Active@ image VSS problem

Hi guys.
I have a small problem (maybe) with Active@ disk Image v4.
It runs ok and seems to have created the image file.

I'm creating an image file of C: onto an external 1TB just as a routine precautionary backup but I get a log file entry as below (relevant bit) :


[03-Jul-2011 12:49:28] Information: Initializing VSS...
[03-Jul-2011 12:49:28] Information: Creating Snapshot set...
[03-Jul-2011 12:50:06] Warning: Selected writer 'SqlServerWriter' is in failed state! Status: 8 (VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_SNAPSHOT). Writer Failure code: 0x800423f4 (<Unknown error code>)
[03-Jul-2011 12:50:06] Information: Calculating image size...

Can someone advise on the VSS_WS fail issue (VSS service is running BTW)
and the SqlServiceWriter issue ?
Are they even issues at all or just non fatal warnings ?

 

morph, did you run an image validation? - personally, I would not trust that backup. I have experienced VSS errors in the past and that's the primary reason I believe cold imaging is inherently more reliable than hot imaging (appster said it best here).

Aaron

 

If the error message says "VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_SNAPSHOT", it probably means the snapshot feature was not activated, hence your image might not allow you to restore correctly the imaged partition (because files were modified while the image was taken, leading to inconsitencies in the imaged filesystem)

I recommend you get in contact with Lsoft support and tell them about this error. Debugging VSS can be very technical...

 

Yes I did a verify and it checked out ok.

The reason I'm using a hot image is that the 1TB drive is an encrypted container file which probably wouldn't be supported by any of the usual Linux distro or similar cold boot OS's...

The VSS snapshot issue seems to plague a few backup packages out there so I hoped there might be a common typical cause and solution.

But if anyone knows a good cold image one that supports truecrypt, let me know !

 

Active@ boot disk DOES support truecrypt partitions, in fact all of them do if you backup all sectors (Active@ boot disk is not linux based)

 

The real test would be to restore the image onto a blank partition with the right size (big enough) and perfom a chkdsk on it. And even so, it's not enough to be sure there was no corruption. I think image verifying just checks that the structure of the image file is ok. You may image a corrupt filesystem, the image with check ok with this basic test.