After recent update, new drive for Mobile Backup data has overridden and hidden a mapped network drive
Hi all,
After a recent update (IIRC to build 8029), a new (virtual) drive was created in Explorer which displayed my Mobile Backup data. I realised that this was on drive letter M:, which I previously had as a mapped network drive. There was no way to change the drive letter for this Mobile Backup drive, and Windows seemed to think that the network drive was still mapped even though the only contents displayed within the drive was the backup data.
I deleted the Mobile Backup job from True Image (I was only trying out the feature anyway, and plan to use a different method for backing up my mobile), which caused the Mobile Backup drive to disappear. I could then access the content of the network drive by entering 'M:' manually into Explorer (or the Run dialog, or on the command line). However, the drive doesn't appear in Explorer alongside my other drives. I've tried deleting the mapped drive (with 'net use /delete m:' on the command line), rebooting and recreating the mapped drive with the same results. I've also tried stopping the Acronis Mobile Backup services to see if that makes a difference. I've also checked the 'Hide these specified drives in My Computer' policy in the Group Policy Editor (not configured) and the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoDrives registry key (it doesn't exist), which seem to be the two ways of hiding a specific drive letter.
I haven't yet tried uninstalling and reinstalling Acronis. But before I go ahead with that, I wanted to find out if anyone has experienced the same issue or had any ideas on how to fix this? It feels like it's the result of a slightly buggy implementation of this new feature, and I just happen to have issues because I was already using a drive letter that was chosen for this Mobile Backups drive (I guess M: for Mobile makes sense, but it should be configurable!)
FWIW, by 'slightly buggy' I mean that it seems like if there's no Mobile Backup job True Image is explcitily doing something to hide drive M:, rather than just leaving the system as-is, which is what it should be doing. But this isn't a drive letter that most people will be using so that's probably why it didn't show up in pre-release testing.
I know I could just change the drive letter for the network drive, but I'd rather not do that as I have various scripts and other bits and pieces that use this drive letter.
Thanks for reading and for any help you can provide.
Looks like the new update automatically mounts the tibx as a network drive this is confirmed and there seems to be no method to unmount or change the drive leter
Mike, thanks for your comments - I have not yet managed to get Mobile Backup to work with my Android phone so don't have any .tibx files created, thus haven't seen this behaviour. (Have a support case open for the Mobile Backup issue with developers working on it but no ETA for a fix!).
I would definately recommend that a Support Case be opened for this issue - I cannot see any good reason why anyone would want their .TIBX files automatically mounted as a network drive letter, especially anyone backing up more than one mobile device!
Hi guys,
Mike, thanks for the comfirmation. Steve, I can understand why you thought I was mistaking what I was seeing.. it's definitely an odd feature. Deleting my Mobile Backup job did remove the 'Mobile Backup drive' (allowing me to see the network drive's files) but ATI still seems to be doing something with drive M: causing it to be hidden.
(IIRC in the Mobile Backup drive there was a subdirectory per-device, then within the device subdir, there were subdirectories by date... or at least it was something similar. So I guess it does support multiple devices.)
Steve, I think I might go with your recommendation of a Support Case. This definitely feels like a bug. And as much as it feels like a feature that no-one would need or want, at the very least it should behave gracefully... using a free drive letter instead of a hardcoded one, and allowing the user to control or disable the feature.
Doogle, I have raised this issue in the private MVP forums plus have sent a PM to Gaidar, General Manager Acronis True Image about this issue and pointed him to these forum topics asking that this be treated with some urgency.
Thank you very much Steve. I've been trying to start a support chat session with no joy, and I must admit I couldn't see where on the site I need to go to just open a support case.
Thanks again. Hopefully this can be easily resolved.
I found the solution to your network drive issue just by tinkering around.
Go to "C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\AcronisDrive". open "Settings.xml" using notepad
change <ArchiveMountPath>M:</ArchiveMountPath> to whatever drive letter you want and save the file.
Reboot your computer and acronis drive will use that instead.
The acronis drive shortcut will not automatically update but if it works the way i think it does you should be able to find it here "%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts" You can try to change the target to the new drive letter or if its not editable just delete it and create a new one pointing to the new drive letter
Amazing, thanks Mike! I didn't even think to go digging through config files. I was eventually connected on the chat, so I'll finish with him soon and try out this workaround. Of course there's still a bug that needs fixing, as ATI shouldn't be doing anything with the specified drive letter if it's already in use.
