Well I don't have any similar portable devices to test anything with so
I'm afraid I probably can't help much there but did wonder if there's
"Something" hiding the fact that it's broken because of something else
that went wrong earlier... Seemed like your two major problems might be
connected is all.
I wasn't doubting your experiences with Acronis, just seems very out of
character for them.
There were problems just after 64 bit Vista was released and I got some
very thorough tech support that resulted in a new driver that fixed the
problem. I've used a similar tool from 7tools - I won't use Norton
products because the annoyed me years ago and I said enough was enough,
but if you buy another product and it turns out to be hardware or driver
issues then you'd simply be wasting money, which is why I suggested you
persist with their suggestions. One thing, last I looked it was easy to
download the wrong bits from their site because the instructions weren't
all that clear, are you 100% sure you downloaded the right 64 bit
version of everything, because I was and still got it wrong once