Conflict with Western Digital AcronisAlign Tool
Hello,
I just purchased and installed a Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB HDD for my desktop, which is running Windows XP SP3. Western Digital requires the use of their 'Advanced Format Tool', called 'Acronis Align Tool', by Acronis, the setup and align the drive id being used in Win XP with more than one partition.
While installing the Acronis Align Tool, I got a message that the installation could not proceed unless I stopped 3 services associated with Acronis True Image Home 2012 so that it could copy files. I stopped the services and the installation completed. I then rebooted my PC to re-start all services properly.
Subsequently, neither Acronis True Image Home 2012 nor the Acronis Align Tool work at all.
In order to get the hard drive working I had to use the Acronis True Image Home Cleanup Utility to uninstall True Image Home (it would not uninstall through add/remove programs), then I was able to easily install the Acronis Align Tool and get the hard drive set up.
Has anyone alse experienced this issue and/or can anyone offer any advice so I can run my Acronis True Image Home 2012 again ?
Thanks,
Steve
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Don't forget that dessert apples are being compared to crab apples here. Western Digital will have either asked for a specialised version of the Acronis product or will have made changes to it themselves, meaning it is possible it will clash with other Acronis distributed software.
I'm not sure why WD appear to have insisted with the drive you purchased that it requires special alignment, it not being a 3TB drive and you are not running Vista, W7 or even developers W8, so have no need as yet of the new 1023 secotr offset.
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Hi Colin,
This particular drive is what Western Digital calls an 'Advanced Format Hard Drive', which means that it has been optimized for Windows VISTA and 7. When using XP they specify that this alignment tool should be used.
Steve
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Just to provide an update:
Since I had a good image I had some room for exprimentation, so:
1. When I installed the alignment tool, as mentioned in my original post, instead of installing it into it's default folder 'C:\Program Files\Acronis', I had it install into a folder called 'C:\Program Files\AcronisAlign.
2. I aligned the new Western Digital Hard Drive
3. I then left Acronis Align Tool installed
4. I re-installed True Image Home 2012 and Disk Director 11, into their default location 'C:\Program Files\Acronis' and they both installed perfectly.
Now, Acronis Align, True Image Home and Disk Director 11 all run perfectly.. Not sure if it was the installation order or changing the install folder that made the difference.
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Quite possibly due to installation order as you suggest. For example, the registered filter/driver arrangements for TIH 2012 are backward compatible with Disk Director 11, but not vice versa. In theory, the installer packages should handle such versioning issues automatically, but Acronis isn't known for easy and bulletproof upgrading of even the same product without prior "cleanups" of existing installations. As Colin points out, various product offshoots and derivatives like the WD tool further complicate the situation.
So it is generally best to install in the order of development, although that may be difficult to determine in some cases. And using a different programs folder for them is probably not a bad idea either. :)
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