Problem with backup to external USB hard drive

Hi,

I'm currently trying the trial version of Acronis True Image Home to backup my system to external USB hard drive.
I have two partitions on my internal hard drive(Seagate SATA II 300GB), the smaller one(system) has ~15GB of data and I was able to back it up and restore it without a hitch. However whenever I try to backup my second partition with ~100GB of data, I get $MFT corruption and "delayed write failure" errors somewhere after 80% of job completion. Dividing archive into smaller files(4GB) does not help.
I ran chkdsk and it showed no problems. Norton Ghost 9.0 was able to backup to this drive without errors.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.

 

“I ran chkdsk and it showed no problems”
On which drive? I’m assuming it’s the USB drive that has the problem.

“Norton Ghost 9.0 was able to backup to this drive without errors”
I wonder if Norton is compressing the file more and therefore not hitting the bad spot on the USB drive. Try a higher TI compression setting.

 

Thanks for the reply. Actually I ran chkdsk on all drives, just to be sure . I will try higher compression settings and tell the results.

 

Tried with higher compression, still backup fails after ~80GB. Norton Ghost image file is ~95GB. Any other ideas? Should I try to use FAT32 instead of NTFS on my external drive?

Thanks.

 

Hello dimS,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

Please be aware that there is absolutely no point in reformatting your external USB hard drive to FAT32 as Acronis True Image should allow you to save backups to both NTFS and FAT32 partitions.

First of all, please check each partition of both your internal and external hard drives by Windows utility in the way described below:

- For Windows 9x please use Windows menu Start\Run then enter the command "scandskw" and test all drives;

- For Windows XP please use Windows menu Start\Run, then enter the command "chkdsk c: /r" "chkdsk d: /r" for every partition of your hard drive.

Note that you will need to reboot your computer in order to scan the system partition.

Please also download the latest version of Acronis drivers, install it with disabled logging and see if the problem still persists.

If the problem still persists after checking the hard drives and updating the Acronis drivers then please try to use next tips in order to solve the problem you encounter:

- Try updating the drivers for your external USB hard drive, if any;

- If your external USB hard drive is connected to the computer through a hub then try connecting it directly;

- Try connecting your external USB hard drive through another USB port.

If nothing of the above helps then please enable logging by running the Acronis drivers installation package once again, reproduce the problem and collect the c:\snapapi.log file.

Please also provide us with the following information:

- Create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post;

Please keep your external USB hard drive connected while creating Acronis Report and Windows System Information.

- Reproduce the problem and collect Acronis True Image log which can be saved from Tools -> Show Log -> Diskette icon;

- Make a screen shot or provide the exact text of the error message you receive;

- Let us know when you receive this error message exactly;

- If possible, try saving the image to another location, e.g. any other internal, external or networked drive and inform us about the result.

Please submit a request for technical support using Ask a question before you purchase Acronis software link. Provide the files and information collected in 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 the solution as soon as possible.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Was this ever resolved? I ask as I have a 160 GB drive, that I had been using internally, to an IDE/SATA to USB2 adapter. All seems OK, but a write causes this same issue.

I did a verify OK of an Acronis full backup. However, if I create a new Backup I get this error, and the drive is formatted with NTFS OK.

Any answers to this and was it resolved?

 

Hello MPSAN,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please let us know exact product name and the build number of the product you use, which you can find in the Help -> About dialog?

Please also be more specific and let us know the exact error message you have received and when exactly you received it. In addition, please provide us with the full log file from Acronis True Image that contains the error message. In order to do so please do the following:

- run the program;

- select Show log on the toolbar or from the Tools menu;

- select the log with error messages;

- click "Save the log entry to file" (the diskette icon).

Did you use Acronis True Image Bootable Rescue Media or did you use Acronis True Image in Windows?

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.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

I likewise have this problem, and it is a Windows XP problem. The proof of this is small backups run OK under XP, but larger ones fail no matter which USB disk I use (I have three). However, using the TrueImage boot disk works fine with ANY size file on any drive. I can do backups with no splitting. Article 927912 in Microsoft's KB is probably the problem. Unfortunately, it was last updated back in Feb. and there is no solution.

 

Hi Everyone,

I notice that this thread was started over a year ago so it may be that some people have already found a solution to this problem. Anyway, I used to have this problem and I decided that KB908673 was the culprit. I'm using the VIA Vectro USB 2.0 controller. If you go to http://www.viaarena.com/, you can do a driver scan. I seem to remember (it was almost a year ago) that it flagged up a file called WindowsXP-KB908673-x86-ENU.exe, which I ran and it cured the "delayed write failed" problem. Of course, if you don't have the VIA controller, then I can't help. I do believe that Microsoft also claim that there is a hotfix available for KB908673.

Good luck!

JPC

 

hi we are using external USB drives with Acronis for backups on win2k3, but the 320GB we just purchased to accomodate growing data are giving me grief with write errors so i was now trying to figure out how to span a backup over two smaller USB drives but it looks like Acronis only spans over CD/DVDs or zip drives. I've run chkdisk on the USB drive it comes up clean;
checked the large system cache in the registry is set to zero;increased the size of the swap file;switched performance from background service to programs; the drive is formatted as an extended logical drive and i can successfully save files to it. I can now no longer perform a backup on the smaller USB drives that were previously working. I don't see the write errors recently, It just seems to hang all night/weekend at a low percentage until i kill the job in the morning.