Cannot assign a drive letter to image

[gwilki]

I am running TI8 Corporate Workstation, build 941.

I image the active partition on one of my SATA drives to a PATA drive. Both drives are internal. Motherboard is an Asus A7N8X Deluxe, revision 1.04. I am imaging to a PATA drive because, as discussed on this board, I cannot image from one SATA drive to the other, and get an image that isnt' corrupt.

Now the images on the PATA check out fine, but when I try to explore the image, TI says it will create a temp drive. I choose a drive letter, and the clock spins for a bit. Then, TI comes back and says that it cannot assign a drive letter to the image.

I"ve tried several times, and the result is always the same.

I'll be grateful for any solutions. As it is, I'm not confident the images are good.

Grant

[MiniMax]

Hmm....

Anything in the Windows Event Log?

Same problem if Windows is booted into Safe Mode?

[gwilki]

There is nothing in the log, and yes, it does the same in safe mode.

Grant

[MiniMax]

My vote is on a corrupt image

[Brian K]

Have you tried writing the image to your SATA drive by using the boot CD rather than from Windows? Then checking it while still using the boot CD and checking it from Windows later.

Brian

[gwilki]

Minimax - You may be right about a corrupt image, but it verifies ok.

BrianK - It is impossible to image one SATA drive to the other. The problem is not TI. I've checked out large file transfers from on sata the other, and the checksum is bad. Asus knows it has a problem. It just won't fix it. Abit had the same problem, and fixed it.

Grant

[Brian K]

Grant, I gather you used to use Ghost 9. I prefer it. This forum worries me about TI although it works fine on my computer.

Brian

[gwilki]

Hi BrianK

I did use Ghost9, and switched to TI8. I had all but given up on TI, when I found out that I could image the partitions on my sata drives to a pata drive. So.o.o., I bought a pata drive solely for the images. TI creates the images and verifies that they are not corrupt. I thought I was out of the woods, finally.

But, now I find that I cannot explore the images. So, this leads me to believe that I would not be able to restore from them. Since I know that I can with Ghost, I may be forced to go back.

Ilya on this group is awesome, but tech support at TI is anything but. All I got out of them after several emails is that my drives were bad, my cables were bad, my drivers were bad. Even though I kept pointing them to this group where they could see that others were having the same problems that I am having,they kept blaming my individual PC. I finally gave up with them, and told them to close the file.

I am going to try a different sata controller if I can get an add-in pci card for a reasonable price. If that fails to resolve the problem, it looks like I sell my corporate workstation disk and move on.

Grant

[Eliot]

Its a problem between versions of True Image. I had the same problem before too. I upgraded to the latest version and it stopped.

[gwilki]

Hi Eliot

I'm glad that worked for you, but I have the latest version and build, and the problem is still there.

Grant

ps. In case Acronis Tech support is lurking, I also have the latest bios, the latest drivers for the SI3112a controller, new sata cables, tested memory, and tested drives.

[beenthereb4]

You and I have worked on this a bit. Forgive me if you stated this, but can you image from one sata drive to the other with the boot disk ( and verify)?

[gwilki]

It doesn't matter if I boot from the cd and image. If I image from one SATA drive to the other, the image is always corrupt.

[beenthereb4]

Well, that isolates it to your board and almost certainly your controller. The Si3112 bios is part of the board's bios and therefore gets upgraded when you upgrade the bios. There is a guy who has hacked the bios for the A7N8X boards and inserted the latest bios for the Si3112, but I would not mess with it in your case. I would have to stick with my first guess: bad controller. You have the link that I posted for you for the cheapest Si3112 replacement add-in board. That board is flashable on it's own. The Si3112 is very widely used. Good luck and let us know what you end up doing.

[Eliot]

Open a command promt. Type the command below

chkdsk /R

when it asks, say yes and reboot. Its going to take a while but may fix some hard drive issues causing it. Hope that helps.

Eliot

I have the same problem with 2 different situations :
the first :
My notebook run TI Workstation 8 build 796 and images file created on network drive ( file size 700 Mb ).
the second :
an IBM Xseries 346 Server with 6 Hot Swap SCSI disks ( RAID 5 ), run TI Enterprise Server 8.0 build ? .... and the images files created on IBM DS300 storage system ....
When i tried TI 7.0 there wasn't this problem.... I have purchased the product ... and .... SURPRISE !!!!

I hope that Acronis Support they find the solution ..... fastly !!!

thanks !

[gwilki]

Eliot

Chkdsk /r reveals no hard drive problems. The drives are fine, the file system is fine. The problem, I am quite sure, is that Asus has monkeyed with the SiliconImage controller chip. This opinion is supported by the fact that the drivers supplied by SiliconImage for non-raid setups will not work on this particular Asus board. According to SI, Asus has changed the chip, and according to Asus, the version of the driver that they provide supports by raid and non-raid configurations. SiliconImage has separate drivers for raid and non-raid. I tried to use the non-raid version of the SI driver, and Windows will not load at all. This issue has been discussed at some length on the PCbanter forums.

Asus is the problem, and they don't care to fix it. To repeat, Abit had the same problem, and fixed it with a bios change that allowed the parameter P2P discard time to be be slowed down, and the problem when away.

Grant

[Eliot]

Sounds about right. I have an Asus P4P800 and it has nothing but troubles with some drivers for my hardware. I finally decided to check the beta bios section and it worked. I would not suggest loading a beta bios though.