External USB hard disk has changed number preventing backups

I was able to correctly backup and restore using any of my hard drives but for some reason one of my external USB2 hard drives changed Disk number (as shown in the Vista64 Disk Management program) from 'Disk 6' to another Disk number (not sure which). The drive letter, as seen in windows explorer has not changed, and the data on the disk is accessible.

Since the this happened, when I try to do any backup True Image Home 2009 bringes up the error message 'failed to read from the sector -xxxxxxxx of hard disk 6'. Now significantly, the error mentions Disk 6, whichever drive I make the backup to, whether internal or external. If I ask it to ignore the error the backup remains at 0% completed and cannot be cancelled.

What is it that TI is acually trying to save or retrieve from Disk 6 ?, as it is not the actual backup data (which I have on one occasion managed to successfully save and restore from another Disk, despite the Disk 6 error message).

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling TI (all my old backups were still available and working - so it may not have deleted the reference to Disk 6 either) but the problem remains. Any suggestions?

 

Did you delete and recreate the task?

Did you make any drive changes or boot order changes in the BIOS? This can change the order in which they are detected on some computers. Some will change automatically when a new drive is connected, so this can happen without you knowing it.

When you look at the drives in TI, does TI list the drives in the same order with the same numbers as Disk Management? Disk 6 to TI may not be the same drive.

 

Post Updated:

I have found the missing Disk 6, which I have now replaced into a caddy in the PC. Backups now work correctly (to any drive).

It is not possible for me to keep the particular drive in the caddy permanently though. After a normal TI uninstall and reinstall it still needs the particular drive 6 for exisiting and new backup tasks to work.

Any advice on how to fully uninstall TI, so it will not look for Disk 6 (when I remove it)?
(I do not need to keep any of my current backups, so loosing the backup database is not a problem).

 

OK, I typed a massive reply and then Wilders decided to provide system maintenance and my whole post was trashed

The upshot of what i typed was - TI stores the drive signature ID as decided by Windows in the task XML file. If the drive changes so does the drive signature.

Your options are manually alter the task file to the new drive ID - time consuming, prone to error.

Make a fancy script - as above.

Assign a permanently different drive letter to the replacement drive - change the task to either attempt to inlcude both drives or have two alternate tasks to cover the two drive placements.

If using Echo Workstation, you have the alternative of having an alternate backup location (I might be thinking of Echo Enterprise here), so if the main drive is missing, the laternate location is used. You'd still need to have assigned a permanent alternative drive letter to the drive.

This can be done easily in XPpro, Vista and W7.