What if "Image" is unusable..?

TI9 User Guide pg 39 Section 6.3.12

"...... it is critical to note that the target partition will be deleted and its space unallocated - the same result you will get if the restoration is unsuccessful. To recover the "lost" partition you will have to restore it from the image again...."

What if the "image" does not restore for whatever reason..?

Does this mean that if a restoration is unsuccessful and an image is corrupt that you will end up with no data? .... because the target (orginal partition) has been deleted as part of the restore process and the source (image partition) is unusable for whatever reason.

 

Hello Tabvla,

Yes, I'm afraid it does. Hence the reason you should set TI's default option to verify the image prior to it being restored (one of the enhancement requested by users).

Regards

 

OK..... But is TI's image verification 100% reliable?

Are there any Forum members who have verified an image only to find after the restoration that the data was unusable or that the image disk was unbootable?

(Note : I am concerned specifically with images and not backups)

 

Hi!

I am using TrueImage from version 6 on. I Think from version 7 on a verification of images is possible. I never had the situation over the years that a verifyed-ok image was in fact not readable or writable by TrueImage

Sometimes i had images that were not ok (one time my RAM was defect) but then the verifying said that there were errors.

Forellenblau

 

Hi Tabvla,

Based on the Acronis Support reply to an old inquiry of mine, not only the standard verification is not a definitive one in regard of restoration capability of the image, but neither is mounting the image when trying to push the verification on step higher.

I found myself in such a spot quite some time ago when the image was stored on an external drive that was on the verge of compatibility with TI. After several retries, the restore finally succeeded.

Following this forum closely for over half a year now, I came to the conclusion that after the user has carried out at least one restore to verify that it runs without problems on his system, the issue you mention is not one to be feared.

Of course, if you copy your images to DVDs, you shoud keep the burning speed well down.

 

And my favorite, use the burning programs "verify after creating" option.

I play it safe, IMO, I create images to a second internal drive and then copy an image when I think I should to DVD. I always use the TI verify after creating an image.

My other suggestions (these are just my opinion which means you can disagree but I'm not going to argue):

Run chkdsk /r or equivalent on your C drive and other partitions you backup to/from every now and then. If you create an image from a corrupted structure who knows how it will behave.

Certainly do the above when you first install TI or a new build of it.

Run memtest86+ or other memory diagnostic every now and then. If you don't want to run memtest just do a TI verify of a large archive. It will usually bring to light any marginal RAM and disk sub-systems . I am of the opinion a lot of complaints about TI image corruption is due to marginal hardware.

IMO, do not run defraggers on the disk you store your images on while you have the images present. Minimal gain for the risk of shuffling around a giant file.

Get a drive to test your restores on. Money well spent and you can use it as your second backup internal drive after if you wish.

If your hardware is stable and you can backup, verify and restore you will likely always be able to do so.

 

My recent experience with a corrupt image, bad partition, and copying large files (> 50 GB) to or from an External USB Drive lead me to believe that aggressive performance settings in the system BIOS can result in image corrupt errors or other Acronis error messages, especially when restoring from a USB device. My System Volume Information folder was corrupt (non-zero size) and I had to recreate the boot and extended partitions and restore from an external drive where I'd copied the Acronis image file. I routinely copy the Acronis image from the extended partition on my primary system to several external USB drives because I routinely use these external drives and have plenty of free space to do so. After a half-dozen corrupt image error messages from each of the external drives, I entered the system BIOS and reduced the front side bus (FSB) speed, reduced the memory multiple from 4x to 3x times the FSB, tuned off aggressive memory timings (turbo mode), etc.

No more corrupt image error messages.

This may work for some of you receiving corrupt image messages.

 

Folks,

Good points about checking DVD copies. FWIW, being completely anal, I always do MD5 checksums on the disk and DVD versions. My final step is to copy the checksums to the DVD's. (Which are obviously rewritable - I hate coasters!)

Off the top of my head, I have had to re-write a 700mb image about 1% of the time - but with an average of 14GB a backup, that represents almost a quarter of my DVD backups which would otherwise have been useless.

Regards,
Brian.