Once I've rebooted I'll comment with the results.
just remember youll need to edit or recreate the acronis drive shortcut by hand cause it wont auto update to the new letter
also you might need to remap the network drive too not sure.
Mike, I don't undertand, sorry. Which shortcut are you referring to? I couldn't see anything in the start menu directory.
Either way, with no Mobile Backup data the acronis drive seems to have disappeared, so I don't need/want it anyway.
(Finally finished on the chat, about to reboot)
Ill see if I can find an autorun entry for acronis_drive.exe If you just disable it from starting with windows than it wont use any drive letters. but if one of the acronis services is launching it than it might not be possible to just simply disable it without disabling acronis alltogether.
Right, I've tried a bunch of different things, and the issue still remains.
I tried Mike's workaround, both with a valid drive letter string ('Z:') and an invalid drive letter string (it was something like '*?*?::'). I tried renaming acronis_drive.exe, renaming the various Acronis shell extension DLLs, and disabling the three Acronis drivers I could find. Each time removing the network drive mapping, rebooting and recreating the drive mapping. (I just realised I haven't tried rebooting with all Acronis services disabled, so I'll try that now)
I couldn't find an autorun entry for acronis_drive.exe, and it isn't in the process list either. Later today (as I should really be working now!) I'll try creating a new mobile backup and seeing if I can get the mobile backup data drive back (but on a different letter) to see if that affects my M: drive.
Thanks for your help guys. I'll update if I make any progress.
I wouldn't screw around with the shell extensions and the drivers I don't think those are related to acronis drive and you could end up doing something that will prevent the system from even making backups. As soon as you changed the drive letter in the configuration and then rebooted the system you should have been able to remap the network drive without any problems I tested trying to map a network drive to M and I didn't have any problem doing so. Are you getting any kind of error when you try to remap the drive?
That was just exploratory poking, and I've since rolled back any changes I made. I was poking around shellexts and drivers because (from the config file) it looked like acronis_drive.exe actually acts as a server, so I was thinking that if I can stop whatever is invoking it then that might affect things. I was looking more for changes than a complete fix as, as you point out, the changes I was making would have other (negative) effects. Also, the first thing I tried was the config file change, so I only started looking at other things after I verified that didn't work.
Interesting that it's working for you. Although one difference between our setups is that (I'm guessing) you didn't start off with a mapped drive M: before the update to 8029...?
I'm getting no errors when mapping the drive (FWIW it's to a samba share on a Linux VM, so it's not even going out to a physical network), and the drive works... It's just that the drive is hidden in explorer (another reason why I went poking at shellexts). Mapping the same share to other drive letters doesn't have this effect. Also, when this issue first appeared (when the M: drive was overridden by the mobile backup drive), Windows still saw the M: drive as being mapped to the network share (eg. when going to the 'map network drive' dialog, the drive letter dropdown would show 'M: \\...<UNC path>', which it does if a drive letter is already in use) even thought looking in the drive showed the mobile backup drive contents.
I spoke a little too soon I was doing everything in the command line I just realised that the drive i mapped is not visible in explorer but it was mapped and accessable in the command line and by typing M: into the address bar. this is bizare my bets are on some registry hack acronis used to insert its shortcut into network locations
I'm not on my local network at the moment so can't test, but curious if
net use
shows the mapped drive?
If so, can you disconnect it with net use commands?
net use drive letter /delete
If so, does it reappear automatically after rebooting the system and/or launching Acronis?
EDIT: make sure you're running these froma an elevated admin command prompt - even if already logged in with an admin account.
Mike, that's 'good' that you've been able to fully replicate the issue. It's either going to be something they're explicitly doing at init time or something like, as you said, a registry hack that is being picked up by Windows/Explorer itself. The two methods of hiding a drive that have come up when searching are the 'Hide these specified drives in My Computer' policy in the Group Policy Editor and the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoDrives registry key, but neither of those are configured/exist on my machine. Of course there might be other registry/config methods to hide drives, but I haven't come across any others yet.
(Thinking further on how the drive is being hidden, if it wasn't something like a registry hack (ie. it's being done in ATI code at init time) then you could reasonably expect it to use the drive letter from TrueImageHome\AcronisDrive\settings.xml, but that doesn't seem to be the case)
Bobbo, thanks for the response. 'net use' does display the mapping (whether or not the drive is there as the 'mobile backup data drive'), and 'net use /delete' is how I've been removing the mapping when trying to get the drive to reappear, as I of course can't unmap using the drive's context menu. As to your last question, after a 'net use /delete' there's no reapperance after reboot or restarting ATI (which is what I'd expect, as AFAIK 'net use /delete' should remove a persistent mapping for subsequent reboots).
