error sector errors during partitoin analysis

Hi
I'm a relative newbie, have been using Acroinis for a while now (6.0.0.342), and it seems by far to be the best backup solution for me. However, I have a question - when I back up a partition, during pre-backup analysis, it complains about bad sectors ("failed to read from sector <#####> from hard disc two").

I do have some unformatted space in my disk for a linux install I've never gotten around to, could it be related to that, and more to the point, can I ignore the eror messages? (no info in the manual on this)

thanks for any help,

Brian

 

I should add - the error comes from the destination external hard disk (when I back up to a DVDRW I odn't get thaat error. That's what makes me nervous, that maybe I'm backing up to a bad device (although it seems to perform fine). Is Acronis doing some kind of super=sensitive check that the OS is going to work around anyway?

thanks again,
Brian

 

I don't think Acronis is doing any kind of special checking. But there's a good chance that the drive is developing bad sectors. Unfortunately, I know of no way of checking SMART status on an external drive (USB/Firewire)

I would suggest the following:
1) Move the external drive to an internal IDE controller. (Assuming the enclosure allows this)
2) Run smartmontools on the drive, using the following syntax:
smartctl -a /dev/hdn (where n is the letter 'a', 'b', 'c', etc... , depending on which controller and the master/slave setting of the drive)
3) Post the results here if the results aren't clear.

Now, on the other hand, if the sector number where the error occurs is random, then that would indicate a possible issue with the interface, rather than the drive itself.