Who DOES NOT have a problem with corrupt images...

[jmk94903]

The instructions with both my external USB 2.0 drive cases said to set the drive to Master. They are working fine that way without corruption.

John

[brandis]

I want to add the results of the data-transfer speed of my USB2.0
PC Ahtlon64/3200 512MB ASROCK K8 comboboard with usb20 120GB-UDMA5 disk, External disk MAXTOR XT5000 250GB with USB2.0 and 1394
Testfile size about 3.6GB

Copy from PC to MAXTOR via USB20 200Mbit/sek
Copy from MAXTOR via USB20 to PC 164Mbit/sek

So I am under 40% of the theoretical limit of USB20 --> 480Mbit/sek

An other interesting comparison, copy the same file on PC on the same IDE-disk from one partition to the other --> ONLY 62Mbit/sek

So copying from on same disk (different patitions) is 3 time SLOWER then via USB20

Some new test that I did

1.
I created a TI 80/791 image with my pc on the IDE disk splittet im 100MB. Totaly i did get 25 files (appr. 2.5 GB)
Then I did copy this files to the MAXTOR XT5000 250GB via USB 2.0
The MD5 of all files is O.k.

2.
I created a TI 80/791 image with my pc on the IDE disk splittet im 600MB. Totaly i did get 4 files (appr. 2.5 GB)
Then I did copy this files to the MAXTOR XT5000 250GB via USB 2.0
The MD5 of all files ARE WRONG

What does this mean?
I did copy 2 times the same total amount of bytes
1. time splittet in 100MB and checksum is allways o.k.
2. time splittet in 600MB and checksum is allways wrong
On my system USB2.0 produce errors writing or at least reading files that are "too" big. Since copying the files in both cases were made at "same speed" (via USB2.0) the USB speed cant be error source!!
The only difference is the file size, IS THIS THE KEY?

And if yes WHY

Is it related to the free memory of my PC? I have 512MB total ~400MB free??

I will do some test with 1394 soon

3. TEST of LAN 100Mbit/ data transfer
I did copy a 1.2GB file from my Athlon64/3200 to my Acer labtop via LAN, the switch was an Vigor 2500We router (DSL modem as DHCP)
The total speed I did get was 74Mbit/sek, MD5 was o.k.!

[brandis]

I did one test to see if the error acoure while writing the data from PC-IDE to the Maxtor 250GB ext drive via USB20.

1. I did copy a 1.2 GB file from PC-IDE to MAxtor via USB2.0
2. I did check the MD5 of the file on the PC-IDE
3. I did disconnect the Maxtor from PC
4. I connected the Maxtor with Acer Labtop via 1394 (100Mbit no problems with this pc no corupted files)
5. I did check the MD5 of the file on the MAXTOR 3 times

The MD5 result of all 3 calculations via 1394 was the same so the ACER Labtop was reading every time exact the same data!

But the MD5 on the original file was different!!

Conclusion:
The error accures right from the START WRITING THE DATA via USB20 to the external disk! Of cause the error in the copied file is stable, it does not change! So the different MD5 results on the same file must accure because with every reading I have differnt errors in the USB20 transfer.

[hgratt]

Could the problem be with the Maxtor and large files? Is there anyway you could try another brand of External USB HDD?

[Tsu]

[quote=brandis]
Since copying the files in both cases were made at "same speed" (via USB2.0) the USB speed cant be error source!!
The only difference is the file size, IS THIS THE KEY?

And if yes WHY

YES....YES....YES

I'm sorry I wasn't more forceful in my first post. Now I will be accused of preaching, but here goes anyway. LARGE FILE SIZE is the common denominator for all these problem. Ignore Acronis. Ignore USB - maybe. Your systems are croaking on writing large files. 99% chance it is not a read error. But you can check that with #3 below. What is the threshold for successful writes and based on that - get your systems imaged and verified and users safe before trying to fix the problem.

Now, where to start with a fix. Remember there is not going to be one answer that fixes everyone who has the same symptom. In no particular priority....

1 - reset your BIOS to boot up defaults - no tweaking for speed. Set them to the slowest/lowest setting sometimes call BIOS DEFAULTS or SETUP DEFAULTS. Of coursce you will have already recorded all your existing settings so you can get it back to where you are. Try the large file copy. If it works you can now start adding the performance tweaks/caching/yada yada yada one by one in the BIOS until it fails again.