Hello All,
The issue with Acronis True Image silently taking the M: drive letter is known and is expected to be addressed in the future updates.
In the meanwhile, we have published instructions on manually changing the default drive letter for Acronis Drive from M: to some other letter: https://kb.acronis.com/content/59584. This will not prevent the program from taking M: after the initial installation/update/upgrade, but allows you to assign the drive letter you want to Acronis Drive.
Regards,
Slava
Slava, please can you check the KB 59584 link you posted above, I am getting an Access denied message when I try to view this, asking for login credentials.
Seconded link leads to a login page however my acronis account is not recognized however as long as the M: Drive remains used than this is not a fix as the whole problem revolves around acronis reserving a drive letter it has no right to reserve without explicate user consent.
also would you please explain the mechanism which acronis uses to reserve the M: drive because I have never seen this behavior before and it is not done by any of the normal methods I know about. The only thing i can think of is that the static mapping of M: is somehow done through a explorer hook which is why there does not seem to be any trace of this in the registry it would also explain why the M: drive is only hidden in my computer but can still be accessed by entering M:\ into the address bar.
There is however a temporary fix i came up though it is a bit of a kludge
navigate to %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts
rightclick and create a new shortcut
set the path of the new shortcut to M:\
this will create a link to the mapped M: drive that will overriding whatever acronis did to hide it
I'm aslso getting access denied.
I don't have mobile backup services enabled so have not seen this. I believe that it was mentioend in another post that you will see the drive mapped via "net use" commands (method used by Windows to assign a drive letter to a network share - typcially).
Open an elevated command prompt and just type
net use <enter>
Does it show up there?
Using the value specified in the settings.xml it seems to be a simple 'subst' being performed to the location of the .tibx file.
Not everything requires detailed registry hacking. Remember old school DOS still lives!!
Regards
Old School
M is not being hidden with subst I actually ran subst from both my username and an elevated command prompt and there were no entries listed for M: the only subst entry was the mapping for the new drive letter I had assigned
Mike,
I can only report what my system shows....and there is a difference in what it reports under Normal and Adminstrator Command Prompt windows as the attached screen captures show.
DJM
This was my output from subst.
C:\Users\Mikeloeven>subst
O:\: => C:\Users\Mikeloeven\AppData\Local\Acronis\Acronis Drive
it only listed the remapped acronis drive but had no references to M:. So mapped network drive M: is not being overridden by subst and something else is still hiding it in explorer
Hello All,
https://kb.acronis.com/content/59584 should be accessible now.
There was an issue with permissions for accessing the article, I have just corrected them.
Regards,
Slava
Thanks, Slava, I am now able to access and read the KB document fine.
Thanks for that however the mapped network drive M: is still being hidden as per my pevious post after changing the settings for acronis drive the only entry in subst is pointing at the new drive letter O: so there is still some other mechanism at work hiding the M: drive in explorer
Hello Mike,
If you are absolutely sure that you have followed the steps and executed commands exactly as they appear in the article, please contact us here so that we could investigate the issue in more details.
Regards,
Slava
I contacted support already they looked into the issue and apearantly escalated it however I have yet to recieve a resolution
Hi Mike, please check your personal messages.
I am having a related problem. I also was testing out the Mobile backup - it worked fine but created a drive M: that containted the individual backup files. I wasn't using M: previously and thought all was fine. Then I discovered that this drive mapping for M: is totally confusing Photoshop Elements Organizer. Organizer has its issues and there is a known issue with this sort of drive mapping. Once the Acronis Drive M: was in my system (in explorer it showed up as "SSD Drive M:" and the drive properties (size/used space) exactly matched my C: drive. This is probably because the folder it is mapping to is on the C: drive. Somehow this confuses Organizer and its database that points to all my images gets confused and starts looking for all my images on M: (this is particularly rediculous since most of my images are actually on G: so the similarity between M: and C: doesn't seem like it should matter.) This is a known problem with Organizer and has been seen with both Acronis and syncdocs. Organizer just doesn't like virtual drives (it seems to use the volume name rather than drive letters to keep track of location & the virtual drives have the same volume name as existing drives.)
