Can't backup Ubuntu Linux 8.04 partition

This is my first shot at using Acronis to backup a Linux partition. I've been using for Windows XP for years. I'm using Acronis 9. My Linux machine is an Ubuntu 8.04 machine with Linux as the only OS. It has a single physical internal hard drive partitioned to use the whole drive. As Linux usually does, it also has a special swap partition. It's an ext3 partition on this drive. There’s also a 120 gig external hard drive with an ext3 partition.
I booted to my bootable Acronis CD and started running the backup program, using simple settings (normal compression, and splitting the files into 4.7 gig increments). It started, but then told me it could not read the drive.

Is it because of ext3? Can Acronis 9 read ext3? Will later versions read an ext3 drive? Should I be using a bootable CD or would I be better off with some kind of Linux-based Acronis utility that installs under Linux?

I’ve been reluctant to upgrade because I have many, many backups of my Windows XP machine done in Acronis 9.

 

Tom:

It should work. I used TI 9 for quite a while to back up ext3 and Reiser Linux partitions before getting TI 10, which I now use. Are you using the latest build of TI 9 (build 3854)?

Acronis removed the ability to write to Linux filesystems (but it can still back them up to disks formatted with NTFS or FAT filesystems) in version 11, but versions 9 and 10 should still write to ext3 disks.

Do you know which disk is being referred to in the error message; is it your source disk or is it your external drive where you are storing the image file? If it's the source disk then try running the Linux filesystem check (fsck) on the disk to make sure that there are no file system errors. Do this from a Live Linux CD; not from Ubuntu while it's running. If it's the destination disk then try saving the image to a FAT32 or NTFS partition as a test, or across the network to another PC or file server.

 

I'm using build 3666, and I also tried with a CD from an earlier build. That's probably the first thing I should do -- update to the latest build if it's still available. Then I'll try the disk check that you suggest.

I don't know which drive it was referring to as the one it couldn't write to. However, I could try writing to the internal drive. If it writes okay, then I know Acronis had its problems with the external drive.

I wonder why they removed the ability to write to ext3 drives. That would be a very good reason not to upgrade to 11.

Thanx for the tips.