hqic
October 5th, 2005, 12:31 PM
I've spent some time trying to figure out what's going on with this very common problem. I wish Acronis would spend some time on it too. In any case, I've been able to come to some understanding, at least on my system. Maybe this will help you. Maybe it will help Acronis.
Like many, many others, I see corrupted image errors and this has nearly caused me to switch to Norton Ghost. But I'm also dissatisfied with that product for many other reasons. If I could ever get past the corrupt image problem, True Image would be my choice.
I created a multi part (four) image capture. I put the four images onto four DVD's. When I boot Acronis Recovery Manager and then put the first DVD in the drive and point it at that image (xxx1) then it tells me that the image is not a Acronis image or it is corrupt. So many of us see this so often.
I take that same DVD, and running True Image, I verify the image. It reads this first DVD for a while, asks for the next DVD, etc, and at the end, it tells me that the image is fine.
OK, so this starts to get frustrating. So, I put the four images on a USB drive and again try to restore. This time it works.
Now, here is the important point... I move the first image of the set to a different directory on the USB drive and point Acronis Recovery Manager to that file... corrupt. I move it back to the same directory as the other images in the set, and it is ok.
So, what is obviously happening is that when you have an image that is the first of a set, ARM recognizes that it is part of a set and tries to find the other images of the set, but can't and reports this as corruption. Unfortunatelty, my DVD drive can only hold one DVD at a time, so putting these images on DVD is not apparently a viable solution. For me, this is OK, because I have a network and can copy the images back from DVD to another machine and then restore from the network and this works. But that is, of course, non-intuitive and non-helpful for folks with a single machine.
Related to this, when I point the ARM at the first image of a set and the entire set all exists in the same directory, the recovery goes all the way through without ever asking for the second, third or fourth image. This is ok, but also probably means that this is the only way the recovery can work. I don't mind that it automatically goes on to process the rest of the set, but it has to be flexible enough to ask for the other images if it can't find them.
All this is the behavior of TI8.0 build 937 AND TI9.0 build 2277.
BTW, I also tried putting the last DVD of the set in the drive and pointing ARM to that. It still didn't work in TI8.0, but in TI9.0, it took the image as non-corrupt, but then it started asking me to swap disks. I got optimistic for a moment, but then the disk swapping continued...
Put Disk 1 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 4 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive... put disk 4 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive...put disk 4 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive... put disk 4 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive... and I finally gave up.
Acronis, When you see the first image of a set, process it and then ask for the next one. This is exactly what you do when verifying a multi-part image... do that same thing when you read images in the Acronis Recovery Manager.
I hope this information helps some of you.
Mike.
Like many, many others, I see corrupted image errors and this has nearly caused me to switch to Norton Ghost. But I'm also dissatisfied with that product for many other reasons. If I could ever get past the corrupt image problem, True Image would be my choice.
I created a multi part (four) image capture. I put the four images onto four DVD's. When I boot Acronis Recovery Manager and then put the first DVD in the drive and point it at that image (xxx1) then it tells me that the image is not a Acronis image or it is corrupt. So many of us see this so often.
I take that same DVD, and running True Image, I verify the image. It reads this first DVD for a while, asks for the next DVD, etc, and at the end, it tells me that the image is fine.
OK, so this starts to get frustrating. So, I put the four images on a USB drive and again try to restore. This time it works.
Now, here is the important point... I move the first image of the set to a different directory on the USB drive and point Acronis Recovery Manager to that file... corrupt. I move it back to the same directory as the other images in the set, and it is ok.
So, what is obviously happening is that when you have an image that is the first of a set, ARM recognizes that it is part of a set and tries to find the other images of the set, but can't and reports this as corruption. Unfortunatelty, my DVD drive can only hold one DVD at a time, so putting these images on DVD is not apparently a viable solution. For me, this is OK, because I have a network and can copy the images back from DVD to another machine and then restore from the network and this works. But that is, of course, non-intuitive and non-helpful for folks with a single machine.
Related to this, when I point the ARM at the first image of a set and the entire set all exists in the same directory, the recovery goes all the way through without ever asking for the second, third or fourth image. This is ok, but also probably means that this is the only way the recovery can work. I don't mind that it automatically goes on to process the rest of the set, but it has to be flexible enough to ask for the other images if it can't find them.
All this is the behavior of TI8.0 build 937 AND TI9.0 build 2277.
BTW, I also tried putting the last DVD of the set in the drive and pointing ARM to that. It still didn't work in TI8.0, but in TI9.0, it took the image as non-corrupt, but then it started asking me to swap disks. I got optimistic for a moment, but then the disk swapping continued...
Put Disk 1 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 4 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive... put disk 4 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive...put disk 4 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive... put disk 4 in the drive... put disk 2 in the drive... put disk 3 in the drive... put disk 1 in the drive... and I finally gave up.
Acronis, When you see the first image of a set, process it and then ask for the next one. This is exactly what you do when verifying a multi-part image... do that same thing when you read images in the Acronis Recovery Manager.
I hope this information helps some of you.
Mike.