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Acronis Will Not Recognize External Hard Drive

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Folks,

I am backing up my Dell XPS 13 9350 to a My Passport 4 TB external hard drive using the latest version of Acronis.  However, the last few months Acronis has not been finding the drive.  I delete the profile, recreate it, and go on my merry way.  This is a pain.  This should just work.  Windows has no difficulty recognizing the drive.

Last night I set up my backup and go to bed.  In the middle of the night I checked on the backup and it hadn't run.  I had error messages saying that Acronis couldn't find the drive.  I tried to do a manual backup.  Acronis tried to shutdown my PC.  I went ahead and shut it down and went to back to bed.

This morning I logged in my PC, went to shower, and discovered later that my backup had run.  The only thing different was a reboot.  Any clues as to what might be going on?

Thanks,

Regina in Knoxville

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Sometime a full restart can solve issues where such an event in necessary to complete the installation or removal of software - this is not achieved if the PC is using fast start or is hibernated instead.

The substantive problem may have something to do with the power settings for the USB port; it may go into low power mode (due to lack of activity) and is not providing enough power to run the USB powered HDD. This happens quite often. Another possibility is a defective USB cable, loose connection (USB cable not properly seated), or could also be that accidentally a USB 2 port is use (not sure if Dell XPS has one of those!).

Ian

Ian,

Before I posted here, I dug through old forum posts for a solution.  Someone had posted to check the USB selective suspend settings to make sure that they are disabled.  I checked those and yes, they both were disabled.  So, no solution there.

I plug my disk drive into a "hot" USB port.  Some of these settings are controlled in the UEFI, but Dell designed this port to always be available to provide power.  Convenient when one of your devices runs out of power and you can plug in if the PC is in your backpack.

Additionally, I have the sleep settings for this PC wide open.  I do not allow it to sleep or hibernate unless I specifically tell it to do so.

I think what you've suggested are good possibilities, but doesn't nail down my particular problem.  I suppose that I could just reboot every time before I setup a backup.

Thanks,

 

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Regina in Knoxville

Regina, how many USB ports does your Dell XPS 13 9350 laptop have and have you tried plugging your Passport drive into any of the other available USB ports?

What USB standard does your My Passport 4 TB external hard drive use?  Is it USB 2.0 or USB 3.x?  USB ports are often coloured blue internally for USB 3.x and grey/black for USB 2.0.

Open the Windows Device Manager (via the Control Panel) then look for Universal Serial Bus controllers and expand this to show the USB devices in your laptop.

Check the properties for each of these and look for the option allowing Windows to turn the device off to save power.

My 2021 version will not let me choose a destination for my clone. It is greyed out. Thoughts?

Marcus, welcome to these public User Forums.

Please open a new Topic in the ATI 2021 forum for your clone issue, and when doing so, provide a lot more detail of what exactly you are doing, how doing it and what drives are involved etc, then we will be happy to try to help you.

This topic has be inactive since April 2020 and is for ATI 2020 not 2021.