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#16
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
On Sun, 5 Jul 2015 05:55:41 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
wrote: I bought a Toshiba hdtc710xr3a1 external drive for backing up my new computer running professional windows-7 64 bit operating system.. I also bought Acronis True Image 2015. This a home-built desktop. computer. Repeated attempts to back up using Acronis failed, apparently blocked by the external drive. Failing with Acronis, I attempted to backup using windows' program, which also failed. During all this, pop-ups asking how I wanted to use the drive repeatedly appeared. Also, I kept getting pop-ups saying I needed to format the drive before I could use it. It is already formatted. To insure the drive could accept files, using explorer I copied several files to it from other hard drives. And then deleted them. So, to make sure the backup programs were functioning correctly, I successfully backed up, using both programs, to a empty/spare internal hard rive. At lest I have a backup now, but not where I wanted it/them! The drive had backup software installed on it, which I didn't want to use. So, it appears that there is something unique about the drive that windows doesn't like. I am about ready to return it. I hate to, because I like to solve problems...not skirt them. This is a new experience for me. I have successfully used a Toshiba external drive (different model) on my laptop. Before I ship it back, I would like some comments on this problem. Ben Long time lurker, first time poster here. The problem that I've seen when saving backups on USB-attached HDDs is that some makers, especially the prebuilt boxes (versus you installing an HDD into a USB enclosure), deliberately have their devices go to sleep. Supposedly this is to save power but I also suspect it is because the enclosure does not have sufficient cooling capacity so they cycle it down to keep it from overheating. You didn't mention SSD so I'll assume it's a mechanical HDD inside and those create heat. Some enclosures have a fan to cool the drive or provide larger cooling vents and use the case as a heatsink. Most prebuilts just provide a cutsy case and almost no ventilation or conduction of heat. So they define algorithms within their firmware to cycle down the HDD. The problem is the backup program may end up crunching a huge string of characters and doing a lot of work without writing anything to the drive for quite awhile. That means the drive cycles down (by itself, not part of Windows powering mode) but the backup program expects immediate access when it does decide to start writing to the device again. What I've seen is that the backup job begins just fine. The backup program starts writing to the USB-attached HDD but sometime after 1 to 4 hours the backup job has hung. The drive wasn't responsive. The drive is not broke. It just keeps cycling down when it has been idle for too long. Not only do the makers put in slower spinning HDDs (because they generate less heat) but they also stick in "green" drives that themselves will cycle down under whatever conditions the maker has decided, like being idle because there haven't been any writes for some number of minutes so they suspect the drive. The problem is a program may not expect the delay to resume from suspend, like the time to spin up the platters. In fact, this used to be a problem under Windows 8 where USB-attached (external) drives would disappear. Before the Win8 fix, some users found NoSleepHD (http://nosleephd.codeplex.com/) or KeepAlive (http://keepalivehd.codeplex.com/) which kept the drive awake so long backup jobs to finish okay. See: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usbcoreblog/...ost-title.aspx That was Windows 8 ****ing up its users. USB drive makers do the same when they have their logic suspend a drive because there have been no writes for too long (i.e., suspend on idle). Not all programs are going to wait until the platters get spun up again and for the drive to finally become ready. Other than getting a USB drive that resume much more quickly or doesn't suspect at all (because you connect it to a desktop instead of to a laptop or notebook so power consumption is not an issue), you might want to check your power options to disable USB selective mode. See: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...-turn-off.html Obviously if you are running a backup job, you should not be running a laptop on batteries during the backup. Plug the laptop into its A/C power adapter and run off of line power. That should switch you into a different power profile (where USB select suspend is disabled). This setting won't help if it's the firmware in the USB drive that is performing its own suspend mode. When I had someone ask me why the backups were erroring or stalling after several hours during a backup job, the cure was to get a better prebuilt USB drive that matched you use of it (or I'd build one for them using a non-green HDD). Thank you for the suggestion. Sounded like a god solution, but when I tried the suspend thing, the problem continued. |
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#18
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
bentot1035 wrote:
