TI saved my butt

This morning my wife reported that our Gateway computer wouldn't boot. It was giving the "disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart" message. I tried to correct this with:
Chkdsk /R
Fdisk /MBR
Fixmbr
with no success.
I imaged the drive just to make sure we would have all the files intact and restored from a week old image and it booted fine. The only issue was one file from yesterday that I was able to restore from the image created this morning.

Good job Acronis. This is the second time I 've had to do this. The first time I was able to do a restore while using the Trial Version about 8 months ago. That's when I purchased TI 9.0.

 

Glad you got it going. However, if this has happened 2 times I think you need some new hardware, probably the disk drive. If you are running XP, have a look in the Event log to see if other errors are being logged.

 

Your probably right about needing a new drive. Although this one is less then a year old. Its a Maxtor so I'll try Powermax to test it. For the record I used Mustang's V9.0 plugin on a Reatgo CD. Worked like a champ. My BartPe CD with the TI 8.0 plugin couldn't access the drive where the images were stored. It pays to have multiple ways to recover your machine.

 

If it is less than a year and maybe even 3 it could well be under warranty.

 

A Maxtor less than a year old? Ime, that's long enough for one to go south. I had three go south during the warranty period, including less than a year.

If you have disktest software, run it periodically and note if any new bad sectors show up.

sh

 

This drive is still under warranty until 7/17/06. I have another Maxtor drive that's 3 years old and is working just fine. Last night I created another image and verified it. I left the machine on over night and my wife said it was hungthis morning. When she rebooted it the "disk read error" reappeared. I restored the image from last night and ran chkdsk /r with no errors. Tonight I'll run Powermax overnight and see if it shows a diagnostic code. This morning I used the Acronis Rescue CD for the restore which took about 30 minutes.

 

Hello Tom,

There is a slight possibility of course that the Gateway's memory is being too aggressively clocked or has gone flakey (either could cause disk read/write errors). This can be checked by downloading <Memtest86+> and running it for two or three hours. There should be zero errors reported during that time.

Regards

 

Imaging files from a drive in such dire straits is not reliable. No telling what you imaged, cannot trust such an image.

 

Run Maxtor's diagnostics, you'll have to do that for a warranty claim.

But also run the Hitachi DRive Fitness Test, see http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm.

No point in delaying as drive is still under warranty.

 

If the Maxtor drive was part of the GAteway purchase, I suspect that you'll have to call Gateway, not Maxtor.

 

Howard, this drive is a replacement for the original Gateway drive so replacement will be from Maxtor if I can show its bad. I ran the Maxtor Powermax utility last night and it gave the drive a clean bill of health. I'll also try the Drive fitness test which I already have. I also plan to use Memtest as Menorcaman suggests. I'll be running Memtest today while we are out. So far everytime I've restored with TI the machine will boot just fine, so something may causing corruption possibly memory as Menorcaman suggests.

True Image has not been an issue at all and has performed flawlessly for me. I've also ordered a new Seagate 250GB drive which is supposed to be delivered tomorrow. Then I'll make that the boot drive and fiddle with the other drive after I reformat it.

Update: I ran Memtest for about 5 hrs. while we were out. No memory errors reported after 10+ passes. I'll try the drive fitness test next.

 

This morning I installed a brand new WD 250GB drive to replace the Maxtor 160 GB boot dirve that was giving problems. I used the TI cloning process which worked flawlessly. I had it clone the old drive proportionally which completed quite quickly about 20 - 30 minutes. I was pleased with the speed compared to cloning this drive originally using Maxblast 4 which took 2hrs+. The old drive is still in the machine but is not connected. I need another Power Y cable to hook it up. Once I get one I'll reformat it and see if it still behaves in a flaky manner. Issue resolved for the moment.

BTW, I used Mustang's V9.0 plugin booted from a Reatgo XPE CD to accomplish. Thanks Mustang.

 

FYI, if you still have the same issue, try to borrow another stick of memory. I had a laptop that would run the memtest all day. However, after using XP Pro for a few days I would get a BSOD. It was the second stick in the system and I noticed that if I took it out (downgraded memory from 1GB to 512MB) it worked fine. Remember, memtest would never find anything wrong..I made a bootable CD.

Kingston sent me a new SODIMM and all has been fine ever since. It was not a seating issue either as I tried it in and out several times.

...just a thought!

 

I am a fan of Memtest86+ and I put a fair bit of confidence in it but it is not the program that is running when you have a real problem. We used to say in my previous life that the operating sytem was the best diagnostic for the hardware.

A swap is an excellent idea. However, there is one area I would also consider and that is the power supply voltages. A system running the disks, lots of graphics activity, etc is not running in the same environment as a diagnostic. This can pull the voltages such that it can cause trouble with a component. Replacing the component, in this case a memory stick, may fix the problem because it happens to work OK at a slightly lower voltage than the other one. If the voltages are within spec then the component should work or it is faulty.

 

Yup...but in my case it was easy to pull the extra stick from the laptop. I must admit that when Kingston sent me the new memory, I did not expect it to matter!!

 

Yes the PS could be flaky but for right now I'll see how the new drive performs. Thanks for the input.

 

Re: TI saved my butt (with a twist)!!!

Great product - over the past week I have had the dreaded disk read error problem as well. The first time I tried to reboot several times but to no avail. I then booted from the TI recovery CD and did a full restore of the sys partition.

Then tonight it happened again - this time when I was rebooting the system (XP - Media Centre Edition 2005 RU2). But here's the twist - I again booted from the TI CD but this time I chose to boot Windows from the Acronis Menu and it booted fine..... does this help explain why I have the problem in the first place and perhaps a permanent fix?

Appreciate any and all input

Regards,

Crawf