Wizer:
Thank you very much for your reply. But since I am not knowledgeable, I need a clarification of your statements,
You wrote:
1) “The software requires the computer to have the drive directly connected to the computer.” I don’t know what “directly” means. There is a USB cable from the Apricorn external disk (which uses a Hitachi hard disk) to a USB port on my laptop computer. What would be more direct than that, for an external disk?
2) “if connected to an USB enclosure it might not work.” What does “enclosure” mean here? I think that some sort of case would surround any external hard disk. My laptop has three USB ports in various locations on the side of the laptop.
Taken together, do your two statements mean that Acronis Western Digital Edition software cannot backup to AND restore from my Apricorn external disk?
Since my initial post in this thread, I HAVE backed up my C: and D: partitions to the Apricorn external disk. And while I am in Windows 7 and have opened WesternDigital Acronis > Disk Recovery > Disk backups button, both images are listed. But there doesn’t seem to be any way to recover them (which may merely reflect that the Windows7 internal hard disk doesn’t need either its C: or D: partitions replaced by the backup images).
On the other hand, if I boot from the WD Acronis Recovery CD I have created and then try to recover, the Recovery CD cannot find the Apricorn hard disk.
Three additional questions:
a) If I acquire a commercial Acronis version instead of the Western Digital Acronis version, would that solve my inability to restore backups from my Apricorn external hard disk?
b) If I acquire a Western Digital external hard disk, would I be able to use the Western Digital Acronis to back up and restore my C: and D: partitions?
c) Is there any way that I have overlooked to enable the WD Acronis version not only to back up to my external Apricorn hard disk but also to restore from from my Apricorn hard disk? (I wanted the WD Acronis version not because it was free, but because it apparently was somewhat simpler than the commercial version, and I wanted to continue using the Apricorn external hard disk because it is less than two thirds full. But maybe having both “wants” isn’t possible.)
Thanks for any comments, suggestions, or other help.
RNFolsom
