Image corruption - ASUS or AMD ?

Having read about the image corruption problem on this forum it seems that the solution remains as elusive as ever. Many people have absolutely no problem with TI and are very happy with it. Others just can't use it due to consistant image corruption.
As you may have seen elsewhere I have moved a hard disk between two computers with dramatically different results - a DELL 4600 with 2.8GHz P4 has no problem whilst a self assembled computer with ASUS A7V133 with AMD Athlon 900 (1200MHz) just will not create images without corruption.
There has been speculation about the corruption problem being due to various factors such as image size or external disk drive chipsets.
Let me speculate about the motherboard and processor.
Do you have an ASUS motherboard and/or an AMD processor?
If so, please comment about your image creation success or failure.
If not, do you also have a consistant corruption problem?
Maybe your comments, with details of motherboard and processor, will help shed more light on the problem.

 

I have an Asus MB and AMD Processor

Initially, I had image corruption problems, but, at least as far as I can tell, it was due to a sub-par USB chipset in an external enclosure. Once I purchased an external enclosure with a good (NEC) USB chipset and a good FireWire chipset, I have been able to create good images with both interfaces. *Every* image I created with the first enclosure was corrupt. *Every* image I have created with the second enclosure has been good.

Your situation may be a combination of issues which manifest themselves more on the Asus/AMD combo. How are you imaging? From one internal drive to another? From an internal drive to an external drive via USB/FireWire? Over a LAN?

My motherboard is an Asus A7N8X Deluxe rev. 2.0 with an nVidia nForce 2 chipset with built-in FireWire and USB 2.0 support. My processor is an Athlon 2500+.

Your Asus MB appears to have a VIA chipset. If you are imaging to an external drive, does your MB have built in USB support or are you using a PCI card?

 

Thanks, I appreciate your reply.
I previously posted details of my problem at: Who DOES NOT have a problem with corrupt images... at post 154 since that thread discusses the corruption problem in detail.
If anyone else would like to comment specifically on my problem or has any other corruption issues then please do so there
or, if more appropriate, start a new thread.
I was hoping this new thread didn't just get bogged down in a detailed ongoing discussion of each individual's problem but rather tried to look at the big picture which might show some trend like say: most corruption problems occur with ASUS (or whatever brand) motherboards with AMD (or whatever) running at less than say 1400 MHz.
Maybe, as Hoopster comments, a specific chipset might be involved (maybe on a motherboard not just PCI cards)
So let's hear more.

 

Tachyon42
I've used True Image Acronis 7 for ages on my old machine without problems. 1.4 Gig Celeron, Asus P4B mother board, IDE Hard drives. It still works well.

The new machine is a different story! Asus A8N SLI (with one card installed), Athlon 64 3200+ CPU, Nforce4 chipset, SATA hard drives. Acronis 7 on this machine at first came up with the errror message E00010F4 can't find any drives. The driver update from the Acronis website cured this problem with the hard drive installed version but the bootable floppies and CD's won't work. They still can't find any drives.

Langdon

 

Langdon,
There are known issues with TI 8 and SATA drivers.
Check Error E000101F4 with ADAPTEC 8130 SATA.
Also search this forum for : sata error
Email TI Support with your details.
Once you overcome the SATA driver issue please let us know whether you get image corruption.

 

I would say you're looking somewhat in the wrong direction. Brands (AMD / Asus) aren't going to be of much help. You need to look more at the details. For example the chipset that a motherboard or external enclosure uses.

The A7V133, for example, uses the VIA KT133A, which is a horrible chipset. The PCI implementation is flawed and cannot sustain heavy throughput. And the USB functionality with that chipset is dodgy at best. Unfortunately, the chipset was quite common with early Athlon setups.

I'm told that any of the KTx33 boards should be avoided. Newer VIA chipsets are reported to have improved, but the whole KT133 fiasco has left a bad taste in my mouth for VIA.

 

I, too, have an Asus A7N8X board. My revision is 1.04. This board uses the Nvidia chipset, and the SiliconImage 3112A SATA controller.

I am using 2 Seagate 120Mb SATA drives, with no raid set up.

I alway have corrupt images if I image from one drive to the other. If I image from one partition on one drive to another partition on the same drive, the image is fine.

Using information provided in this forum, I did MD5 checksum tests of large file copies from one drive to another. The checksums were always different, with files over 1Gb. Again, partition to partition on the same drive were fine.

I finally gave up, and installed a PATA drive and I can image from either of the SATA drives to it, and get good images. It's not the solution that I would have hoped for, but it works.

Others on here with Abit boards solved the same problem by changing a BIOS setting for P2P discard time. This setting is not available on the Asus board.

Grant

 

To me it seems a waste of time trying to guess what's causing these problems. Acronis wrote the software - if they can't fix it who can?

I'm not too worried about it as I'm using "Bootit NG" now which is cheaper and a much more powerful programme.

 

I pointed out the problem of checksums being bad to illustrate that this is not an Acronis problem. The files that I copied from one drive to another to check the integrity were not TrueImage files. They were simply large files. The image files were corrupt - true - but so were any other large files that I moved from one drive to the other. It would appear to be either the SATA controller, or some other hardware problem.

