Corrupt Image - Possible Solution

Hello Everyone,

I have been following the threads on "image corruption" for many months. I do not believe the problem is "error with the CPU's or memory." There are way too many instances of occurance for this problem to be system failure. However, I have been able to identify three patterns:

1. This problems may be a timing condition related to overall system and I/O subsystem performance. For example, this problem occurs more often when I select "no compression" during the image creation process. If I "slow down" the image creation process by opting to compress the data, the problem frequency is reduced. Of course, this reduces the backup performance as a side effect.

2. I have been using Diskeeper to "background defragment" my hard disk. Unfortunately, this causes the image creation process to fail if Diskeeper happens to run during the image creation process. Disabling the automatic function and running manually seems to help.

3. I have been able to "resolve" the problem, but I do not know why. This is a two step process...assuming an image creation between physical drives. First, I run the "drive check" utility from within Windows XP. Since the source drive is in use, the check will not run until after the system reboots. When the "drive check" is complete, I do a "full" format (not quick) on the destination drive. After I complete these two steps, I can successfully create and verify an image.

Please test item 3 above and reply to this thread if this works for you. Acronis should be able to take it from there.

Thank you.

Steve Mattos

 

Having to reformat the destination drive every time is hardly a "solution".

The "solution" would be for Acronis to FIX THE SOFTWARE and not blow everyone off by claiming "bad RAM".

BTW, Acroneheads, I just replaced my RAM and, guess, what, SAME PROBLEM.

 

I have found that sometimes the image will verify ok after a reboot

 

I've also been following these "corrupt image" threads for months, and have had the problem as well. I am convinced that the problem is more often than not with the image check algorithm, not the actual image written. According to Acronis it is a source independent check of the image. Reseting your computer and then being able to getting a good check on the same image reinforces my opinion.

 

I also experience image corruption over a network. I have 5 computers on the network that I do daily scheduled backups. I tried to restore an image over the network and I get a corrupt image. Now this same image will check ok on the system that created it. Then I can take another partitiion off of the same system, and it will verify fine. There are a total of 13 partitions on the 5 systems. 7 will verify, 6 give corrupt image error. This is over the network. All the images check ok on the systems that created them.

I really need to have the ability to clone a system over the network when I do upgrades. Some of the partitiions are too large to fit on DVD.

Obviously the image is ok since it works fine on the original system.

What's up here?

using latest version TI corporate workstation.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Hello all,

We are very sorry for the inconviniences connected with this problem. Our Development Team works on it. We need the information about your systems to find the solution more promptly. Please contact support@acronis.com with the description of the problem.

Thank you.

--
Ilya Toytman

 

To Acronis support,

This problem will be difficult to deal with since there are no logs created when a corrupt image is experienced over a network connection.
I tried the same check image on other systems connected to the network and it worked fine, so I am concluding that it is an issue with the boot version of TI from the CDROM.
My next attempt is to copy the image to a drive then add that drive to the new system. I bet that will work. Perhaps the problem is with the network interface on the boot version. Perhaps we need to have a list of known NIC's that work with TI (supported drivers). I know that the Gigabit cards don't work.

 

Here are me findings.

When I switched to an NIC with a DEC 21140 chipset, it worked.
The Realtek 8139 or 8169 did NOT work.
This concludes that the NIC is a crutial componet in using TI.
TI should post a list of supported NIC's or allow a driver to be added to the interface.

This would eliminate a large number of customer concerns.

Thanks
Dan

 

I spoke too soon. The DEC 21140 did NOT work. It got to the end and failed with a corrupted image error. The other cards failed right away.

I guess this product does not work via the network using the boot image CDROM. You must have a local image to use.

Dan

 

I am a new user on a stand alone system. I have invested more time into Creating an Image than I care to admit. I know there is nothing wrong with my hardware. I was able to finally get an image. I discovered that something was set in my WIN task manager to go off ever few min. I cleared that Item, rebooted and success. I concluded that if ANYTHING is happening in the background TI will not write an image. Is my assumption correct or was my success a matter of chance?

Nello

 

Nello,

I have shut down background processes, which seems to improve the "corrupt image" problem. The problem remains intermittent, but seems to be sensitive to timing...thus the apparent background task, format, and network dependencies. Slowing the process down by using higher levels of compression also seems to help.

Regards.