Validation operation has completed with errors

I just purchased Acronis True Image Home 2009 (build 9,796). I've backed up a few partitions with no problem, but the last partition I backed up, which completed successfully, has given an error when I validate it. The validation almost completes, and then suddenly terminates with a popup that the operation has failed. How can I find out why the validation is failing.

 

If you backed up and validated other partitions recently and this one fails, I would run chkdsk X: /r on the partition you are storing the archive. Replace the X with the drive letter of the partition being checked. The fact the others validated OK indicate that the rest of your PC is likely working OK so a suspect is a bad sector where the archive is being stored. Anyway, that would be my first check.

 

I sometimes get backup validation failures - in my case I believe it is because I'm backing up to external USB hard drive. USB is slow and rather easily suffers overflow or underflow.

 

I am using an external USB hard drive, so maybe it is an overflow/underflow, although I've never had issues with other software writing to external hard drives. I don't think the external hard drive has problems, it is brand new, although of course that's no guarantee of being fault free. I guess the bottom line though is that the backup I created for which I'm getting the validation errors, is screwed, so I should delete it and try again.

 

Archive files tend to be very large compared to most files and also TI typically runs about as fast as you can go so some problems may not show up under typical operation. Some device chipsets don't play nice with some motherboard chipsets and the problem most often shows up with large files but this problem isn't as common as it was a few years ago.

Try it again. If it fails, make the archive to an internal HD. If you don't have a second drive or another partition you can make it to the same partition that is being imaged but you will get a warning message. If it validates then copy it to the USB drive with Windows Explorer and Validate it again. If that also works, copy it back to the internal HD and try the validation again. They should all succeed.

You can also boot up the TI rescue CD and try the create/validate with it. The CD is Linux so it uses different drivers etc.

 

With USB hard drive, any problems would almost always be with the USB data transfer, not with the drive.

 

I think that is likely the case since his drive is new and that is what my copy/validate should show up. Another method is to use a checksum calculator but the validate essentially does the same thing. OTOH, if the drive in the USB case is old it can have bad sectors like any other HD.