60612: Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, Acronis True Image: backup cannot be started, pauses, or fails with the "Plug in external drive" error

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Last update: 26-10-2022

Symptoms

In Acronis True Image, you have a backup task of your computer of some files. The backup should be saved on a USB drive that you attach to the computer.

You try to start the backup task, but it does not start. Or the backup task pauses or fails. You see this error message:

Plug in external drive <drive_letter>.

Solution

The software cannot detect your external USB drive. To resolve the issue, do the following:

  1. Make sure that the USB drive is plugged in firmly.
  2. Make sure that you are using the USB drive that contains backup files previously created with current backup task. A different drive will not be recognized as the necessary drive for current backup task, even if the same letter was assigned to the drive.

    If you want to use a different USB drive that does not contain files of this backup, edit the task and specify the new drive as backup destination.

  3. Make sure that the USB drive is visible in Windows Explorer (or in Finder on a Mac). Click My Computer or Windows Explorer. Find your USB drive and double-click to open it. If it does not open (you cannot see the files stored on your USB drive), you need to find out why Windows cannot detect the drive. Once the drive is detected by Windows, Acronis True Image will detect it as well.
  4. In Windows Explorer (or in Finder on a Mac), copy any file to this USB drive and make sure the file can be successfully copied.
  5. Check the letter of the drive. When a USB drive is plugged and unplugged, the letter assigned to the drive might change. The backup task, however, stores the letter that was initially assigned to the drive. Click here to learn how to change the drive letter.
  6. Edit backup task settings, re-select the external disk, save the changes and run the backup again . 

If you have checked all the solutions above and the issue still persists, please contact Acronis Support. We will assist you with this issue.

To successfully troubleshoot the issue, we need to check some information. Please have this information on hand:

  • Acronis system information
  • screenshot of Windows Explorer (or Finder on a Mac) with the USB drive connected
  • screenshot of Acronis True Image window with the error message