2 - If you have a performance monitor for your motherboard that shows temperatures and voltages - i.e. hardware health utility that came with your M/B - see what it is doing especially while doing the copy. Are the temperatures reasonable for your system? Are the voltages constant or is there one that fluctuates more than +/- 0.05Volts - i.e 0.1 volts highest to lowest or whatever is reasonable for your system. Check it at idle and under stress. You paid big bucks for regulated power and if it isn't regulating, consider replacing.

3 - Try the USB on a significantly different platform - different motherboard and different clock speed. Does the problem move with the USB drive? Move the USB drive to a different USB port on the same PC. Maybe even to a USB 1.0 - so the test will be slow but you need all the info you can get to isolate the culprit.

4 - download this MS memory checker, make and boot to the floppy and test memory - http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp. You may just be using some memory addresses when doing the copy that are normally not acccessed during day-to-day use when DLL and other stuff get flushed out when not used. Although I quite like the registry hacks that keep system files in memory and not have them swap out to disk when not in use. Folks with fast drives will find that archaic. But are you also getting unexpected system reboots in the process of doing quite ordinary things? You may just have one bad memory chip. Remove it from you system and use what is left to try the LF copy.

Anecdotally, my last experience with this now infamous LF write problem was an unstable power supply. However, I will not assume for one nanosecond that it might be your problem. It is a damned difficult issue to isolate.

The good news is that y'all forced me into doing an image verify on five workstations this afternoon that imaging is to a cheapy-cheapy USB box with a 80gb Maxtor ( purchased separately) running NTFS off of a $30 add-on USB 2.0 card in a W2K Dell server and I have no idea of what the jumper settings are because the server is 200 miles from me and remotely administered by me. But I suspect it was factory default and not CS. Thankfully I am okay with my largest file 6 gb but most images use the CD sized 650mb. Why 650? Beacuse. I had some silly notion that I might want to burn 50 or 60 cd's - duh! So I bought a second identical USB box and Maxtor and the user swaps them weekly to off-site storage and I never reset Acronis to a single large file.

Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and good sleuthing to y'all.

Originally Posted by FanJ

Hi,

I have NOT any problem backing up and/or restoring to/from my external USB-2 drive.

I run Windows 98 SE.
Latest TI version/build.
System: P3, 600 MHZ, Mobo Asus P2B, 512 MB RAM.
Sitecom USB-2/Firewire card in my system.
Maxtor OneTouch 80 GB external USB-2 drive, connected to that Sitecom card.

I always use the TI bootable floppies (write protected) to make backups and/or restore a backup.

I only use TI to make full backup images.

I hope this helps.

Just only some additions to my own posting:

During the backup image creating process, I let TI split the backup image up into parts of 650 MB.

Using Karen's Directory Printer here are the files that TI made some hours ago:
===
FOLDER k:\Ti050206\
FILE Ti0502061.tib 681 574 400
FILE Ti05020610.tib 132 938 183
FILE Ti0502062.tib 681 574 400
FILE Ti0502063.tib 681 574 400
FILE Ti0502064.tib 681 574 400
FILE Ti0502065.tib 681 574 400
FILE Ti0502066.tib 681 574 400
FILE Ti0502067.tib 681 574 400
FILE Ti0502068.tib 681 574 400
FILE Ti0502069.tib 681 574 400
===

Some other remarks:

Before the time we had the Acronis-forum here at Wilders, I tested TI (of course an older version) (Paul might remember it ).
I am far from a professional tester...
But I tested in several ways; with two file integrity checkers; and compared registry before and after using Beyond Compare.
I never posted it in public, because I thought the test could have been even better performed.
Nevertheless I myself felt very comfortable with the results.
Please, let me clearly state that this was only my own test, and that nobody should take my word (as with any test without given all the test-parameters).

I also would like to applaud all of you who are trying to get to the bottom of this USB-issue !!!

[Ed Y]

Originally Posted by CooL3

Lucky me, not seen it yet.

Just for you to know, if you're using an external USB2 HDD (like me) the drive should be set to CS (Cable Select).
This because USB chips are not very smart.

Hope this helps.

As far as I know the TEAC USB 2.0 external drive that I have has no settings of any kind. I did remove it from the case once to check the ribbon cable but saw nothing that would allow any settings to be changed.
??

[jmk94903]

Stefanos,

I checked the TI 8, Build 791 image files on my 40GB WD drive in an external USB 2 case. The files were 4.0GB, 3.3GB, 2.6GB, 2.3GB, 2.0GB, 1.6GB and six less than 1.0GB. The files were created while the drive was connected to two Dell notebooks, one with USB 2 and one with only USB 1.1, and to my old AMD K62 500MHz desktop which has a USB 2.0 card. All three systems run Windows XP Pro SP2, the hard drive was the only USB device connected to the computer when making the images and a 3 foot or shorter USB 2.0 cable was used.