Thank you for the suggestion. Sounded like a god solution, but when I tried the suspend thing, the problem continued. Then it is the firmware in the HDD inside the USB case that is performing its "green" functions and which get in the way of programs that last for hours whereupon the HDD goes idle and then gets suspended by the drive's logic versus simply copying files one at a time that will keep the HDD busy. So see if using the NoSleepHD or KeepAlive utilities will prevent the USB-attached green HDD from going into suspend mode during a backup. You don't need the utility running all time, just during a backup. |
#19
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
wrote:
On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 21:58:26 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: wrote: On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 13:02:22 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: wrote: I bought a Toshiba hdtc710xr3a1 external drive for backing up my new computer running professional windows-7 64 bit operating system.. I also bought Acronis True Image 2015. This a home-built desktop. computer. Repeated attempts to back up using Acronis failed, apparently blocked by the external drive. Failing with Acronis, I attempted to backup using windows' program, which also failed. During all this, pop-ups asking how I wanted to use the drive repeatedly appeared. Also, I kept getting pop-ups saying I needed to format the drive before I could use it. It is already formatted. To insure the drive could accept files, using explorer I copied several files to it from other hard drives. And then deleted them. So, to make sure the backup programs were functioning correctly, I successfully backed up, using both programs, to a empty/spare internal hard rive. At lest I have a backup now, but not where I wanted it/them! The drive had backup software installed on it, which I didn't want to use. So, it appears that there is something unique about the drive that windows doesn't like. I am about ready to return it. I hate to, because I like to solve problems...not skirt them. This is a new experience for me. I have successfully used a Toshiba external drive (different model) on my laptop. Before I ship it back, I would like some comments on this problem. Ben Long time lurker, first time poster here. Go into Disk Management and look at it there. Is it properly formatted? What's the partition info say? What does Windows say about it? Post the details here. Ed The drive came NTSF formatted and had backup programs that I deleted. After windows kept telling to format, I reformatted to NTSF hoping the alerts would go away. I ran CHKDSK on the empty drive. It found no problems. Disk Management reports 931.51 GB NTSF Healthy primary partition. Ben When you say "The drive had backup software installed on it" what exactly do you mean? WD portable drives come with a partition containing their backup software (not installed, but "installable" if you want it); but they install a virtual drive whenever you plug the HD in. Is Toshiba doing something similar, perhaps? Or do they maybe load some program at start-up that could be locking the HD out to Acronis? You'd have to look in the Task Manager processes for that. You say that both Acronis and Windows System Image "failed"? What fail messages did you get? Ed Don't know if this drive was set up to install a virtual drive. I'm not sure I would have recognized it if it did. Unfortunately, I don't remember what all the Acronis messages were. I swarmed with repeated pop-ups telling me to format, asking how the drive is to be used, files not found..etc. The drive had some files and directories loaded. One of the files was a setup.exe, implying that I could install the program(s). Partition Magic revealed that the drive had a strange 100 GB partition at the "front" of the drive. The rest was a primary partition. I my effort to fix the problem, used Partition Magic to delete both partitions and established a single NTFS primary partition...AFTER, having copied all the files and directories to another drive in case I needed them. After all that, the backup continued to fail. Finally, I tried a smaller Toshiba drive (different model) I used for my laptop which is running Windows 7 Home. Backup was successful! So, there is something hinky about the new Toshiba drive. I am beginning to believe that I bough the wrong kind of drive. Should have gotten one with no bell and whistles. Sigh..... lessons learned the hard way. I thought re-partitioning and formatting would have created a nice clean generic usb backup drive. I will probably return this drive and get a larger one without the hinky bells and whistles. The computer has two 500 GB hard drives and a 500 GB SSD, so I might as well get a 2 TB back up drive. Thank you for your interest. Ben I'd recommend two portable drives that I've used without trouble; no extra partitions, no bundled software, no virtual drives. Seagate and Verbatim. I have 2TB ones of each brand. Ed |
#20
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 22:31:30 +0100 "Ed Cryer"
wrote in article Seagate and Verbatim FWIW, I've had pretty bad luck with Seagate drives - no experience with Verbatim (I wonder whose drives they use, I don't think they manufacture their own). I saw an analysys of HD reliability a few months ago and Seagate didn't fare well compared to Wester Digital. |
#21
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 08:18:16 -0700, wrote:
