Can't Validate Archives

Doing an image to my trusty USB Backup drive today, and then attempting to validate it (I've never tried to validate the new TI 10 images)
I get this:

Error: Archive corrupted

So I do another image creation, turn off all screen savers, set task priority to highest level. Than do a validate archive.

I get this:

Error: Archive corrupted

I also just did an image creation and had Acronis store the image directly to my HD - still won't validate!

What is going on? My HD is operating fine, my USB drive is fine, never had ANY issues with it, but I can't get a reliable image even stored to my HD? I didn't ever have this problem with TI 9. Good thing I didn't have a real emergency. As far as I can tell, TI 10 build 4942 isn't doing anything for me at the moment.


Thoughts?

 

If you have a spare hard drive to test one of those backups on, try that and see if the Image is actually good. There have been reports from time to time of false positives so I wouldn't put it past True Image to also report false negatives in the validation.

 

Bad memory has been know to cause this error also. Download and run Memtest
for several hours(overnight is good). If you get any errors then you have a memory problem.

 

Well here we go, thanks for the suggestions but I doubt that is the issue because:

1. My computer is running fine.

2. My USB drive has never corrupted any files in other transfers.

3. My main PC HD is fine, I've run chkdsk upon Vista startup and I have no issues when running vista.

4. This is the clincher - I never had these problems with TI 9

So as it stands, I have no trustable images with my new TI 10 program. I still have the old TI9, and I'm going to do a test later to see if that works. If it does, then I think Acronis has serious technical issues.

 

I did just that this morning, that is how I first ran into the image being corrupted - it wouldn't finish the re-imaging on my spare test drive. Good thing I tried to find out if the software was functioning properly.

Here is the error message:

Operation with partition "0-0" was terminated.
Details:
Image corrupted (0x70020)
Tag = 0x82DB9339B70C3AFC

 

Don't discount memory issues too quickly. TI stresses memory more than most programs. Let us know if TI9 works OK.

 

1. Have you tried booting from the TI 10 Recovery CD and creating an image and verifying it?

2. Have you tried booting from your old TI 9 Recovery CD and creating and verifying an image with it. Note that TI 9 can't be installed on Vista, but it can image a Vista drive when booted from the Recovery CD. This also should allow you to be protected while figuring out the problem with TI 10.

3. After creating the image with TI 9, test whether TI 10 can verify that image. TI 10 can verify images made with earlier versions of TI.

Just as a comment, I have made images of Vista with TI 10.4942 to USB drives, and they all verify normally. Something on your system is causing a problem. The question is what is the source? Keep up the detective work.

 

TI9 likely doesn't use exactly the same locations as TI10 and normal PC use does not guarantee that you don't have some marginal locations. Depending on how much RAM you have and what you run, it is possible that a lot of the memory is hardly used.

Solving the problem is a process of elimination and this is one of the variables to eliminate or confirm as the problem.

 

Yes this morning, it didn't verify.

I started it but it was going to take 2 hrs so I moved on to cleaning memory contacts.

On hold ...

I took out the memory and cleaned the contacts with alcohol, put back. Am now doing another image to HD for a preliminary test. Stand by...

Edit: The Image failed again. I ran the memchecker for a while, but it found no errors at all. My PC seems to run just fine, so ... what to blame here? Now resorting to running TI 9 from my old CD to see what unfolds, stand by...

 

Mike, if your V9 rescue CD doesn't work run Memtest overnight to eliminate memory as an issue.

 

Calling all experts -

Preface: Why did Acronis make TI 10?

Thomasjk wrote:

It did work!

Synopsis:

I booted from my Acronis 9 build 3854 CD, and created a Vista image to my USB drive and verified it.

It verified good!

Next, I booted back into Vista and tried a validation of the TI 9 image (just verified on my USB drive) from TI 10 build 4942.

It verified the TI 9 image good!

Then I made a bootable new Vista HD from a spare HD with the image created by TI 9 build 3854 which was verified good from both TI 9 & 10.

It booted perfectly and Vista ran as normal.

Well then, what is the problem with TI 10? It can't be caused from running within Vista, because it won't make a verifiable image from the TI 10 CD running linux either.

I seriously doubt I have memory problems, because I ran a memory test for an hour (even though I don't have problems with my PC) and no memory errors were detected.

It isn't a USB problem because I did the verifiable image to my USB drive using TI 9 and made the new Vista bootable HD from the USB drive, it worked flawlessly.

So, I have to conclude that TI 10 isn't ready for prime time. I really wonder how many people are trusting the images being created with TI 10 and not verifying them to be sure. I had good experiences with TI 9 and so I trusted the images from TI 10 until I had some free time to experiment with them. Whatever the issue is, I hope they fix it, but until then, I must go back to my TI 9 CD and I guess I'll charge them interest on the upgrade money I spent on TI 10, plus sending them a bill for my troubleshooting time. Sounds fair.

