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.

On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 17:52:21 +0100, Good Guy wrote:

Can your machine see the drive with Windows Explorer? To check this,
Launch the Windows Explorer and then go to:

Computer Drive [D, E, F WHATEVER]

This will tell you whether the drive is defective or not.



On 05/07/2015 04:09, 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.

html
head
meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"
/head
body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFCC"
div class="moz-cite-prefix"br
Can your machine see the drive with Windows Explorer?Â* To check
this, Launch the Windows Explorer and then go to:br
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Computer >> Drive [D, E, FÂ*Â*Â* WHATEVER]br
br
This will tell you whether the drive is defective or not.br
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On 05/07/2015 04:09, a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
"bentot1035@yaho o.com/a
wrote:br
/div
blockquote om"
type="cite"
pre wrap=""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.
/pre
/blockquote

Of course it sees the bloody drive, otherwise he couldn't do anything with
it.
Make sure there is nothing else using usb that you can unplug and try
different usb ports.
These drives are great to have, but they push their luck a little relying
on the limited power capacity of a usb port. Some earlier models used an
extra usb connection to up the capacity and other units use external
power. If that's not the problem the cable could be faulty. If all else
fails try exchanging the whole thing.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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?.

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

"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

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

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