USB stick not recognised after use with Acronis True Image Home Edition 2010
I was taking a hard disk backup with a free tool Acronis True Image Home 2010 onto my usb stick (brand: Mitone USB Key drive, 8GB). The process was completed as expected, I shuted down Acronis and removed the stick. When I moved to the other computer I loaded the same Acronis version, chose to recover backup but the stick was not recognized any more (was not shown in the list).
I checked the contents with a Windows 7 laptop and it says no media found. Windows Computer Management shows the stick at the bottom area (grey) with a driver letter but it doesn't show it at the top area (white). I tried formatting it with a free tool from HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool and it doesn't do it!
Can anyone recommend a solution, or a low-level formatting tool for USB sticks? I think the partition table on it is ruined and it is only bought recently :-( The stick was healthy before all this. It had both Windows files and a bootable Puppy Linux on it.
Hello James,
Thanks for the detailed reply, your suggestion should have solved my problem but unfortunately it didn't. I followed your instructions and couldn't get around the "clean" command as shown in the screenshot provided where it says "no media in the device". There are others suggesting your solution to situations like mine, for example here: http://superuser.com/questions/338059/recovering-a-partially-formatted-… but the result is the same: my USB stick will simply won't respond. There is no partition on it and it won't create one.
To further illustrate my problem I am including another screenshot from Computer Management. The device is found with a letter but it is impossible to engage onto the partition so I cannot format it. In fact tried qtparted (Qt Partition Editor) from a Linux boot CD and found that one partition exists on the stick of 1MB in size, which is wrong it should be 8GB! Qtparted does not allow any operation to be made on the stick.
After spending all of my afternoon today downloading various tools and swapping the USB stick between various Windows XP and Windows 7 PCs I realised that it was a lost battle and got nowhere really. I believe that Acronis has ruined this USB stick of mine somewhere in the process of getting a disk backup. Pitty ... I am left with a broken USB stick It was practically new and unused :-( ... I think I will throw this CD away and probably try another version of Acronis or try something completely different from now on like Clonezilla or Norton Ghost.
I'm sorry to see you are having the problems with your USB key. It is possible that the USB key drive has malfunctioned. I have never had a USB drive damaged by Acronis, but I have had USB flash drives fail randomly. The brand USB key (Mitone) you are using is not mainstream and is normally sold in airports and not of very good quality. They typically come with a two year warranty and can be replaced if found defective. I would suggest that you buy a better quality USB flash drive for storing a backup file on.
You can place the blame on Acronis if you wish, but I tend to think it is not Acronis that caused this failure. You stated that the USB key was "practically new and unused" which means that the failure could have happened using any software product that may have been used to write to the mainly untested/unused drive.
Hi James
it could very well be just an unfortunate event that I had with this USB stick and this of version of Acronis. You know what I believe happened? From what I read on the web at various websites where people shared similar stories like mine I came to realise that it is important (maybe on some sticks) to eject the stick before removing it. There are certain times when a stick is treated as "removable" or as "fixed" hard disk. If it is treated as "fixed" and you pull the stick out of the port just like that you may corrupt the partition on it. Now, when I took a backup of the disc drive I chose to save it on USB, gave it a filename on root folder, clicked proceed and then clicked the tick box that says shut down when finish. The PC had shut down as expected when it was done. Then I pulled out the stick, moved it to the other PC, loaded Acronis and the backup file wasn't there. From that point on the stick wasn't functioning any more no matter what I did. So I believe Acronis treated it as a "fixed" hard disk and didn't eject it properly before shutting it down. That's my theory and maybe people at Acronis could learn something from my experience. As I said the stick was healthy and working fine before all this. I mean I used it with both Linux and Windows for some months before taking this backup. Anyway, there is no point in continuing with this and I don't have any hard feelings. To tell you the truth I thought of putting it in the fridge for half an hour see if it changes anything! Otherwise it goes straight for recycle.
Thanks again.
it is important (maybe on some sticks) to eject the stick before removing it.
That is always recommended. Always.
But, a shutdown would unmount/eject USB devices properly, so it wouldn't seem that that was the cause of the failure.
You might try doing a complete 'dd' zero-wipe of the flash drive using Linux. I've had some success with that before when I've screwed them up so Windows won't see them correctly.