On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 21:58:26 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: wrote: On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 13:02:22 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: wrote: I bought a Toshiba hdtc710xr3a1 external drive for backing up my new computer running professional windows-7 64 bit operating system.. I also bought Acronis True Image 2015. This a home-built desktop. computer. Repeated attempts to back up using Acronis failed, apparently blocked by the external drive. Failing with Acronis, I attempted to backup using windows' program, which also failed. During all this, pop-ups asking how I wanted to use the drive repeatedly appeared. Also, I kept getting pop-ups saying I needed to format the drive before I could use it. It is already formatted. To insure the drive could accept files, using explorer I copied several files to it from other hard drives. And then deleted them. So, to make sure the backup programs were functioning correctly, I successfully backed up, using both programs, to a empty/spare internal hard rive. At lest I have a backup now, but not where I wanted it/them! The drive had backup software installed on it, which I didn't want to use. So, it appears that there is something unique about the drive that windows doesn't like. I am about ready to return it. I hate to, because I like to solve problems...not skirt them. This is a new experience for me. I have successfully used a Toshiba external drive (different model) on my laptop. Before I ship it back, I would like some comments on this problem. Ben Long time lurker, first time poster here. Go into Disk Management and look at it there. Is it properly formatted? What's the partition info say? What does Windows say about it? Post the details here. Ed The drive came NTSF formatted and had backup programs that I deleted. After windows kept telling to format, I reformatted to NTSF hoping the alerts would go away. I ran CHKDSK on the empty drive. It found no problems. Disk Management reports 931.51 GB NTSF Healthy primary partition. Ben When you say "The drive had backup software installed on it" what exactly do you mean? WD portable drives come with a partition containing their backup software (not installed, but "installable" if you want it); but they install a virtual drive whenever you plug the HD in. Is Toshiba doing something similar, perhaps? Or do they maybe load some program at start-up that could be locking the HD out to Acronis? You'd have to look in the Task Manager processes for that. You say that both Acronis and Windows System Image "failed"? What fail messages did you get? Ed Don't know if this drive was set up to install a virtual drive. I'm not sure I would have recognized it if it did. Unfortunately, I don't remember what all the Acronis messages were. I swarmed with repeated pop-ups telling me to format, asking how the drive is to be used, files not found..etc. The drive had some files and directories loaded. One of the files was a setup.exe, implying that I could install the program(s). Partition Magic revealed that the drive had a strange 100 GB partition at the "front" of the drive. The rest was a primary partition. I my effort to fix the problem, used Partition Magic to delete both partitions and established a single NTFS primary partition...AFTER, having copied all the files and directories to another drive in case I needed them. After all that, the backup continued to fail. Finally, I tried a smaller Toshiba drive (different model) I used for my laptop which is running Windows 7 Home. Backup was successful! So, there is something hinky about the new Toshiba drive. I am beginning to believe that I bough the wrong kind of drive. Should have gotten one with no bell and whistles. Sigh..... lessons learned the hard way. I thought re-partitioning and formatting would have created a nice clean generic usb backup drive. I will probably return this drive and get a larger one without the hinky bells and whistles. The computer has two 500 GB hard drives and a 500 GB SSD, so I might as well get a 2 TB back up drive. Thank you for your interest. Ben I had this drive boxed to return, but the old electronics technician in me (37 years in naval electronics) wouldn't let me throw in the towel. I concentrated on deleting its partition and reformatting, several times. Each time I looked at it with explorer...and lo & behold, there were the same directories that originally came with the drive! Try to explain that one!!! Hard coding in the drive?? After a few repeats of the procedure, was able to get an empty drive that stayed empty. A couple times while in explorer and storage management I would see the drive disappear and reappear two or three times! I then ran windows backup which again failed. The error code was 0x800704c8. A google search suggested that Windows' "volume shadow copy service" may not be running. I went to services.msc and found it was off. I turned it on. I ran backup again and got my first successful backup. Hooray! But I wont start crowing yet, having been around the block a few times in my career, I don't trust it yet. This dive is about the flakiest thing I ever experienced in the computers I have built. So will be doing daily b/u before I bet the farm on it. Then I will take a run at it with Acronis, which is my preferred program. While i was searching for a possible replacement, I found that there are very few drives without loaded software. Those without, were much more expensive. I suspect it is like the printer industry. Buy a inexpensive printer and get stuck with pricey ink. Buy an affordable drive and get hooked to some expensive cloud service...or something. Ben |
#22
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
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#23
