external USB drive "can't be found"

i am running acronis TI 8 build 786 on an emachines 6805 laptop running win xp home sp2. a great machine and working very well.

TI works fine to make images and sees the external disk just fine.
BUT....

When I try to clone my internal disk to an external hitachi travel-star disk on a USB 2.0 bus, I get to message that "machine must reboot". The machine then reboots, but when it tries to do the copy it reports that "disk cannot be found".

The error log shows nothing unusual and i tried the patch that turned off the acronis log to no avail.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Ken

 

Hello Ken,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Could you please boot from Acronis Bootable CD and see whether you may perform the cloning in this case?

Thank you.

--
Ilya Toytman

 

I tried booting from Acronis CD and that could not find the external disk either.

THanks, Ken

 

been trying other things to make clone to external usb disk.

would it make any difference what the external disk jumper is set to?
currently it is jumpered as master...could be slave or CS too.

i have tried some more things to no avail yet.

K

 

im having the same trouble....help please? acronis? anybody?

 

Add me to the list too. Has any solution been found??

 

Are you really using the "clone" option or the "create image option". The clone option is most commonly used for replacing a hard drive with a larger one, when both are internal to the PC. The "create image option" is most commonly used to backup an internal hard drive, in case of some future problem, such as virus, bad installation, or hardware failure. If you are using the "clone" option with an external USB drive, it is not clear what you would get, even if it worked. Windows operating systems do not normally support booting from an external drive. In fact, most mother boards do not support it either, although I have heard that some of the newer ones can boot from a external USB floppy or USB ZIP or maybe even a pen drive.

 

Hi All...

rharris270 - bootable USB external drive are common but require a motherboard/BIOS that supports it. Most newer PC's do.

kenni1 - you didn't give enough info. What is your original partition - NTFS or FAT32? The cloned drive - was it done manually or automatically? Did you create a FAT32 drive that is more than 32 GB by allowing it to porportionally expand the original drive to fill the new drive? NTFS okay FAT32 N/G I ran and old Dell 7500 ( 17 GB FAT32 ) through a clone to a 38 GB external USB and Acronis does not trap this error. It expands the 17 gb to 38 gb and changes the cluster size from 16kb to 32 kb. It's a bug to allow a user to do this in automatic mode.

rharris270 - sorry to dump on you old man but this is a real important issue in the laptop world. Cloning ( i.e. creating a bootable drive ) on a notebook that doesn't allow installation of an internal 2nd drive will give you a working PC while Mr. Dell or whoever is mailing you a replacement drive. It is also sometimes easier to CLONE TWICE ( i.e. 2nd clone back to the internal drive ) rather than create an unbootable image, do a TI image restore and then have to do a repair install of XP on the new drive if the replacement drive in not identical to the failed/failing/upgraded drive or if there is a motherboard change - anything requiring a rework of the HAL.

I'm rambling on here, haven't solved anyone problem, but want to flag up a trap that Acronis can put you into.

Take care y'all...

 

Hi Ken,

Create a "Safe" version of the TI boot rescue CD and boot from that. It uses a form of DOS and motherboard BIOS functions to access the hardware rather than Linux (used in the "Full" version rescue CD). Acronis say that the safe rescue CD doesn't detect external USB disks (amongst other things). However, depending on the make/model of your motherboard, you might just get lucky and be able to detect the external HD. It certainly worked for a number of other users who posted similar problems.

Regards

 

My workaround:

1. Created image file of existing 40 GB HDD on a second USB drive with enough capacity. The file size with the 'normal' compression option is about 70% or original -- my 40GB almost-full drive compressed to a 28 GB image in about 45 minutes. I did get a cryptic system error message during this process, but the imaging continued and finished without problem.
2, Restore that image to the new drive, again in an external USB enclosure. That took another 45 minutes. The process created a 40 GB partition in my new 200 GB drive, with rest of space 'unallocated'.
3. Installed the new drive and rebooted without problem to find an apparently-perfect copy of my previous disk. Repartitioned to increase the partition size and create a second partition using PartitionExpert with no problem.

Bottom line: got the job done, with some problems along the way. Luckily, I had the second external drive to store the image, otherwise I'd still be cussing Acronis.

 

I currently have the same problem but cannot seem to get around it...

I have a 200gb SATA partitioned into 3 sections...
One of the sections is my system drive which is 30gb and is the one I am trying to backup...

When I run the backup wizard in WindowsXP it creates an image backup onto my USB external enclosure...

I made an Acronis bootable CD and when I boot off of the TrueImage CD, I can no longer find my USB external enclosure...

I am wondering if I have to change something in my bios for it to detect the USB HDD...

I am using the Gigabyte 7NNXP motherboard...

Please HELP!!!

Thank You...

 

Hello TeK9Samurai,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

First of all, please make sure you use the latest build, which is available on our web site at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/updates/. To get access to updates you should register your software first at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/registration/. Please disable any download managers, internet download/connection boosters, etc. before the download.

If you still have the problem please try the "acpi=off noapic" workaround. If it doesn't help please create the sysinfo.txt file and send to support@acronis.com. Please see https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317 for the instructions.

Also I may recommend that you change the "USB Legacy Support" setting in BIOS. This may also help to solve the problem.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Sorry for the late response but I did what you suggested...

quiet acpi = off noapic

It worked like a charm...

Thank You!!!

 

Hello TeK9Samurai,

Did you create a "Full" or "Safe" version of the rescue CD (see post #9 above)?

Regards

 

Full

But pressing F11 during the loading you get the popup window

quiet acpi = off noapic

It worked like a charm...