomega software that puts the drive to "sleep" after 3 or 5 minutes (I don't know where it is set). If you access the drive in DOS, Windows, or Linux, it automatically wakes up. But not for True Image. I don't know why that is, but if anyone else has this problem, this is a workaround. Just access the disk using any of the above Operating Systems before using True image.

 

OK, so it still is. The problem has returned. I have e-mailed support with a copy of my Acronis Report.
Hope we can get fixed for real this time.

 

Hello bob-m,

Thank you for taking the time to contact Acronis Support Team.

If you don't get any reply within 48 hours please let me know your Acronis request # which was sent to you in autoreply? I will find out the reason for the delay.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

It is not quite 48 hours, but I have some addidtional info which may be helpful.

I tried several times to backup the zip drive. One time out of about 10 attempts, True Image actially recognized the drive. I can tell immediately whether it is going to work by watching the lower left of the screen. When it works, I see "analyzing drive F:". I proceeded to try to burn the image on a cd. It went for awhile with the green progress bar showing up, but then I got an error.

This is using W98se, True image 8.0, build 768.

Error 0x103EC "Can't find..." \local\hd_sign(DE47014E)

I searched the registry for \local\hd_sign and DE47014E, but found neither.

FWIW, the Acronis request number is #209998. I emailed it 3/9/5 3:30p EST.

 

Hello bob-m,

Thank you for taking the time to contact Acronis Support Team. I have found your letter and will answer you soon.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

OK, you say Removable Zip drives are is not supposed to work as the source. But it does.. Sometimes.
I don't know if it matters, but it is not a REV drive, which I found out is a USB device.
The Zip 100 drive I am using is a Parallel Port model. I notice that the software often refers to it as an scsi device. I guess the Iomega driver simulates scsi. In Linux, it is referred to as /dev/sda4. or /dev/sdb4, depending on whether the SmartMedia reader is present or not..