 

OK, so TI 9 still works and can even be verified by TI 10.

I saw your comment earlier that you postponed the TI 9 backup because it was going to take about 2 hours. How long did it take when you made it and how many GB are used on the drive you imaged? Unless you have 50GB used, that sounds like a long time for USB 2.0.

I'm wondering if this really is a USB 2.0 problem.

Did you have Windows XP installed previously on this same computer with TI 9 successfully doing backups in Windows?

 

mikex11,

Have a look at this thread. Experienced posters say that verified images can't be trusted and "The only way to be sure a backup image is good is to restore it to a spare drive". How much time do you want to devote to backing up? I suspect the majority of TI users don't do test restores and are holding backup images that have a chance (albeit small) of failure to restore. In my opinion this is quite unsatisfactory.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=178796#17

 

My Vista drive is using up 25 GB, so that is the size of the backups. No, it's not a USB 2 problem. I don't know, it took several hours to back it up and verify using TI 9 from the CD. Then once I saw it verified OK (something I couldn't get TI 10 to do all day), another hour to create an image on a spare drive.

Yes. And I had done restores using TI 9. I don't trust TI 10 at all for now. If TI 9 does Vista reliably, what did they "improve" in TI 10? Sounds like they de-proved it instead of im-proved it.

 

Yes they may be in for quite a shock if they don't verify the image. I used to think that was a fairly useless step until yesterday, after all how many times does your computer fail to copy files properly? After using TI 9 and restoring my drive several times in the past, I didn't give that product a second thought. I just assumed it was going to work. But now after "up" grading to TI 10, I have totally lost confidence in the new version. Whatever they did to make it compatible with Vista (and I don't see what they needed to do since I just proved I can do it all with TI 9) broke it, at least on my system. Why should a customer have to do all this troubleshooting themselves?

Acronis, are you reading this? I suggest keeping updates going for your reliable product TI 9 until you can make TI 10 reliable. Should I send this information to your team?

Versions used were TI 9 build 3854 & TI 10 build 4942

 

Hello mikex11,

As your kit seems to have passed all the tests you have tried it has to be a problem with the installation of build 4942.
What I suggest you do is to download and install build 4940. You should first uninstall 4942.
I put this forward with some confidence as I have used 4940 for daily whole drive images and restores since 2nd February 2007. In that time I have actually had two corrupt archives reported. These were shown up part way through the restore process, I do not use the validation process at all IMHO it is a time waster.

Like you I have run all the tests including an overnight run of Memtest 86 3.3. All passed with flying colours.
So I have had two failures with corrupt images out of a run of 150. I have no idea what caused them though it must surely a random event in my hardware rather than an intrinsic problem with the TI software.

Xpilot

 

Mikex11. I'm glad you were able to validate with TI9 B3854. I personally have not upgraded to TI10 and have stayed with TI9 B3677. I'm running WINXP SP2 with no plans to upgrade to Vista in the foreseeable future. Someone else reported using V9 on Vista here some time ago. Not sure why it works though.

 

I can't get 4940. My acronis account doesn't have that build available for download.

 

I knew TI 9 worked on Vista, because I had tried it successfully before I was bamboozled into upgrading to TI 10, which I assumed was more "compatible" with Vista, whatever Acronis means by that statement. As far as my experience is concerned, it's far less compatible. I submitted a problem report this morning, but I doubt anything can be done until they figure it out in the next update. Why can't I just get a product that works?

 

From what I've seen, using the Linux recovery CD made from a TI9 installation on XP may work with Vista but the Windows application itself won't. Acronis does not claim any part of TI9 will work with Vista.

 

If you go to product history at the bottom of your account page you should be able to find the previous version there.

Xpilot

 

TI 9 is not vista compatible. Just because you can install it, and perhaps produce a backup does mean it will get you out of the crap when you come to do a restore - especially a system partition restore.

Also, check out the V10 datasheet

System Requirements
• NEW! Windows Vista


F.

 

You don't seem to be reading the entire thread. I definitely did do just what you said couldn't be done. I made a Vista disk image using TI 9 and restored the drive perfectly to a spare drive. Something I can't get TI 10 to do. So your theory is invalid.

 

It does make a difference whether it is the Vista setup or whether something else creates the original partition. It also makes a difference whether you do a partition or disk restore. The same problem exists in some form with V10 ironically. If you have confidence that V9 is suffice for Vista then good luck.

F.

 

TI 10 Home build 4942

I had this problem with file-backups. Turned out to be all System Volume Information folders. If I exclude (uncheck) these folders, file-backup validation completes OK.

This problem persists with drive-backups (drive images), of course, since you cannot exclude anything. I just do not validate drive-backups.