Uggg!

I purchased Acronis True Image 10.0 back in December and now for the first time that I needed it, it failed me! I tried to use the recovery mode only to get the attached error message, even though I verified the backup at the time of backing up.

Unbelievably frustrated!

 

Read error usually means just that, it cannot read from the drive.

Why do you have to do a restore? Did your disk start acting up and if so, is it the same disk that is giving this error?

Try running chkdsk X: /r on your disk. Replace X with the drive letter of the partition being tested. It needs to reboot to do C.

 

The reason I wanted to do a restore was because I kept getting an error message at bootup. The error message was "NTLDR could not be found, Press Ctrl Alt Del. to re-boot". This was on the main C drive (of course).

I did a search on the internet for NTLDR and found a ton of help but I still felt that doing a system restore from Acronis Secure Zone on a separate drive should of fixed the problem, only to receive the read error.

I did run a chkdsk on both drives and neither of them had any problems. I appreciate your post and believe me, I'm no expert when it comes to this stuff but I did purchase this program to get me out of problems such as this.

Then to complicate matters, I go to run a system restore within Windows XP Pro only to find out that there aren't any previous restore points, even though I have system restore turned on Now I'm gonna go look for hard drive ghosts that maybe running around in my house!

Ultimately, I did a fixmbr and fixboot from within the Recovery Console of Windows. That got me back up and running but now I have a few error messages when I get into windows because it doesn't know what to do with some programs starting up. I un-installed and re-installed as well as ran a registry scan with Registry Fix 5.5 but nothing has helped. Still working on those.

 

It would seem that True Image is notorious for giving false positives in its validation process, which is why I don't waste time with validation. Instead I test the Image by doing an actual Restore.
Do you run disk cleaners like CCleaner as well as more than one Registry cleaner? And do you run any anti spyware software. You can get rid of unwanted startup programs by checking what is starting up. A good place to start is Start/Run and then type msconfig.

 

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that chkdsk will check the Secure Zone for errors.

 

ummmm.....

I had purschased a new Western Digital Caviar (250mb i think? can't remember) about a year ago.... had it for only for a few monthes...and guess what? I was getting this error u speak of a few times before total LOSS! I will NEVER buy a WD again.

"NTLDR could not be found, Press Ctrl Alt Del. to re-boot". yeah...very familiar.

I had my OS on it and that was all... good thing I had seperate drives that have my business and perosnal data on it! Or it would have all been gone in mere seconds!

I replaced the drive with a Seagate...and no problems so far..and heard they were the best.

It seems sometimes doing the MBR works...but I think it would not in my case....so u may want to check into your drive and see if it is notorious for failure etc.

My main C: drive has nothing but my OS on it...and I have seperate drives for important stuff that i never want to lose. Also partition them is very large.

I would persoanlly make sure you backup your IMPORTNAT files ASAP! even just a simple copy to another drive or partition or remotely online (maybe you have ftp space?).

You can also use the simple to use BACKUP program in Windows XP Pro (Home Version, you have to install from cd if not OEM)

good luck!

 

Ralphie I run everything you mentioned and then some. CCleaner, several different spyware programs etc..

In regards to running a chk disk in secure zone, windows will do it but it all happens extremely fast so I don't believe it's actually checking the disk, since, when running chkdisk on other partions or drives, it takes a while but on the secure zone, it's almost instant so I don't think it's accurate to say chkdsk is doing it's job.

I called Western Digital over this error message as this drive is a 150gig raptor. I don't think it has anything to do with the drive. It's strictly an issue between the bios on the motherboard and windows. The drive is working fine. I cleared cmos, booted into windows and ran the fixmbr and as I said earlier, I am pretty much back up and running with all data intact. Now if it happens again, I'll have to question this drive but it's hard with this being a new build, new mobo etc...

 

Better scan your hard disk for bad sectors. You can use this freeware:

http://www.hdtune.com/

 

I don't think this is quite right. The validation is a simple checksum and while it's possible that one error offsets another, false positives are very unlikely. The issue with validated files sometimes not showing valid when one tries to restore is that within win, ATI can read the hardware but sometimes the restore (which runs under linux) cannot (which is a matter of linux drivers not being as robust and up-to-date as win drivers) and so backup file that reads valid for ATI within win doesn't when you go to restore but only on some hardware.

Absolutely, I agree one should do a test restore before relying on any backup software.

 

As far as the checksum calculation goes, I would say it is virtually impossible for errors to cancel with something like the MD5 level of checksum calculation.

I agree that an inadequacy in the Linux environment is likely to be a reason where an archive validated from Windows fails with the TI rescue CD. For this reason a validation should be done using the rescue CD when TI is first installed before attempting a first restore.

It is obvious well, after you think about it, that we really are dealing with 2 different programs and it is silly to say that we are happy with the way the first one works and are assuming the second will work when we need it.

There is one other mechanism that could give a false positive given that the validation method is a checksum calculation. If TI reads garbage or for some reason causes a corruption of data in the archive creation process it is possible for it to store the bad data in the archive. The checksum is calculated using this bad data so all is well when the validation is made. On the restore, TI does not put everything back exactly where it was (it is not a direct sector to sector copy for every sector) and it would be possible now for this bad data to corrupt the restore process.