I checked the MD5 three times on each file, and all 3 values were the same. I've never had a corrupt backup on this drive, so that's consistent with the MD5s not changing.

I think you've clearly shown that most of the corrupt backup problems on USB drives are due to hardware errors when reading and/or writing large files and not due to Acronis software.

Now, the question is which drives, USB external enclosures, USB chipsets and cables are good and which should be avoided.

John

[jmk94903]

The two USB 2.0 IDE drive enclosures that I've bought both say to set the drive to Master. I've done that, and I don't get any corrupt files.

John

[hoser_d]

Originally Posted by hgratt

Could the problem be with the Maxtor and large files? Is there anyway you could try another brand of External USB HDD?

My drive is a Western Digital and I have had corruption problems. This seems to simple, but for all of you that have had corruption problems, what is the file system on the EXT HDD? (NTFS, FAT32, ect.) My drive was FAT32 in which every image was corrupt. Since I had no good images I decided to format my drive (I wanted NTFS anyways) and I created another image. The image was created successfully (like usual) and checked out as OK (like usual). Now this was only yesterday that I did all this, so there hasn't been much time. But I have rebooted numerous times and checked the image three times now and it still checks out OK. Now I knock on wood because, with my luck I will check it again tomarrow and it may be corrupted, but for now everything seems OK. I'll continuously check it and let you know the status.

[jmk94903]

Good point about the file system. My 40GB WD drive in the USB 2.0 case is formatted FAT32 and has no errors. So, FAT32 can be OK.

John

[Ed Y]

Mine is formatted NTFS.

[Smokey]

Originally Posted by jmk94903

I think you've clearly shown that most of the corrupt backup problems on USB drives are due to hardware errors when reading and/or writing large files and not due to Acronis software.

Is correct, most of the imaging programs on the market have the same problems with USB drives.

[bocsor]

Hello All, and especially brandis (good work),

Does anyone find it incredible that you all have "defective USB drives" or other defective hardware, and that you have not had any indication of problems with these devices untill you started having "corrupt image" problems with Acronis? By all accounts none of your USB drives should ever have worked properly using any other applications.

Are you all using the MD5 check utility downloaded from Acronis?

Experimenting, I've had very consistent results with TI 8, 774 on some machines, and nothing but corrupt files on others. In all cases I've used the same USB 160 GB external drive as the target for image file storage. The drive works just fine for everything else that I use it for on ALL of these machines, large files or small.

I'm definitely perplexed by this problem.

Regards,
George
Syracuse, NY USA

[brandis]

Originally Posted by bocsor

Hello All, and especially brandis (good work),

Does anyone find it incredible that you all have "defective USB drives" or other defective hardware, and that you have not had any indication of problems with these devices untill you started having "corrupt image" problems with Acronis? By all accounts none of your USB drives should ever have worked properly using any other applications.

Are you all using the MD5 check utility downloaded from Acronis?

Experimenting, I've had very consistent results with TI 8, 774 on some machines, and nothing but corrupt files on others. In all cases I've used the same USB 160 GB external drive as the target for image file storage. The drive works just fine for everything else that I use it for on ALL of these machines, large files or small.

I'm definitely perplexed by this problem.

Regards,
George
Syracuse, NY USA

Hello George you are perplexed?

For the moment I am searching for some TNT to blow all the %$/E$%(%/($/$-HARDWARE to the moon and go back to the the stoneage.

About your first question: How many software you know, use single files that are so big like IMAGE files? Take a look at your standard files on your disk, you will hardly find files bigger then a few MB.
If you think about large VIDEO files AVI or MPEG) f.e. what would happen if 10 bits of a 2GB AVI/MPEG are readed wrong? Will you recognize the 20 wrong pixels in the 30minute video??

But if the 10 error bits are in a DLL that your OS needs to boot.......
If you are lucky its only a word-doc file that is corrupted that you did write 1 year ago and now you have STEFAM in it intead of STEFAN or you cant open it, who cares? You will blame word, microsoft, your PC and write it again without making a deeper research!

[brandis]

Originally Posted by hgratt

Could the problem be with the Maxtor and large files? Is there anyway you could try another brand of External USB HDD?

HI,

I dont have problems when I use my ACER Labtop and cory file via its IEEE1394 firewire port!

