TI10 corruptions on external drives

I have experienced this before with an older PC but put it down to a vagary of that system.

However...

When I image to an external disk - in this case a brand new e-SATA disk on a brand new Vista Ultimate machine - verification flags up corruption and won't let me even mount the image.

Images save to an internal SATA disk are passed as OK.

I have stress tested the components, especially the RAM, in my PC and they all pass extended testing with a clear passes - nothing's wrong.

Also, I've had the occasional runtime error from TI10 - not to do with the corrupt external disk problem though.

Why is this? I don't want to lose confidence in Acronis, I really like it.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks.

Steve

 

Steve,
If you copy an image that fails verification from the external back to an internal, will that image verify from the internal location?
I’m guessing on this: you might try replacing the cable for the external HD. I’ve seen several posts that USB problems have been solved with a new cable.

At what point are you getting this error message? Any chance it’s when you are in the Backup Location wizard?

 

What brand of external drive?

What is your motherboard brand and model or computer brand and model.

Perhaps someone with the same hardware has had similar problems.

Errors on external drives can be due to the chipsets on the motherboard or the drive not communicating properly. They are often not tested for performance with such large files.

Do you have any other external USB or Firewire drives you could try?

 

Thanks, jmk94903.

System specs:

Asus P5B Deluxe - mobo
Core 2 Duo 6700 @3GHz
Corsair 8500 Dominator RAM @900MHz
Western Digital 150GB Raptor - system disk
Western Digital 500GB Caviar SATA2 - storage disk
Western Digital 500GB Caviar SATA2 - external e-SATA disk sitting in an Akasa e-SATA Integral disk
Creative XFi Xtreme Music - soundcard
Vista Ultimate

I think the jury is returning with a 'Not Guilty' verdict for Acronis. As a test I did a straight copy of the same files and could actually see corruption on some of my pics after they'd transferred! So all Acronis was doing was faithfully reporting back on the problem. The trouble is that the image is useless in that Acronis won't let me mount the image as a volume, so I can't do an emergency partial rescue.

What's odd is that as it's e-SATA the external disk is seen by Vista as an internal disk, as it should be. No problem with the other internal disks so why this one?

Thanks.

Steve

 

Try to copy and paste the verified image you made on the second internal drive to the external drive, check both images MDS sums to make sure the copy was successful. If the copy to the external does not have the same MDS sum then I would suspect the chipset on the mobo or in the external is not playing nice

 

Is it an eSATA drive enclosure connected via an extension cable from a regular motherboard SATA connector to a eSATA plate connector on the back of the computer and then a eSATA cable to the enclosure? If so it could be the cable length that is causing a problem. If the external runs at 3Gbps put the jumper on the drive to knock it back to 1.5Gbps.

 

Thanks. I'll look into that because that is indeed the way it's rigged up.

Same with USB though.

Steve

 

Do you have the same problem if you actually create the archive or files using USB or is it that it was possibly improperly written by eSATA and then you can't read it with the USB.

You might have a problem with the enclosure's interface.

como's suggestion of checking the MD5 checksum on a copy is an excellent one. You can get a free checksum calculator here:

http://www.irnis.net/soft/xcsc/

Calculate the checksum for a large file such as a tib file then copy the file to the external. Calculate the checksum of the file on the external drive and it must be the same. If it is, then copy the file back to the internal drive and check it again. It also must have the same value. If not, then there is something wrong with the external system. You can do this procedure with both the eSATA and the USB interface.

Normally, a bad checksum could also be caused by bad RAM but since you can validate an archive on an internal HD OK, this cause is unlikely.

Have you run a chkdsk /r on the external drive's partition(s)?

 

Thank you, this is all very helpful.

I have just got the checksum program and will undertake the test you suggest.

The RAM and the CPU have been stress tested for long periods and both are just fine, fortunately.

I'm also, as suggested, trialling various USB2 drives in order to see whether the problem's there.

Have also done many chkdsks - all ok.

Steve

 

After fairly exhaustive tests I have discovered that the external drive when functioning on a USB2 interface is just fine but when it's in its e-SATA to SATA mode it fails; so there's something wrong there then. But is it my mobo or the external disk SATA interface?

Steve

 

If you haven't try putting the jumper on the drive to put the transfer rate down to 1.5Gbps (makes little speed difference compared to the 3Gbps setting in the real world) but does make the burst speeds lower. This is an attempt to reduce the effect of cabling.

Try a different SATA port.

On my Vantec the internal cable to the plate had a very short SATA to eSATA adapter and then the cable to the plate connector was a proper eSATA cable not the flimsy SATA cable. If you have a similar arrangement see if you can temporarily eliminate the section of the cable from the adapter to the back plate, ie, just plug the cable to the drive onto the SATA/eSATA adapter to minimize cable length.

 

Thank you, seekforever. I'll give this a go.

Steve