Acronis Can not read sectors...

I'm using a trial version of Acronis 11 and testing it with backups to an external usb drive (Seagate Agent Pro).

The issue is when the backup starts Acronis gives an error stating that a sector on the drive can not be read. When I clik Ignore, there is a similiar error relating to a different sector. There are about 20 sectors that can not be read.



Do I need a new drive? (It is new and under warranty).
Do the mentioned errors mean the backup will be bad?
Will Acronis write to those sectors even though it can not read from them?

Any other advise is most welcome.

 

In my view a drive that shows up with 20 or so unreadable sectors is highly suspect.
I suggest you run CHKDSK R on that disk and try running the backup a second time and hopefully it will complete with no errors.
Whatever that result have a close look at the results of the CHKDSK run and if any sectors have been repaired that is probably acceptable but if any have been marked as bad it may be best to send for a replacement.
The first backup will be bad in the sense that some of the sectors will be missing and you do not know what they may have contained. If CHKDSK has done its stuff the second backup has a good chance of being complete.
Create an Acronis recovery CD and make sure that it can see and validate the second backup. Then it depends if you are getting a replacement drive or not as to whether it is worth running a restore to the suspect drive or not.

Xpilot

 

Thanks for the reply. I ran a scan and repair to no avail. Acronis still gives errors regarding sectors it can not read from. So I am leaning toward taking the drive back. This seems to be more about the drive than Acronis software at this point.

Thanks again.

 

My first inclination is to tell you to not jump to conclusions about the hard drive being bad. What I would do is a little troubleshooting first. The first thing I would do is hook the drive up directly to the motherboard of a computer. (This may not be a possiblility if you are talking about a laptop) If it is a laptop you are talking about and you have access to another desktop computer, try hooking up the drive directly to the motherboard of the other computer and then check this drive. The drive may not be formatted correctly or there could be a number of other reasons that that the drive is not performing. If it is a new drive like you have said and still under warenty, chances are great that the drive is not bad but just needs to be reformatted. I do not reccommend checking, formatting, or doing anything else to a hard drive that is critical while the drive is hooked up to a USB port.

 

Have you viewed the results of the CHKDSK R?
These can be found in the event viewer log under the applications tab. Just scroll back to the last logon entry where you should see exactly what is what.
But it is looking more and more that the drive should be RTM'd.

Xpilot

 

Please clarify whether the error message is about the internal drive you are backing up or the external USB drive where you are storing the backups. Xpilot assumed that it was the internal drive, but Uptone appears to think it is the external drive.

Have you run CHKDSK /R on the USB drive also?

 

I agree and the key to this whole thing is USB. If you are using acronis to put a backup on a USB drive and Acronis says it can't read sectors of another drive that you are backing up because it is trying to back them up to a USB drive, then the USB drive may be the problem. Try backing up the drive to another internal drive. Use chkdsk on the suspected bad drive as Xpilot suggests.

Acronis will not, in my understanding, write to bad sectors of a drive because it checks the sector before it writes to it. If it can not read a sector it won't write to it. As a matter of fact windows usually will not write to bad sectors of a disk. How data gets put into bad sectors is that the data is put there before the sector goes bad. When you have a hard disk that starts developing bad sectors, the hard disk useually needs to be replaced.

 

Thank you fellows for the additional input.

To clarify:
The disk that Acronis state it can not read from several sectors is the external usb drive that the back up is going to. The internal drive is fine.

The results of the check disk and repair is that there are no bad sectors on the external drive. And no errors in files, system, or indexes. Additionally, the seagte "Seatools" finds nothing wrong with the disk.

Yet Acronis still reports it can't read from several sectors which reduces my confidence in any future restore effort.

So I shall address the usb and formatting issue that has been raised. It shouldn't be too much trouble to take the drive out of the case and connect it to the motherboard for formatting and diagnostics.

Thanks again.

 

My understanding is that if Acronis reports that it cannot read sectors when it is writing to a backup drive the problem must be with the internal source drive NOT the target drive.
Has CHKDSK R been run on the source drive and if so what are the results.

Xpilot

 

Thanks for clarifying what you were experimenting with. If I may just add a comment that you may or may not agree with and probably many will not agree with. Acronis is a great tool and the developers should be very proud of their product but not even acronis has control over other developers. USB is also a great way of transporting stuff back and forth but USB in my estimation has many limiting factors that have not been worked out yet. Acronis programmers have to work with what they have right now. I do not reccommend making backups of your critical system and data on USB drives. There are too many things that can go wrong. If you are depending on an Acronis backup that was made on a USB drive I would seriously reconsider and make your backup on another internal backup drive.

 

Just to follow up on this issue:

I initiated another backup with Acronis and it is no longer reporting bad sectors or errors. Don't know why but, as they say, no news is good news...I hope! Its possible bad sectors were repaired -- seagate says there are spare sectors on the drive to replace bad ones.

After I test a few mor features I think I'm gong to spring for this backup software as it seems easy to use and has many featues.

Thanks again.

 

I didn' see your other posts before my last one.

I checked the internal drive also and it was ok. Acronis specificaly identified the external one as having the bad sectors. It said "Disk 2" had the bad sectors and "Disk 1" was the disk I was backing up.


And about the USB drive being a less secure choice compared to a second internal drive -- I have no experience or knowledge to evaluate that. For added security I could do both external and internal drives dedicated to backups. With the external on I like the idea of easily disconecting it so it can't get mucked by what ever malady might strike the system drive.

The long and short of it is I need reliable backup software as previous doomed restore attempts likely failed due to inadequate restore capabilities. Live and learn.