Now I could think, is IEEEE1394 not a APPLE/MAC development? And is USB not microsofts favorite?

Only a small joke, the problem apears also with other ports, but USB seems to be the worst, or more affected!

Now I did try to copy a 4GB file from a Duron800-PC W2000SP4 from IDE to the Maxtror XT5000 via USB2.0 after 5 min it was nearly complete. It shows onyl 10sek. left, the suddenly it shows 2,300,000 MINUTES left, I did leave it for 45 minutes but it didnt stop! so I must abord the copy proccess, NO ERROR is shown from W200o this time.

The HORROR is getting BIGGER AND BIGGER.....

[bocsor]

brandis,

I appreciate your frustration with this problem. Good point about the critical nature of the drive image file integrity. I did find a KB article and driver update on Microsoft's home page about USB 2 timing problems on some hardware combinations (VIA controlers). I don't think it has anything directly to do with the apparent USB problems here, but might suggest another line of investigation.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

Regards,
George

[CooL3]

Originally Posted by jmk94903

The two USB 2.0 IDE drive enclosures that I've bought both say to set the drive to Master. I've done that, and I don't get any corrupt files.

John

Well, obviously there are differences in EXT USB2 drives.
I have a Sitecom MD-200 enclosure and Western Digital Caviar model WD1600JB-22FUA0 160GB HDD.
Sitecom recommends to put the HDD in Cable Select mode.

CooL3.

[wdormann]

FWIW, I've never had a corrupt image using a USB 2.0 drive connected to my "Gigabyte USB Enhanced Host Controller" (GA-7DXR+)

Backups, restores, verifies all work fine.

[hgratt]

Originally Posted by wdormann

FWIW, I've never had a corrupt image using a USB 2.0 drive connected to my "Gigabyte USB Enhanced Host Controller" (GA-7DXR+)

Backups, restores, verifies all work fine.

Good lead. Could another parameter be the USB driver and controllers that are being used in individual systems.

I have, to date, not seen a corrupted image on my external USB HDD (FAT32, 4GB file sizes). The controllers that shows up under the device manager (win xp pro, sp2) are:

Intel(r) 82801DB/DBM USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller - 24CD
Driver version 5.1.2600.0, Driver date 6/1/2002

Intel(r) 82801DB/DBM USB 2.0 Universal Host Controller - 24C2
Driver version 5.1.2600.1106, Driver date 7/1/2001

ntel(r) 82801DB/DBM USB 2.0 Universal Host Controller - 24C4
Driver version 5.1.2600.1106, Driver date 7/1/2001

ntel(r) 82801DB/DBM USB 2.0 Universal Host Controller - 24C7
Driver version 5.1.2600.1106, Driver date 7/1/2001


Harvey

I check several images dating back to September, 2004. All were made with TI8, various builds. All verifed OK on the latest build (791). More importantly, I did a restore around Christmas, and that worked perfectly.

I send images to a Maxtor 120 Gig USB 2.0 external hard drive, formatted as NTFS. Sometimes I backup the whole C:\ drive as one large image, about 4 Gig compressed. Other times I limit the file size to 650 Meg, so that I can later copy the pieces to CD. All verifed OK.

Note that I never try to save directly to CD, but always to disk first.

My PC is home-built on an ASUS P4S8X motherboard. OS is XP with SP-2. Pentium 4, 2.5 GHz, 1Gig RAM, dual internal Seagate SATA hard drives, 120 Gig each.

When I use True Image, I turn off all other applications, except for antivirus and firewall. And, I do not read email, play games, or even move the mouse. This may be extreme, since XP is supposed to handle multiple tasks, but why take chances.

Every week I run CHKDSK on the internal and external disks. Occassionaly some small error about free space is detected and I then run CHKDSK in boot mode to repair the file system. I try to do the CHKDSK just before the backup, but I admit that sometimes I forget.

I have had none of the problems others have reported about copying large files to external hard drives, using Windows's copy functions. I frequently copy files as large as a CD (650 Meg) and on rare occassions files over one Gig.

Finally, TI7 also worked well on this computer and with the same external hard drive. I do not have any of those images around to test, but I did use a few of them to restore the system, and the restore worked, so they must have been good.

[Tsu]

Deja vu all over again.

