[jdohr]

Thank you. I have now formatted the external drive, but my PC does not recognize it as a drive. Acronis says it is "unallocated". How do I allocate it as the H: drive again?

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Does your drive need to be reformatted? If you see your drive listed, but it says unallocated, you will need to reformat it. The image below shows a 200GB external drive in Disk Management that is unallocated and needs to be reformatted:



and see this format it NTFS
http://www.wdc.com/W...4779-705001.pdf

[Macboatmaster]

Does your drive need to be reformatted? If you see your drive listed, but it says unallocated, you will need to reformat it. The image below shows a 200GB external drive in Disk Management that is unallocated and needs to be reformatted:



and see this format it NTFS
http://www.wdc.com/W...4779-705001.pdf

[Macboatmaster]

If you cannot get it recognised by formatting, see tis
http://wdc.custhelp....,211#desktopnew

[jdohr]

Now I'm getting frustrated. I have read the documentation on the WD sites that you sent. The drive is currently listed as unallocated, and there is no drive letter assigned to it. I have tried reformatting, I have tried to assign a drive letter to the drive, among other things per the support.wdc.com website. Nothing seems to be working at the moment...the site is suggesting that I try other things like using different power adapters and USB cables...but I don't have time for all of that right now. I think there is just something that I am not doing right...I am having a hard time believing that a cable or the drive has coincidentally failed. I'm going to try one or two more times and then be done for a day or two. Thank you for all of your help Macboatmaster. If you have other ideas, please let me know...

[jdohr]

My first step was to use the Acronis Drive Cleanser to wipe the data and the existing partition from the external hard drive. When I did that, the drive sat there and the LED light surrounding the power button flashed on and off continuously for over two hours. The status of the operation remained at 0% for that entire time. I pressed the power button to see if that would move things along. Almost immediately, Acronis said that the job was complete. I don't know if something went wrong at that point. Now, I am running the Drive Cleanser again, and it is just sitting there at 0% with the LED flashing again. I'm inclined to let it run all day, but I can't imagine it would take that long...it just seems like nothing is happening. The drive IS spinning... Any thoughts?

To build on what I said above, the PC will not let me format the drive, because it is unallocated and it does not have a drive letter. When I go to Disk Management, this disk obviously does not show up with a drive letter. When I highlight it in the graphical representation below that shows it with the black border and says it is unallocated, I get no menu choices for it except Properties and Help. The menu does not include an option to format the drive, whereas it does include that option for all of the other drives...

Edited by jdohr, 31 December 2011 - 11:55 AM.

[Macboatmaster]

Left click once on the drive entry in the lower window in disk management.
Now right click on the part of that entry that says unallocated space - what options please.

See this it is FULL guide.
http://wdc.custhelp....0FBN19Naw%3D%3D


and IF there is a red circle to the left of the drive entry in the lower window of disk management on that guide
when you have selected XP and scrolled down to that, see the sub link for initialize drive.

[jdohr]

When I left click on the drive and right click on the area where it says Unallocated, it gives me 3 options...New Partition, Properties and Help. No, there is not a red circle on the drive letter...there used to be...after I wiped the drive clean with Acronis, but I then went through the steps to initialize the drive according to the instructions from the WD site. I will now go through the steps to create the Partition...originally I thought this was just if I wanted to divide the drive into parts...I did not realize that you have to create a Partition, even if it takes up the entire drive. I will tell you how that goes.

Aside from that, going through some of the troubleshooting steps from the WD site - I have confirmed that the power supply is working, and that I get the same results by connecting the drive to another computer...the only thing I have not done is try another USB cable to be sure that the cable is not part of the problem... I thought I would let you know that I have gone through the checks with this one exception.

Edited by jdohr, 01 January 2012 - 02:09 AM.

[Macboatmaster]

YOU have it NOW.
will now go through the steps to create the Partition...originally I thought this was just if I wanted to divide the drive into parts...I did not realize that you have to create a Partition, even if it takes up the entire drive. I will tell you how that goes.

Indeed as you cannot use the drive until there is, in essence somehwere to store the information - that is the partition.

When I left click on the drive and right click on the area where it says Unallocated, it gives me 3 options...New Partition, Properties and Help

What threw me was when I asked you before you said you only had

I get no menu choices for it except Properties and Help

• Right-click on the black bar to see a menu of available options. Select New Partition...

To save you the trouble of reading the guide I sent make the new partition the total size available and make it primary

http://help.artaro.e...agement-xp.html

There are other ways to do it and you can create up to four partitions, one primary etc but the way above is the easiest

[jdohr]

Whew... Well, I successfully formatted the external drive, and it seems to be in good order. It is blue in the lower pane of Acronis, and looks good from Explorer. Now I have started a full image backup of the C: drive, and it is working on that...I suspect it will take several hours. I don't know why I missed the creation of the partition...I went through that material over and over and obviously just didn't get it. Thank you for being patient with me through that.

After the C: drive finishes it's backup and I verify that it looks good, I will back up all of the files on my D: and E: drives...should I do that using Acronis backup as well, use some other method/software, or just drag files?

Thank you again, Macboatmaster...and a Happy New Year to you!

[Macboatmaster]

That is very nice of you

Thank you again, Macboatmaster...and a Happy New Year to you!

and the same to you.