Grant

 

Uh, have you ever considered that there are a lot of factors at play and that ATI is just one of them? Like you, I initially thought the corrupt image problems were solely an ATI issue and I was a bit upset that I had purchased a "flawed" program. However, numerous system tests (all documented in these forums) have shown that some hardware just cannot reliably write and/or read large files over certain interfaces.

Stick around and get an education or happily use whatever works for you. However, unless you have some specific experience with ATI, positive or negative, simply promoting another software application does little to contribute to these forums.

 

The problems ATI are having at the moment seem to be confined to new computers and their new technology. These new computers are not going to go away - either ATI makes their progamme work or they go out of business.

The deafening silence from their tech support can't be doing them much good either. Anyway I don't owe them anything so why should I worry. I've always thought their upgrade from ATI 7 to 8 was a bit of a rip off and should have been free for ATI 7 users.

 

I downloaded the test version of TI. The image burned fine, but I got a message that the image was corrupted when I did a check. My system is:

Asus A8V Deluxe, AMD 3500, 2 WD Raptors drives in a RAID 0, backing up to an external hard drive connected via firewire. External drive is Venus DS3 enclosure with 300GB Seagate UATA drive installed.

I am using firewire, not USB, so USB cannot be the problem. The funny thing is, when I use the TI feature that allows you to view the files in the image, it works fine and I can view all of the imaged files and they seem fine. Would I be able to view the files if the image were really corrupted? Maybe this is a TI software issue that sometimes sees files as corrupted when they really are not.

Any replies appreciated.

 

By the way, my Asus motherboard has the Via K8T800 Pro Chipset.

 

I have posted before but will again that my Asus P4P800 SE works just fine with TI8. I initially send images to the second internal drive (80GB WD) then copy to my external USB drive (specs posted elsewhere). Images in either location have always verified through the boot CD or from within Windows and the external drive is recognized from the boot CD or within Windows. It's sad to hear all the problems that so many of you are having . . .

 

wdormann - It's interesting that I don't have any other problems with any other programs. Why should TI 8 have such dramatic and consistant errors?
Are other software makers aware of problems with this chipset and taking action to avoid errors?

Does anyone with this chipset NOT have problems?
Does anyone have a workaround?

Ilya, or anyone at Acronis - any comments ?

 

Tachyon42:
Probably because other programs don't move huge amounts of data across the IDE/PCI bus?
Read this message. A quote from it:

Sound familiar?
See also this article at the register.

Make sure you're using the latest BIOS for your PC and/or try tweaking some of the BIOS settings for PCI. Setting the drives to operate in PIO mode might be something to try, but the performance hit would be significant. If that's not acceptable to you, you may want to consider a new motherboard that isn't flawed. Another quote from a Linux driver page for the PVR-X50 line of video capture cards:

The chipset just isn't a good one.

 

OT post regarding competitor software (again?) removed.

 

If it is a hardware issue, why don't other imaging programs have the aame problem?

 

wdormann - thanks for info on VIA chipset.
I've been using the default Windows 2000 Microsoft driver from 2003 so I assume the problem which dates back to 2001 has been fixed. However, I will download the 4.37 version (2002/01/31) from ASUS website and try it.
There are also 2 drivers on VIA site which I will try:
Hyperion Version - 455vp1 25 November 2004
Retro chipset VIA 4in1 drivers Version - 4.43 25 October 2001

The problem also occurs using the Bootable CD version of TI 8 so if it is a chipset driver issue then it exists with Linux too.

 

Detox - I appreciate the work you moderators do in stopping these forums getting out of control and can understand why some comments about competitive software might be removed. However, sometimes such a post may contain info which may help the resolution of an issue. So regarding the above post that you deleted - can you tell me whether it was specifically refered to this ASUS/AMD/VIA chipset issue. If so, was the post from a registered member with history in this forum (so presumably trustworthy) and ,without naming competitive product, whether the member claimed to not have similar problems using this chipset.
I'm still inclined to think the corrupted archive issue is a TrueImage error/incompatiblity/deficiency rather than a bug in BIOS or drivers and welcome any comments which might shed light on the problem.

 

Tachyon42: have you tried the "MD5" suggestion?
Take a multi-GB file, get an MD5 of it, copy it to another drive (USB, second internal drive... however you'd be using ATI), get an MD5 of that new file and compare it to the original. Should be relatively simple to determine if it's a hardware problem or not.

 

Curious, I ran checksums.......

I have a Dell laptop (XP Pro) and an external USB 2.0 2.5" hard drive. I created several large image files, all > 6GB. Some I saved during creation to my C partition. Most I saved directly to the external drive. I ran checksums on all of them and I checked them within TrueImage 8 build 800.

Then, I copied all the images from the external drive to the internal drive and re-ran checksums. Then, I copied those same files back to the external drive and re-ran checksums again.

All files checked out fine. No corruption at any point.

What does this prove? Probably nothing to those who are experiencing corrupted files. However, I think it's an indication that the corruption may not be related to TrueImage 8. Or, at very least, TrueImage 8 works just fine for people like me who use mostly "standard" hardware and software setups.