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 00:17:56 -0400, Paul York wrote:
In article , says... On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 22:31:30 +0100 "Ed Cryer" wrote in article Seagate and Verbatim FWIW, I've had pretty bad luck with Seagate drives - no experience with Verbatim (I wonder whose drives they use, I don't think they manufacture their own). I saw an analysys of HD reliability a few months ago and Seagate didn't fare well compared to Wester Digital. I bought a 3gig. western Digital My Book for backup. It came with software which I didn't want. So I tried Microsoft Backup and it failed. I then downloaded Macrium Reflect and it worked with no problem. This might be an answer fpr your problem. - - PWY I will keep that in mind. I have tried that program in the past and ended up buying Acronis which I have used for four years. As posted elsewhere in this thread I may (???!!!!) have had a breakthrough, which I will pursue for now. thanks Ben |
#24
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
In article , bentot1035
@yahoo.com says... On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 08:18:16 -0700, wrote: On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 21:58:26 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: wrote: On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 13:02:22 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: wrote: I bought a Toshiba hdtc710xr3a1 external drive for backing up my new computer running professional windows-7 64 bit operating system.. I also bought Acronis True Image 2015. This a home-built desktop. computer. Repeated attempts to back up using Acronis failed, apparently blocked by the external drive. Failing with Acronis, I attempted to backup using windows' program, which also failed. During all this, pop-ups asking how I wanted to use the drive repeatedly appeared. Also, I kept getting pop-ups saying I needed to format the drive before I could use it. It is already formatted. To insure the drive could accept files, using explorer I copied several files to it from other hard drives. And then deleted them. So, to make sure the backup programs were functioning correctly, I successfully backed up, using both programs, to a empty/spare internal hard rive. At lest I have a backup now, but not where I wanted it/them! The drive had backup software installed on it, which I didn't want to use. So, it appears that there is something unique about the drive that windows doesn't like. I am about ready to return it. I hate to, because I like to solve problems...not skirt them. This is a new experience for me. I have successfully used a Toshiba external drive (different model) on my laptop. Before I ship it back, I would like some comments on this problem. Ben Long time lurker, first time poster here. I've been following this thread and believe the drive in question is a WD 1Tb external or portable drive. I bought a WD 1TB portable awhile ago now. It came with software as it seems all do now-a-days regardless of manufacturer. The difference was in what WD's software "did". It seems it uses some protocol to load automatically a virtual device (CD drive in this case). You cannot prevent Windows loading it!!! That drive is used to load something else (the backup software you install off the drive if memeory serves me right) required for them to implement their "password protected backup data protection" scheme. I believe the virtual drive bs is actually on a chip and not part of the hard disk software on the drive. You can't really delete that BUT you can make it "go away" so to speak. WD's forums had a lot of info about it. I have routinely copied any software on the external/protables I have to my next backup DVD and delete it from the drive. It's almost always some crippled backup product there to simply entice you to buy the full version. Why do that with so many free alternatives. I think of it same as bloatware on new pcs. Another item was drive going to sleep. I have an older WD external that the drive failed after warranty. I took it apart to find it had a 500Gb WD "green" drive in it (it was basically simply an enclosure). I replaced it with a 1Tb green drive also by WD. It never seems to go to sleep or at least it's not so slow coming out of sleep you notice any stall accessing the drive even after hours of it just sitting there. A Tosbia drive I also have in another enclosure is very noticable when it's sleeping, get a few icons fast then a stall while disk comes up to speed and it can read the rest of the drive. The drive is a portable rather than an external drive. I assume the inital little bit is fetched from some cache stored in memory. That one doesn't like Windows Backup or making an image also. My three externals never seem to go to sleep but the two portables I never leave on long enough but I suspect they likely would. P.S. just so people know how I distinguish them. Externals are the ones use an AC power cord, portables use the USB for power. Can someone answer "Is it safe to copy the backup or image to another drive and can it still be recognized and used after doing so?. |
#25
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
pjp wrote:
Can someone answer "Is it safe to copy the backup or image to another drive and can it still be recognized and used after doing so?. In general, yes. As long as you keep notes of where it was originally, to tweak your memory of the incident. I haven't had a problem moving Macrium Reflect .mrimg files around (mine are now all over the place). The files keep a record of where they came from, so there is some information to go on. You can also add a Comment to the Comment field, to tweak your memory. Windows 7 built-in Backup scheme, is an image. It goes into a WindowsBackup folder on one of your partitions. Every time the program runs, it *overwrites* the folder. But nothing prevents you from renaming the folder to WindowsBackup07072015. The next time you run a backup, it'll then make a fresh WindowsBackup folder. What I don't know right off hand, is whether booting a 200MB recovery CD, has the navigation capability so you can hunt down the WindowsBackup07072015 folder when you need it. That's how I was managing mine, while I was using Windows Backup, is by renaming the folder that was created to keep it safe. Inside the folder, is a VHD file per partition. You can open a VHD file with a modern version of 7ZIP, if you need something out of there. So if your Win7 machine crashed, and all you had was a WinXP machine, you can use 7ZIP to pull the odd file out of the VHD backup file. I'm sure, somewhere, there is a brittle backup program that does not tolerate image file movement. But I don't remember seeing such a thing mentioned anywhere. A harder thing to get right, is the limitations on storage devices. Like, lots of cheap backup software, you can't use a network share as a target. So there can be limitations on that. Or on RAID support, and not being able to put your RAID image back the way you wanted. So, yes, backup software has plenty of rough edges. Even stuff like GPT source disks, might not be handled with as much ease as you'd expect. For fewest surprises, stick to the lowest common denominator :-) Paul |
#26
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
"Paul York" schreef in bericht
... In article , says... On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 22:31:30 +0100 "Ed Cryer" wrote in article Seagate and Verbatim FWIW, I've had pretty bad luck with Seagate drives - no experience with Verbatim (I wonder whose drives they use, I don't think they manufacture their own). I saw an analysys of HD reliability a few months ago and Seagate didn't fare well compared to Wester Digital. I bought a 3gig. western Digital My Book for backup. It came with software which I didn't want. So I tried Microsoft Backup and it failed. I then downloaded Macrium Reflect and it worked with no problem. This might be an answer fpr your problem. - - +1 I have different external usb drives and I use Macrium Reflect to make images. This program never failed here. I recently even made a bootable usb stick with it. -- |\ /| | \/ |@rk \../ \/os |
#27
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 06:39:00 -0700, Stormin' Norman
wrote: On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 21:29:52 -0700, wrote: On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 00:17:56 -0400, Paul York wrote: In article , says... On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 22:31:30 +0100 "Ed Cryer" wrote in article Seagate and Verbatim FWIW, I've had pretty bad luck with Seagate drives - no experience with Verbatim (I wonder whose drives they use, I don't think they manufacture their own). I saw an analysys of HD reliability a few months ago and Seagate didn't fare well compared to Wester Digital. I bought a 3gig. western Digital My Book for backup. It came with software which I didn't want. So I tried Microsoft Backup and it failed. I then downloaded Macrium Reflect and it worked with no problem. This might be an answer fpr your problem. - - PWY I will keep that in mind. I have tried that program in the past and ended up buying Acronis which I have used for four years. As posted elsewhere in this thread I may (???!!!!) have had a breakthrough, which I will pursue for now. thanks Ben Bravo zulu Ben, thanks for your service! Have you checked out Easeus Todo? I migrated away from Acronis and Macrium to the above program quite a while ago, for both business and home use and I have never regreted the decision. Here is a link to the free version of the program: http://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-free.html Roger your Bravo zulu, Stormin! And, thank you for yours also! I have heard/seen positive comments on that program in the past. I just bought the latest Acronis so will try to get some mileage out of it. If I encounter many more stumbling blocks, I may do as you did. The price of Acronis was only about that of a 50's weekend liberty in Sasebo, Japan. I could blow that much for a martini and five minutes on a machine in a casino. ;O Thanks for your input. Ben |
#28
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Cant back up to external usb-3 Toshiba drive
On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 20:53:26 -0700, wrote:
On Mon, 06 Jul 2015 08:18:16 -0700, wrote: On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 21:58:26 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: wrote: On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 13:02:22 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote: wrote: I bought a Toshiba hdtc710xr3a1 external drive for backing up my new computer running professional windows-7 64 bit operating system.. I also bought Acronis True Image 2015. This a home-built desktop. computer. Repeated attempts to back up using Acronis failed, apparently blocked by the external drive. Failing with Acronis, I attempted to backup using windows' program, which also failed. During all this, pop-ups asking how I wanted to use the drive repeatedly appeared. Also, I kept getting pop-ups saying I needed to format the drive before I could use it. It is already formatted. To insure the drive could accept files, using explorer I copied several files to it from other hard drives. And then deleted them. So, to make sure the backup programs were functioning correctly, I successfully backed up, using both programs, to a empty/spare internal hard rive. At lest I have a backup now, but not where I wanted it/them! The drive had backup software installed on it, which I didn't want to use. So, it appears that there is something unique about the drive that windows doesn't like. I am about ready to return it. I hate to, because I like to solve problems...not skirt them. This is a new experience for me. I have successfully used a Toshiba external drive (different model) on my laptop. Before I ship it back, I would like some comments on this problem. Ben Long time lurker, first time poster here. Go into Disk Management and look at it there. Is it properly formatted? What's the partition info say? What does Windows say about it? Post the details here. Ed The drive came NTSF formatted and had backup programs that I deleted. After windows kept telling to format, I reformatted to NTSF hoping the alerts would go away. I ran CHKDSK on the empty drive. It found no problems. Disk Management reports 931.51 GB NTSF Healthy primary partition. Ben When you say "The drive had backup software installed on it" what exactly do you mean? WD portable drives come with a partition containing their backup software (not installed, but "installable" if you want it); but they install a virtual drive whenever you plug the HD in. Is Toshiba doing something similar, perhaps? Or do they maybe load some program at start-up that could be locking the HD out to Acronis? You'd have to look in the Task Manager processes for that. You say that both Acronis and Windows System Image "failed"? What fail messages did you get? Ed Don't know if this drive was set up to install a virtual drive. I'm not sure I would have recognized it if it did. Unfortunately, I don't remember what all the Acronis messages were. I swarmed with repeated pop-ups telling me to format, asking how the drive is to be used, files not found..etc. The drive had some files and directories loaded. One of the files was a setup.exe, implying that I could install the program(s). Partition Magic revealed that the drive had a strange 100 GB partition at the "front" of the drive. The rest was a primary partition. I my effort to fix the problem, used Partition Magic to delete both partitions and established a single NTFS primary partition...AFTER, having copied all the files and directories to another drive in case I needed them. After all that, the backup continued to fail. Finally, I tried a smaller Toshiba drive (different model) I used for my laptop which is running Windows 7 Home. Backup was successful! So, there is something hinky about the new Toshiba drive. I am beginning to believe that I bough the wrong kind of drive. Should have gotten one with no bell and whistles. Sigh..... lessons learned the hard way. I thought re-partitioning and formatting would have created a nice clean generic usb backup drive. I will probably return this drive and get a larger one without the hinky bells and whistles. The computer has two 500 GB hard drives and a 500 GB SSD, so I might as well get a 2 TB back up drive. Thank you for your interest. Ben I had this drive boxed to return, but the old electronics technician in me (37 years in naval electronics) wouldn't let me throw in the towel. I concentrated on deleting its partition and reformatting, several times. Each time I looked at it with explorer...and lo & behold, there were the same directories that originally came with the drive! Try to explain that one!!! Hard coding in the drive?? After a few repeats of the procedure, was able to get an empty drive that stayed empty. A couple times while in explorer and storage management I would see the drive disappear and reappear two or three times! I then ran windows backup which again failed. The error code was 0x800704c8. A google search suggested that Windows' "volume shadow copy service" may not be running. I went to services.msc and found it was off. I turned it on. I ran backup again and got my first successful backup. Hooray! But I wont start crowing yet, having been around the block a few times in my career, I don't trust it yet. This dive is about the flakiest thing I ever experienced in the computers I have built. So will be doing daily b/u before I bet the farm on it. Then I will take a run at it with Acronis, which is my preferred program. While i was searching for a possible replacement, I found that there are very few drives without loaded software. Those without, were much more expensive. I suspect it is like the printer industry. Buy a inexpensive printer and get stuck with pricey ink. Buy an affordable drive and get hooked to some expensive cloud service...or something. Ben That's it...the drive has got to go! No amount of tweaking or trickery will make the drive play nice Windows or Acronis backup. Toshiba blew it on this model. The older one on the laptop is working OK. although I don't know why. It had pre-loaded software too. I will use one of my two spare 50 GB internal drives for now. They don't resist. This old tech couldn't outsmart the programmers. The towel is tossed.... Thank you everyone for your comments. Ben |
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