Verification of image files constantly fails

I'm having a problem where image files made on a certain machine constantly fail to verify. I have tried various test configurations including:

• Back up entire hard drive to USB-connected drive
• Back up entire hard drive to mapped network share
• Back up entire hard drive to network share using UNC name
• Back up single partition of hard drive to other partition of same hard drive

In order to determine whether the failed verification was a false negative, I moved the image files to another computer with Acronis installed and checked them there. The image files were confirmed to be corrupted.

The problem is isolated to a single computer. I successfully backed up and verified a hard drive on another computer that I own using the same version of the software. On the "problem" computer, I also successfully backed up and verified a few files, but whole-drive or whole-partition backups never verify successfully.

I ran a checkdisk on the "problem" computer's hard drive. No errors were found. My S.M.A.R.T. monitor program doesn't show the hard drive to have hardware problems.

I have submitted a support request via the Acronis web site, but I thought I'd also post here to double my chances of resolving the problem.

 

Did you back up online or offline?

 

I'm not sure I understand the question. What is online vs. offline? I mean, I know what those words usually mean, but I can't figure out the meaning in the context of Acronis.

 

Did you create an image while Windows is running? Or did you reboot to without Windows to create an image?

 

Actually, I tried both! First I tried several things from within Windows, then I booted using the Acronis CD and tried it from out of Windows. In both cases, image creation completed, then verification failed.

 

Good detective work so far. You've eliminated disk errors and errors due to transmission via USB or network cards, and you've verified that the images are indeed corrupt by checking them on a machine that makes good images.

If you are in any way stressing this system by overclocking or settings beyond the standard to increase speed, go back to the default settings.

If that's not applicable, you should test the RAM on the problem machine. You can use a memory tester such as Memtest86+ fromhttp://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/Memtest86-plus.shtml), or you could swap the memory modules with another machine. Swapping known good modules might be faster since Memtest may have to run for 24 hours to find a problem.

If memory isn't the problem, then it may be a motherboard chipset problem which may or may not have any resolution. Do you have the latest BIOS upgrade installed for this system?

In some cases, large file sizes just are not handled well. Try splitting the image into 700MB pieces.

Beyond these ideas, all I can think of is trying a different hard drive, but I hope it doesn't come to that.

 

Hi John,

The "Smiley" seems to have broken the above link to memtest86+. Lorann can use this one instead:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/Memtest86-plus.shtml

Mind you, I prefer to download my copy from the "horses mouth" i.e. http://www.memtest.org

Regards

 

John,

Thanks for the tips. No, the machine is not being overclocked or otherwise stressed. It's stock--but good thinking. I've downloaded the memtest program and will run it overnight tonight to see what it finds. Your suggestion about breaking the archives into smaller files is also a good one. This machine makes bigger image files than my other two machines, so it's possible that file size is the issue. I hadn't thought of that when I was considering what might be different between the working and the non-working machines. As for the motherboard, chipset, BIOS question: I think that's probably not the issue, as I have made good images with this machine before, starting way back with Acronis TI version 7. At the end of the day, I suppose that I could try a different hard drive. I do have a few. Maybe try a backup of the USB drive to see if the source drive is the problem. I hope not, as it's only a few months old and there's no reason why it should be going bad.

 

Thanks to everyone for the tips. I ran memcheck and sure enough, it found a bunch of errors almost immediately. I took out one stick of memory and ran it again and the errors went away. Switched sticks and the errors came back. It looks like I've got one bad stick of memory. For now, I'm running on just the good stick, and I just completed a backup successfully. Looks like you guys nailed the problem. Thanks again!

(And also, thanks for leading me to memcheck, which is now part of my standard computer-repair toolkit.)

 

Swapped that URL fpr the Softpedia one.

I like getting software right from the horse's mouth also. I find too much that came from the other end.