This same discussion is taking place of hundreds of other bullboards for software and hardware support. Everyone everywhere is equally frustrated and it is almost never that it has to do with the software except I found this one reference to XPSP2 on ATI

http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4217.html

Anyone use TweakUI and set "Large System Cache" to ON thinking it is a performance boost

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache

Don't! Change it it back to "0"

I assume you have verified that all your hardware is up to date and working - flashed your BIOS with the latest fixes, flashed your Promise cards ( or what ever you have ) similarly, updated drivers, visited web sites of your motherboard, drive controller etc to see that they have not updated and addresses this problem with a driver or a flash. Installed all the latest and greatest patches for your OS and as a previous post suggested kill all unnecessary processes. Take your PC of net and kill the virus scanner and software firewalls too. Often an upgrade to a driver or flash is not well documented because the supplier is to embarassed to admit they hadn't tested something like copying a large file. Visit Maxtor to see if your drives have a problem as this is manufacturer is a common reference in this thread. Do the same for your USB chipset if you know it. You've already swapped USB cables, checked your memory and power supply right? If you are running an upgrade to XP all bets are off because of the crappola you probably have brought forward from your old OS.

How are you copying - using the OS , drag and drop, cut and paste, or Explorer or a utility like XCOPY XXCOPY etc

When someone finally posts that they fixed theirs, you will probably find that it is not the solution for your environment. It probably will be unique to you.

Don't wait for someone to post the "silver bullet" solution.

Posted without spell or grammar checking

[hgratt]

Originally Posted by Smokey

Is correct, most of the imaging programs on the market have the same problems with USB drives.

Could you provide some data and/or links to discussions of this problem with respect to other imaging software? Could you also indicate what other imaging programs are having this problem?

Thanks

[hoser_d]

Originally Posted by hoser_d

My drive is a Western Digital and I have had corruption problems. This seems to simple, but for all of you that have had corruption problems, what is the file system on the EXT HDD? (NTFS, FAT32, ect.) My drive was FAT32 in which every image was corrupt. Since I had no good images I decided to format my drive (I wanted NTFS anyways) and I created another image. The image was created successfully (like usual) and checked out as OK (like usual). Now this was only yesterday that I did all this, so there hasn't been much time. But I have rebooted numerous times and checked the image three times now and it still checks out OK. Now I knock on wood because, with my luck I will check it again tomarrow and it may be corrupted, but for now everything seems OK. I'll continuously check it and let you know the status.

Well others have said that they are using NTFS file systems on there external HDD's and have had corruption problems. Today (Tuesday) I checked my image again, now probably 4 or 5 days later and the image is still OK. BTW, I did not even break the image size down at all. It is approximately 38 GB's in size.

[brandis]

Hello, are you prepaired for some bad english??

here I am with a new test!

Now I did check if the large file corruption appears if I use 1394 Firewire!
My test pc at home:
Athlon64@3200, Asrock Z8 comboboard ALI-chipset, 512MB, ATI9800pro, 120GB P-ATA UDMA5, W2000SP4, USB20 onboard, ultacheap FIREWIRE card from Conceptronic 4 ports in a pci slot.
The external drive is a MAXTOR XT5000 250GB NTFS with USB2.0 and 1394 FIREWIRE.

HARDWARE is the same like the test I perfomed with USB20.

1. I check the MD5 of the file on my ATA disk (file size 3.6GB)
EE7CBE9788B18483239594B539069CBD
2. I copied this file from 120GB ATA via 1394 on the Maxtor
3. I check the MD5 of the file on the MAXTOR
EE7CBE9788B18483239594B539069CBD it is O.K.
4. I copy the file form the MAXTOR via 1394 to the ATA disk (other partition)
5. I check the MD5 of the file on my ATA disk
EE7CBE9788B18483239594B539069CBD it is O.K.
6. I copy this file from 2.ATA partition via 1394 to MAXTOR in an othe folder like in step 2.
7. I check the MD5 of the file on the MAXTOR
EE7CBE9788B18483239594B539069CBD it is O.K.

So I did not get any corrupted file using 1394IEEE-Firewire with the same hardware. On my system 1394IEEE seems to be the one an only choise.

(On my Acer TM632 Labtop I use allways the 1394, because it hase only USB1.1, and I did NEVER hade any corruption problems)

The transfer speed that I did get:
ATA to external drive via 1394: 150Mbit/sek
external drive to ATA via 1394: 245Mbit/sek

Only for comparison again the USB20 transfer speed:
ATA to external drive via USB20: 200Mbit/sek
external drive to ATA via USB20: 164Mbit/sek

Interesting, 1394-Firewire is slow writing to the external disk and significant faster reading from it. With my USB20 onboard I have the opposite.