Evaluating TI over Ghost and nothing but errors

I've been using Norton Ghost for years and have decided to try True Image 10, since Symantec has been woefully slow on releasing Vista 64bit support. I've installed TI and tried to do a 35GB backup (Drive Image) to a network location with "Normal" compression.

Here's the problem: It takes almost 2 hours to get approx. 28% along and then throws a corruption error.

I am running:
- Vista Ultimate 64bit
- Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
- 4GB of RAM
- Gigabit NIC
- Striped 10,000 RPM Raptor Drives

I just downloaded the "Free Trial" version of TI yesterday and have tried to backup this one drive 3 times.

Any clues as to what's going wrong here?

Thanks,

Robert

 

Make the bootable CD media and try the Backup with that instead of running the Backup from the installed software.

 

Even if that worked, the problem is that I want to use this product as a nightly/weekly/monthly automated backup tool.

Robert

 

I have two suggestions for you. First, search this forum for "IRP StackSize". Setting it to 30 solved this problem for me with network backups. If that doesn't help, experiment with using less ram. Remove 2 GB and see how it goes. You have a very fast machine and as far as TI is concerned "Speed Kills".

 

Interesting suggestion. I cannot remove the RAM from my machine as I need it for work related purposes (running multiple Virtual PC's). That being said, I did try searching for "IRP StackSize" and got no hits on the forums. If you or anyone else can point me to a thread talking about how to set that, I'd give it a try.

If anyone from Acronis is monitoring this thread, they should take note of the kinds of things that people have tried to get their product to work. Even if they don't work for me personally, as a Norton Ghost user, I am surprised that folks have even tried these things to get the product to work (even if their reasons were different than my issue). I was hoping to find a product that was as easy to use as Ghost, but for Vista 64bit. I am starting to think that this one isn't it for quality reasons.

I am thankful that Acronis allows you to "try before you buy." I would have been upset if I'd actually purchased the product and ran into these quality issues.

Thanks for all of your help. I'll try a few other things, but I am starting to think that being patient and waiting for Symantec Ghost might be a better option for me.

Robert

 

In case you weren't aware of it, Vista Ultimate Edition includes a built-in feature called "Complete PC Backup and Restore", which is an imaging solution similar to what both Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost offer. You may want to check it out while you are waiting for ATI and/or Ghost to catch up.

 

Hello Robert,

Here is a link to a <previous IRPStackSize thread> but I have my doubts that it will help in your situation.

You could check the basic funtionality of TI's imaging by creating an image to the same drive that you are imaging (just ignore the warning message) and then validate the image via the Backup Archive Validation Wizard. That would rule out any affect of your network subsystem.

If that fails then recommend you download Memtest86+ v1.7 from http://www.memtest.org/ and run the test for a few hours (preferably overnight). There should be zero errors reported throughout the run.

Regards

 

Thanks. I am aware of the built-in capability of Vista Backup. The only problem with it, is that it doesn't backup to network drives. It only looks @ DVD/CDROM and USB connected devices. It also doesn't manage disk space at the backup locations. Other than that, it's fine, I've used it for a single backup and restore.

I am looking for a solution that I can turn on configure and feel comfortable that it is backing up and managing the backup location for me (with my periodically confirming that this is happening).

Thanks for the advice tho,

Robert

 

Thanks for the link to the thread about IRPStackSize. I'll give it a shot.

The interesting thing is that the backup works fine for smaller backups (20B or less), but trying to backup the full 40GB is where I have an issue. It may have something to do with the hybernation settings on the machine, which shut the drives down after a certain period of time, but I thought that was if they weren't being used at the moment, and I know that backing them up means that they are in fact "in use."

I have a little time to experiment, so I will continue to do so.

Thanks to all of you for your help. At least I can say that the community around this product is "Top Quality," regardless of the issues that the product itself may/may not have.

Robert

 

Hello robertsheltonjr,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please make sure you use the latest build (4942) of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home. You can download the latest build trial version from our official website. You can find the build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window.

Please download the latest version of Acronis drivers, unpack the archive and install unpacked MSI package.

If the issue persists, please collect some information to let us investigate it thoroughly:

- Replace C:\WINDOWS\system32\snapapi.dll with the one from the downloaded SnapAPI archive;
- Reproduce the issue and collect the log file without closing any application windows (including the error message windows if there are any). The log file will be created at C:\ . The name of the log file will be snapapi [date-time].log

Please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please also check if you can successfully create a backup on a local drive.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov