True Image working or not?

I am running a complete backup of my system on an external HDD. TI ran thru step 1 fairly quickly. I know it is a big backup(150gb), but the TI program has been running on step 2 for over an hour and the progress bar is at:

0% progress

All the lights on the external HDD are on so it seems to be in use, but at this rate it could take days.

Is this normal?

HR

 

Is 150GB the full size of the drive or is this the size of the used space on the drive? Is this being done in Windows or the Rescue CD? What are your machine specs? It seems a bit long at first glance. Is there a time estimate given by TI?

 

No, the full size is 500gb. The 153.2gb is the size of the data which is on the disc.

I am using the Windows interface.

This computer has a Vista OS with 2 250gb hard drives which I have already partitioned for an XP dual boot install(after backup). I have 3 partitions: C-400gb,J(where XP will be)-50gb, and an un-named FAT 32 partition - 15gb.

2 days.

HR

 

OK, if TI estimated the backup to be 150GB in size (I think that's what you mean by the "transfer estimate"), then you are probably backing up 225-300GB of programs and data.

A good first estimate is that you will backup 1-2GB per minute. That leads to an estimate of 2-5 hours for the backup.

Let it run and let us know what happens.

When TI first estimates the time to completion, it usually is very high and then decreases the estimated time as the backup proceeds. Around 10-20% completion, the estimate becomes fairly accurate. For example, I've had backups where the first estimate was over an hour that completed in less than 10 minutes.

 

Why does the progress bar stay at 0% so long?

 

Is it still at 0% or did it finally start progressing?

Sometimes it takes a while for TI to scan the disk and see what it needs to backup. I think that's what it's doing during that time. It would be nice to have the scan shown as a step, though, as you'd have some idea what's going on.

If it's still at 0%, I'd just terminate TI, wait 30 seconds or so, restart TI and try again.

 

I stop and restarted TI and after about 30 minutes it jumped to 2%.

But, it has been at 2% for about 2 hours.

HR

 

Have you tried booting to the TI CD and doing the backup?
If so, how long did it take?

 

No not yet. But, it looks like this is not working. On this second run, it has been 3 hours and it is stuck at 2%.

I'll stop the current backup and try the disk.

HR

 

Well, I finally used the CD to run the backup.

First, I see one glaring problem with this method. When using the CD to run the backup, I am not using the latest release even though I just received the CD in the mail, it is a couple of releases behind which obviously tells me that it is full of bugs that may have been corrected in later builds.


The backup went pretty fast(153gb in 3 hours). But it was error ridden throughout. The primary error(s) were:

E00101F4: Failed to write data on the disk.
Failed to write to the sector 349,543-etc., etc., etc. of the hard disk 2.


The program stopped at each of these errors and failed repeatedly on retry. I was finally able to get the program running smoothly by clicking the "Ignore All" button.

So the backup completed and ran the "verify backup" and I got the following message:

"Archive BackUp Has Been Completed With Errors."

Also, when I tried to view the archive in Windows, I get a list of "Unable to view" errors.

So, my logical question to anyone familiar with this is...

Is this backup worthless? If so, any suggestions?

My second question is...

If I do a regular backup(without TI) on the external HDD(on which I have created the flash boot partition) will I be able to use that disk to boot and restore?

HR

 

If there are errors your backup will most likely not be good. Run chkdsk /r on the drive that has the errors.

 

Are you using TI 10? The current build is 4942.

Register your product on the Acronis web site and download the latest build. Uninstall the build you have now, reboot and install the latest version. In the new version, create a new Recovery CD.

This backup is junk unfortunately. Read or write errors are serious and indicate a problem either with the disk itself or how it is communicating with the computer.

Are you using a USB external hard drive?
Is it connected with a 3 foot USB 2.0 shielded cable directly (not through a hub) to one of the rear USB ports on your computer?
Have you unplugged any other USB devices other than a keyboard and mouse? (this is for test purposes until you can make good backups repeatedly)

As Thomasjk suggested, run CHKDSK /R on your hard disks. I'd check all of them.

If you are saving the backup image on an NTFS formatted drive, you might also try splitting the backup at 4.7GB. Some systems will fail when trying to write a file that is 150GB in size. If the disk is formatted FAT32, the file will be split into 4GB pieces.

 

John,

Yes, I had registered and downloaded the latest build, but I followed your direction and burned a CD of the latest build using Media Builder. It worked fine.

-

Yes

Yes

Yes

Ran CHKDSK /R and the program found and repaired 5 Indexes which were not indexed.

Ran a new backup splitting into 4.7gb.

The backup seemed to go smoothly up until the end, Then I started getting the errors:

E000101F4: Failed to write data on Disk.
Failed to write to the sector 268,435,455, etc., etc., etc., etc. of hard disk 2.

The C drive backup included 3 partitions:

-C- NTFS 400gb(142gb used)
-J: NTFS 50gb(0gb used-where the XP installation will be)
-the 3rd partition had no number. It is a FAT 32 partition 14.33gb which I assumed is the factory installed system backup files. This is where the errors started coming up. Since I am backing up to an external drive which I have formatted to NTFS, is that the reasons for the errors?

Will I need to create another partition(Fat 32) and only backup the FAT 32 files separately?


HR

 

It doesn't matter what format the partitions are. You can back up a FAT32 to NTFS and vice versa.

At this point, since you are getting write errors, let's divide the problem up.

Boot from the latest Recovery CD.
Make a backup of the C partition alone. Let me know if it completes without error messages.
Validate the backup and let me know if it validates successuflly.

Do the same for Partition J alone.

Finally do the same for the hidden partition alone.

 

Extra longs backups are often the result of backing up onto a USB and USB is being used instaed fo USB 2 or a bad drive and writes are failing and being retried and the retires are what's strecthing out the backup time. IN this latter case, you need to check the drive before you do anything else.

 

John,

Ok, here are the results of the partial backups:

C drive: NTFS size: 400gb used: 144.7gb
compression: normal
archive split: 4.34gb
Backup time elapsed: 6 hours 22 minutes
Verify time elapsed: 5 hours 24 minutes
Total time elapsed: 11 jours 46 minutes
Outcome: Successful 28 files size: 113gb

D: drive: NTFS size: 50.78gb used: 0(future how of XP install)
compression: normal
archive split: 4.34gb
Backup and verify time elapsed: 1 minute
Outcome: Successful

Hidden system drive: FAT32 size: 14.32gb
compression: normal
archive split: 4.34gb
Backup and verify time elapsed: 1 hour 13 minutes
Outcome: Successful 3 files size: 12.97gb


Now any ideas on how to get them all backed up?

 

Well, the good news is that all threee partitions backup and verify as long as you do them one at a time. Actually, that's entirely adequate for a restore. You have all three.

What's a bit odd is that the speed is on the slow side by a factor of two or three. I have no explanation for why, but it's more important that the backup is successfull than that it's fast.

If you have a second USB hard drive of a different barnd (or can borrow one), it would be interesting to see if that works any better. Sometimes the chipset in a particular drive doesn't work well for these large backup files.

Once you have a backup of the hidden partition, you don't need to back it up again since it doesn't change. The C and D partitions are what you will be using, and those need regular backup. You can probably combine the C and D into one backup.

Why do they work separately but not when you try all three together? Beats me. If you didn't change anything from when the backups failed on all three together, I have no explanation.

 

John,

Well, that helps, but after breaking these files down into all these small files, I don't see any way other than to restore them one at a time. So, the time backing up the files will not be half as bad as restoring all these little files.

Also, since you did not explain how to save all these files(or that I should), I didn't. Do I need to partition out the external hard disk for each of these drives?

HR

 

After a test restore on a file folder, I found out that the Restore is simple with multiple small split files. Once you click on the restore for the first file, TI installs all of the files in the group.

HR

 

The good news is that a backup file that is broken into many pieces still restores as if it were a single file. Pick any one piece to restore, and all the pieces will be restored automatically. Because the image was of one partition, they will all restore to one partition.

If you made a single image of two partitions and it was split into many pieces, it would still restore to only two partition.

The idea of breaking the image at 4.7GB was to check whether this was necessary. Now that you found that you could make images successfully by choosing each partition separately, you might want to try making an image of C (the large partition) without splitting it and see if it also validates successfully. If it does, then splitting isn't necessary.

As far as saving the images of C, D and the hidden partition, just give each one a name like C-2007-08-22.tib. That would be for partition C today. Doing the date this way will sort chronologically.

Let me know whether the image of C without splitting validated.

 

Exactly! I didn't see your added comment until after posting my answer.

 

John,

Well, I was able to backup each partition(without splitting archives) in 3 hours and 20 minutes.

Now if I can figure out how to add an XP partition with only one hard disk. I thought this computer came with two HDD(2X250), but getting ready to install XP I discovered that it only has one(1X500). I'm already past my 30 day return policy so I guess I will have to live with what I got. At least I have room for another drive. The only posts I could find describe installing XP with two drives.

Any ideas?

HR

 

Did the images all validate?

You need to install Windows XP in it's own partition so it will have it's own drive letter. You have J available. The problem is that if you have Vista installed first, it's a bit of a pain to get XP installed.

Here are two references on how to do this:
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=88231

And this shows what happens if you just install XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

It's always easier to install the older OS first because the newer OS will set up dual booting automatically.

An alternative which I use on one system is to install a second hard drive. In the BIOS select it as the boot drive. Install XP there. When you want to switch back to Vista, you change the boot drive back to the Vista drive. This isn't great if you go back and forth a lot because it requires going through the BIOS, but it's easy to set up, and it's easy to remove either OS by simply removing that hard drive.

When you dual boot via Windows, some of the Vista boot files are on the XP partition which isn't as clean.