I removed the mobile backup from Acronis and the M: drive no longer appears in file explorer. However the problem still exists in Organizer. Tried the DOS SUBST command to see what was up and M: is still being mapped to the Acronic drive folder on the C: drive. If I use SUBST M: /d to get rid of it, Organizer works fine and I haven't noticed any issues with Acronis or my backups. However, every time I boot, I have to remember to go in and do the SUBST M: /d command. I have not been able to determine where this gets set when the machine is booting. Is there any way to tell Acronis I just plain do not need a drive M:?
Pamela, I would recommend that you should open a Support Case directly with Acronis Support for this further issue arising from the Mobile Backup function / Acronis Drive allocation in ATIH 2017, as they would need to investigate this issue and the way it impacts on users of Photoshop Elements Organizer.
Hello Pamela,
You can achieve what you want with these instructions:
1) follow steps 1-10 from https://kb.acronis.com/content/59584
2) remove TrueImageMonitor.exe and acronis_drive.exe, listed in the step 11, from the list of programs that start automatically with Windows. For that you can open Windows Start menu, type msconfig, press Enter, switch to Startup tab in the opened window, and uncheck those two processes. Click OK to save changes and reboot the computer.
Please note that these two processes are used by the program for other purposes, like displaying notifications in the system tray, "Archiving" feature and the program would attempt to start them manually when needed. To prevent this from happening you can change file type extensions of TrueImageMonitor.exe and acronis_drive.exe from .exe to .bak.
The above procedure needs to be repeated after each Acronis True Image update, upgrade and re-installation.
Regards,
Slava
Hi Slava,
Thank you for the information. I have temporarily "fixed" my issue by creating a batch file in the Startup folder that runs the subst M: /d command. I have printed out your instructions and when I have a chance to mess with it I will give it a try.
Regards,
Pamela
Hello Pamela,
I expect the workaround you applied to continue working. We would be happy to help you if you will face difficulties with applying my instructions - the "contact us" page is https://www.acronis.com/support/contact-us.html
Regards,
Slava
I had been searching for why any USB drive I put in my Windows 7(64) machine would be assigned the next available letter (M) but not show up in Explorer. I finally found this topic and tried the instructions listed in KB59584, but several of the instructions returned "invalid command" errors, and attempts at setting the Explorer NoDrives parameter to 0 returned a "cannot edit" message. So, since KP59584 did not fix the problem for me, I uninstalled ATIH2017 completely and did a fresh install of ATIH2018 (which I qualified for as a free upgrade), thinking that surely the problem would be fixed by now. It appear that it isn't. Flash drives assigned as M still cannot be seen in explorer. If I view the drive in Disk Management and select Explore, I can see the contents, but not when just using Explorer. If I change the drive letter to something other than M, it then appears in Explorer.
So, does the problem still exist in ATIH2018, or am I seeing a remnant from the ATIH2017 installation, and what do I do next to solve this?
I think you would need to uninstall ATI 2017, then use the ATI clean-up tool before installing ATI 2018. (This is speculation on my part.)
Ian
After installing ATIH2018, I opened a support ticket with Acronis asking if the 2018 version still had the hidden drive issue.
In the meantime, I made another attempt to unhide disk M by starting Windows in safe mode and using regedit to change the NoDrive key to 0 (None) instead of 4096 (M) and this time it allowed the change and I can now see the M drive in Explorer. What I don't know is if ATIH2018 will re-hide the M drive at some point in the future. I'll see what the support tech says.
I am running ATI 2018 and my M-drive is visible. However, I backup mobile devices to the cloud, not to local PC.
Yesterday when trouble shooting an upgrade to WIN 10 64 Creator Fall that there was a drive without letter for Acronis mobile backup. It was mapped to a subdirectory of one of the user directories.
Ian
I received a response to my support request from Acronis on this issue. They offered two choices. Change the drive letter of the USB flash drive in disk management or follow Knowledge Base article 59584 to change the drive letter that is assigned by ATIH. They said that ATIH2018 works the same as 2017 and the instructions in KB59584 will apply.
My installation of ATIH2018 hasn't taken over the M drive yet, probably because I haven't attempted to backup a mobile device. In fact, I don't find any "Backup Mobile" menu choices in 2018.
I will probably go ahead and do KB59584 just in case.
"My installation of ATIH2018 hasn't taken over the M drive yet, probably because I haven't attempted to backup a mobile device. In fact, I don't find any "Backup Mobile" menu choices in 2018."
This is done via the Android or iOS App.
Ian