ATI 2016 under Win 10 can't find external drive after it is disconnected and reconnected with no changes
Environment is Win 10. In the interest of security, after I successfully do a backup to an external drive, I disconnect it so it cannot be altered by a virus. When I reconnect it to do the next backup, and the drive is visible to me, ATI 2016 cannot find it. How do I overcome this problem?

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Harvey, I haven't found any issues with doing what you say on my Windows 10 system with an external drive, so please can you provide some more information on the specific scenario that is involved on your system?
How is your external drive connected? USB 2.0 3.0 etc?
Do you use the Windows Safely Remove option when disconnecting the external drive?
Do you reconnect the drive while ATIH 2016 is active or before starting the application?
How are you checking that the reconnected drive is visible? Using Windows Explorer?
Please download a copy of the Log File Viewer app and use this to check for any messages that may be being posted to the Acronis logs when you attempt to run your backup task. I am assuming that you are using the same backup task to continue backing up to your external disk drive, and not creating a new backup task each time?
Note: you can run the Acronis System Report tool - in the Tools section of the ATIH GUI, to collect copies of all the logs plus other relevant information in a zipped file and post this to the forum (providing the zip file size is less than 20MB).
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I tried your suggestion of renaming the external drive but think I have compounded the problem. My external drive is renamed X: but now appears in two levels of the This PC stack. One appearance where all the other drives appear, and one appearance at the same level in the table as This PC.
Also, this did not seem to help ATI. So now what do I do to backout this mess?
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See earlier response also to first responder.
In answer to your questions, Steve:
Seagate drive is connected via USB 3.0. I do use the Safely remove function. I reconnect the drive before invoking ATI. I use This PC in Win 10 to view the external drive, and can do so.
On one occasion I tried doing a revalidate on the backed up copy and this did fix the problem for one iteration. The next time I did a back up and disconnect, same problem occurred on reconnect.
So now I have two occurrences of drive X: shown by This PC, as described above. I am obviously making the problem worse!
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I don't believe you are making the situation worse. I also see my 2 external drives appearing twice under windows 10. I'm not sure why they appear twice but that is what I see.
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ATI 2016 is not working under any combination that I have tried. It seems to work for awhile, (19 GB saved) then hangs saying "the specified file does not exist X:\July Entire PC full b1 s1 v6.tib".
See notes above for history of this incident. I've tried rebooting. Tried creating new backup. Deleting old backups using tools. Nothing clears up this hangup. The product has been working fine since upgrade in Dec, 2015.
I also ran "Generating System Report" but can't see it or what to do after it has been run.
Suggestions?
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Harvey, to my way of thinking, the next logical step would be to test with a different external drive to ensure that this isn't an issue with the specific drive used with drive letter X:
I would recommend doing a clone settings for your original task and giving the second drive a different drive letter rather than causing any issues in the Acronis database with changing drive UUID's (unique identifiers).
Normally, with the System Report, it should ask you where to save the resulting zip file.
See KB document: 56652: Acronis True Image 2016: Generating System Report
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Steve, it appears your comment led me to the solution! As I was preparing to switch to a different external drive, I noticed that my current one was attached via a cheap extension USB cable! The portable drive cable had been too short. So I removed the extension cable and rebooted with just the factory cable. Then I started ATI 2016 and it ran to completion! Validation also successful! So I'm sure the problem is fixed!
But I still wonder if I can disconnect the drive for security purposes? If I use the "safely remove" feature, can I do the disconnect, then reconnect a week later without screwing up ATI? I'd appreciate your thoughts.
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Harvey, that is great news, thankyou for giving the feedback as it may help someone else.
I have had problems with USB extension cables in the past - I tend to go for a powered USB hub if I need to extend the reach for external devices as have found that to be more reliable.
I am sure that you can continue to disconnect the drive for security purposes, using the safe removal process and reconnecting with the same drive letter. That should present no issues with ATIH.
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