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Restoring Image file to SD card destroyed my card reader

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Acronis True Image Home 11.0:

Took an image from an SD card in a Sweex card reader (which shows 4 drives in Explorer).
Wrote the image back to a new SD card, and was told a re-boot was required (though why, I can't imagine, but accepted anyway and allowed the reboot).
After the reboot, my PC (Windows XP Pro) no longer recognised the card in the reader, which then only showed 3 drives, all empty.
The card was written successfully, and a new Raspbian Wheezy OS had been created there.

However, I now have a defunct card reader!

Are there preferred card readers, or can this happen to any?

Keith Bromley

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You could try removing the reader in Device Manager and then scan for new devices (or reboot) and see if it helps. I doubt the card reader itself is damaged in any way -- probably just a Windows issue. Have you tried the reader on another computer?

Tried removing the reader gracefully &c., and also tried a complete re-boot, both to no avail - Windows only reports 3 (empty) drives on my card reader, where it would normally report 4, with the SD card seen in the first of them.

However, I did check on another PC following your suggestion, where all 4 drives are recognised, including the SD card.

So it seems that Acronis has screwed my main computer's ability to recognise the first drive in the card reader.

I had an earlier problem with Win32DiskImager, which reported an error using the reader; googling for an answer suggested that the presence of an empty floppy drive often interferred with the process of drive numbering. This problem also occurred on another PC, using the same card reader, and that PC did not have a floppy drive. It could be that the empty drives on the card reader had a similar effect.

End result is that my main PC will no longer recognise my card reader. I've ordered a new, single-card reader, but I may still have problems using that - we'll have to wait and see!

Thanks for the heads up!

Keith, you could use device manager to remove the card reader and let Windows re-detect it and see if that helps. Also you could check to see if you have any drive letters that are being assigned to other drives that overlap your card reader drive letter assignments.

Wow!

James F's suggestion to use device manager worked. The first thing I noticed was that, whereas the reported drives each took 15 - 20 seconds to uninstall, the 'missing' drive uninstalled immediately.

On removing and re-inserting the (multi) card reader, each of the 4 drives were duly recognised and re-installed.

It's now recognising and reading my SD cards.

Thanks indeed!

Keith,

To restore a disk and partition backup, always use the recovery CD.