Compute with confidence..not

I have been testing/using ATI 10 at the workplace. Nothing sophisticated - just an Ibm thinkcentre PC - pentium 2core running winxp. It's a fairly new PC with SATA drives (Hitachi made i believe)

I have been running the most basic routines like backup & restore on the single drive. There is no raid or scsi - just using IDE Channel.

Sometimes the backup (to external WD or external Maxtor via USB) will stop halfway no matter WD or Maxtor. But if i persist a few times more - it might succeed. Similarly ,with restore. Sometimes it freezes at different points 12 minute mark or 17th-minute mark... it just freezes. At other times - when the linux boot loader starts up - it cannot find the external maxtor drive. My take is that - it doesn't matter which make you use - maxtor, WD, seagate etc you will face the same problem with the loader software.

At the moment i have rebooted the PC 8 times in a row (using rescue CD) because it cannot detect the external maxtor...

It is scary restoring a PC this way because if you are in an emergency situation in need of important data or application - it will surely draw sweat beads on your forehead.

 

Have you installed the latest build,4942, of Version 10?
Even though you computer is fairly new you could ckeck it out at:-
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/homeLenovo.do
to ensure it has all the latest driver updates.

I presume you are making backups while booted in Windows and recoveries from the rescue CD.

Not all USB ports and controllers are created equal and some do not play well with TI.
Avoid using an external USB hub that connects to a single port on the PC.
Avoid using one of the front mounted USB ports they often split the available band-width and only have half the capacity of a rear mounted port.
Check your USB 2 cable by substitution.
Connect and make sure that the external drive is on line before booting from the recovery CD.
Disconnect all other USB devices when testing backups and restores.

It is worth a CHKDSK R on all your drives including the external ones.

I have never had this kind of problem which may be due to the separate PCI USB 2 card I installed but I have no proof for that.

Xpilot

 

thanks for the input.

all my drivers are new - downloaded 2 weeks ago. because of the number of complaints abt people doing backup in windows and recovering in Linux (boot) & only to fail -- i now usually backup with the rescue CD & recover with the rescue CD as well. IsTHIS WAY any better? not sure.

There are no other devices attached via USB save maybe the mouse which isn't doing much during recovery or backup.

Actually i have 2 similar Lenovo PCs and i have now experimented on the second one -- it is behaving as erratic as the first one. Both fairly new virgin PCs

I think usb external drive is definitely the way to go - small, compact & convenient to use. Unless there is a more reliable backup device - i am willing to try for reliability sake.

 

My own experience is that backing up from within Winows is just as reliable as from the CD. The two main advantages of the Windows approach is that the tasks can be scheduled to run when I am not even there and they complete more quickly.
I only restore from the CD environment because it is the way one would normally go in the case of a complete drive breakdown and practice makes perfect.

I stopped using USB drives a while ago and instead back up to an internal drive. This was not that there were any problems with the USB approach but internal/internal transfers are much faster and imaging could be unattended. To have an "out of Tower" security element my main drives are in a removable caddies. Simple idea really:- Image runs to schedule, swap main hard drive, run restore, back to work. No validations necessary.
I think a working hard drive that has just been removed from a computer is just about the best form of backup one can have.

You should really raise at ticket with Acronis Support as you are getting the same problem on another similar machine. It may take a day or so but they usually come up with a solution in the end.

Xpilot

 

I completely forgot to mention the Bart PE rescue CD with TI plug in. As you image and restore from a rescue CD the PE approach may solve all your problems.

The BartPE CD provides Windows drivers to run your USB drive thus avoiding any possible shortcomings in the Linux drivers on the standard recovery CD.

The second one I made was a lot easier then the first!
There are some excellent how to guides to be found in this forum.

This really should have been the number one suggestion.

Xpilot

 

thanks for the input.. i have taken up your bartPE suggestion.

will check back in here later after i have use this......

 

i have used a bartPE+acronis rescue CD..........

the results are very impressive for the general UI & the ability to quicky detect network & attached devices. great stuff.

BUT, on the other hand, Acronis is still behaving quite badly from within BartPE. When i asked to restore some *.tib files -- it tells me they are ALL corrupted. i have 10 tib files and each & every is reported to be corrupted. i know there are not because i have just restored one 12 hours ago using the previous rescue CD. (the external drive is the same old one where all the tibs reside)

which leads me to the questions - are all those error messages many users have faced:
" xxxxxxxxxxx.tib is corrupted...................."

Is this error misleading? Maybe the tib files are NOT actually corrupted??

 

i have found a more reliable way to clone... i connect the HD directly to the disk with master image by passing USB drives/drivers. Much faster & always managed to detect the additional HD.

I would recommend newbies ( hey i am a newbie! avoid usb drives - forget it,,, not worth the hassles,,, i have been through 4 different makes - maxtor, WD, Seagate, brand-x, doesn't make any difference. always unreliable!

the only major complaints about the restore method disk-to-disk directly (as described earlier) is -- the drive letter in the new disk is out of sync & you have to go rename them one by one. hassle.