Snap API Drivers for Acronis?

I have been trying to resolve a problem where I get a Protection Warning saying "System Volume Backup: Not Created" when I start up Acronis with my external Hard drive, containing several full archives is powered on and ready. I even see a message saying "Analyzing Partition G:" which is my external HD during the startup of Acronis. For some reason, it does not recognize I have these archives available, creating this warning condition.
In response to this problem, someone in support sent me an e-mail suggesting I install new "Snap API Drivers for Acronis" to see if it fixes my problem. They even sent me a URL to do this. The previous suggestion was to install build 2009.9788, which they sent me. After checking with this forum, I decided build was not the way to go at this time, because of some reported problems with it. I am afraid to just try different things with the possibility of bring on new problems. Is this protection warning condition where, if you don't have an archive present on the local HD, but have them on an attached and ready external HD, a known error condition? If so, I would rather wait for a know fix to this problem.

 

I would try the new drivers that Acronis suggested.

You dont need a new software build to use these.

 

What are SNAP API Drivers? I know about drivers for different I/O devices, but not for some software. I don't think they (Acronis Support People) even know what operating system I am using. I just don't want to bury my machine over some simple known bug in Acronis, if that is the case. I have not been able to find where I read "This is a known problem, and Acronis is working on it". Perhaps an Acronis person would shed some light on this.

 

Hello cranheim,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image Home 2009

The SnapAPI module is in charge of all I/O operations on the hard disk of Acronis software working in Windows. It also allows to create backups under running Windows with an unlimited number of files open for reading and writing without the necessity to reboot the computer.
Once Acronis software initializes the backup process of a volume (a single partition or a dynamic disk), Acronis Snapshot Manager flushes the file system mounted to that volume temporarily freezing all the operations on the system volume. Immediately thereafter, the Snapshot Manager driver creates a point-in-time view of the system volume and a bitmap describing the used sectors on this volume. Once the bitmap is created, the filter driver unfreezes the I/O operations on the system volume. It generally takes just several seconds to create a point-in-time view of the volume. After that, the operating system continues working as the imaging process is under way.

Acronis software reads the sectors on the system volume according to the created bitmap. Once a sector is read, the appropriate bit in the bitmap is reset. In its turn, the Acronis driver continues working to hold the point-in-time view of the system volume. Whenever the driver sees a write operation directed at the system volume, it checks whether these sectors are already backed-up, if they are not, the driver saves the data on the sectors that will be overwritten to a special buffer created by the software, then it allows the sectors to be overwritten. Acronis software backs up the sectors from the special buffer, so that all the sectors of the point-in-time view of the system volume will be backed up intact. Meanwhile, the operating system continues working and you will not notice anything unusual in the operating system functionality.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

When I did some searches on SNAP API Drivers, I ran across procedures where you had to go into the registry to delete them if necessary. I am not an experienced PC tech with enough knowledge to manually alter the registry in an operating system. I still do not understand the correlation of regular I/O drivers for the different devices, and the SNAP API Drivers. I am afraid if I install the SNAP API Drivers as recommended, it may alter my Windows operating system, causing some other problems that I will not be able to correct. I thought Acronis was a reasonably simple program to be used by anyone. Now, it seems like it is still in a testing phase, and things are being tried to see if some problems with Acronis may work better with the recommended changes. I have not had much luck using the chat sessions. If installing questionable API drivers takes down my machine, I will be in big trouble if Chat is my only option to get help.