Hi Joe,
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, I did defragment the backup file in the days between saving and trying to recover from it - I noticed that it did so in a ‘weird’ way that a couple of other 3rd-party programs have in the past which later ceased working, i.e. nothing happened for about 1 minute (as if the Windows defragmenter was hanging) and then suddenly the complete file reappeared ‘defragmented’. Although the waste of time is annoying, at least I can now add Acronis to my list of cowboy software publishers!
Before reading your comment, I’d noticed from the Acronis forums that the WD offering is a ‘lite’ version of the 2009 release, so next I will be trying the full version of Paragon’s Backup & Recovery 11 that came with the December edition of Computer Shopper.