It is especially kind of you as having looked at the posts concerning this, I perhaps should have picked up a little earlier, that you were not seeing the New Partition.

I am so pleased that you have it sorted.
What you need to do after you have the full image backup of the C Drive which will be shown as Acronis True Image and when you open it will look something like my screenshot

[attachment=54997:Untitled.jpg]

BUT my C drive has three partitions, C is the Operating system, D is programs and personal data, E is all my recovery media, including a copy of the Vista DVD and various backups.
HOWEVER you then as I said VALIDATE the image.
It is no use if it will not validate.
Then you can open that image by double clicking to get where my screenshot is and then you can open the C and then you will see all your folder etc.

DO NOT FORGET your recovery CD to boot the computer to the Acronis, if it will not load Windows.
If it is a simple case of an image file (picture) or document being deleted by accident you simply recover from there as a normal copy and paste.

The you return to Acronis and backup the other drive, after you select the drive, you then click Next and then the options on the lower left of the left hand pane allow you to select compression method - do NOT select compression unless you need to..
ENSURE YOU ARE NOT SELECTING the same image location as the previous backup of C

OR you will overwrite the backup opf C drive that you have just created.

Then if you have not already found it you can using the browse to etc for the selection of the folder you are using for the backup then use this facility
See screenshot

[attachment=54998:Untitled.jpg]
so you can then attach the details you wish or of course you can simply achieve the same with the filename.


Then you are back to where I mentioned a few posts ago, that you then establish a folder - right click anywhere on the white space of the drive when you have the external drive opened - click NEW, click Folder and name it Documents or as you choose of course. Then one for Pictures etc.
The when you create a new IMPORTANT document, save a valuable (sentimental) image from your camera or whatever, you simply COPY that image to the appropriate folder on your external drive.

This is so that your backups retain their validity without having to re-create A NEW image backup.

WHEN you have done a\ll this, the only other aspect I would consider with the setup you appear to have is a program called ERUNT which will create a backup of the registry - VERY USEFUL if you ever need to restore the registry.

REPEAT - do not forget the recovery CD from Acronis.

[jdohr]

I won't forget the backup disk. I am in the validation phase...it is took about 9 hours to do the full image backup, and looks to be taking that same amount of time to do the validation...

So...what I think I read in your post is that, once I create backups of all of this data, I will just copy files to the external hard drive...until I do another full image backup again (maybe several months down the road, right?). At that time, I would delete the picture/document/mustic files, etc that I just copied...please confirm that this is correct. If so, I'm envisioning that I would create a new backup at that time, validate it, and then delete the old backup and the old copied files?

I'm thinking that it will take me a couple of days to back up all of this data at this rate...unless maybe I go and get more RAM...

[Macboatmaster]

Well unless you have substantial changes to the system there is really no need to ever do another full backup.

When you back up the plain data on the other drives do NOT use the sector by sector approach.

That is only needed for the system drive.

How you then manage your individual backup is of course a matter of choice.

All I do is, when I create a document of importance or save a JPEG etc I simply copy it to the external drive.

Here is ERUNT the registry backup

http://www.geekstogo...covery-utility/

and the direct link to ERUNT
http://www.larsheder...nline.de/erunt/

DO NOT USE THE REGISTRY Optimzer.

[jdohr]

Still working through validation of the backup of the D: drive. The validation of the C: drive was successful. Still have to create a disk and run ERUNT. I did a full backup of both C: and D: drives, but did not use the sector approach. Didn't even know it was an option or what the difference was. Anyway, still backing up...

[Macboatmaster]

Do not concern yourself too much with it.
The sector by sector approach is mainly used to back up a file system that is NOT recognised by Acronis.
ITS OTHER MAIN use, is that it is possibly more reliable, if some minute part of a file is thought by Acronis to be corrupt, HOWEVER its large disadvantage is that it uses a lot more space.

See this
To make a sector-by-sector backup, check the Back up sector-by-sector parameter. By default the program copies only the hard disk sectors that contain data. However, sometimes it might be useful to make a full sector-by-sector backup. For example, you have deleted some files by mistake and want to make a disk image before trying to undelete them, because sometimes undeleting may create problems in the file system. Please note that this mode increases processing time and usually results in a larger image file because it copies used and unused hard disk sectors.The Back up unallocated space option becomes available if you have selected the previous parameter, Back up sector-by-sector. By default, while performing sector-by-sector backup, unallocated space is not included into the backup file. Enabling this option will include all unallocated disk space to the backup archive.






Did you see my note of caution in RED on my post 70 - PLEASE TELL ME YOU DID.

[jdohr]

I saw your note of caution in red in Post #70...but you're scaring me a little...I hope I understood it correctly. I have completed the Acronis full image backups of both C: and D: drives now, and used Acronis to validate both. Both backups are saved to my external hard drive, in separate folders - one is System Backup and the other is Personal Data Backup. I had formatted this external hard drive prior to doing both backups, so there is nothing else on that external drive now. I guess I may not be understanding what you mean by "the same image location as the previous backup of C"...I took that to mean, don't backup the C: drive and then overwrite it when you back up the D: drive... If I am correct, then there are no worries - I have them in separate folders and all is well. If I am incorrect, please let me know if I've done something wrong.

Next steps are to create the recovery disk and use ERUNT to back up the registry...and see about additional RAM.