Backup stalls

1. I'm not using Vista.
2. TI worked fine for a long time and it works fine on other backup jobs with compression. There is just one job (a very important job) that is working without comprsssion only.

 

Windows XP SP2 with two days wasted on TI 11 already. Tried fixes posted here except backup without compression. Flaky software. Uninstalled TI 11 and reinstalled TI 10 which works perfectly for Backup/Restore Incremental etc, If it aint broke........ I'll wait until I have another few days to waste and try the next build of T11...or ask for a refund. Compute with Confidence....yeah right.

 

I have got ATI 11 on friday and after doing a fresh install of Vista 32bit, i could do a full disk backup of the fresh install. Now i am having the same problem. The Backup stalls around 48%, 11 minutes left, either at the file shown in rugmankc's screenshot or at winsxs.

Gonna try an uncompressed full backup of the systemstate.

 

AMenge I tried other compressions and so far normal wprks

Jerry

 

Can you explain what compression is working or not working on your system?

 

I am running XP Pro, and ATI 11, buiild 8053. I am having the same problem with backups hanging. I did notice one thing not mentioned (i think) yet. The size of the aborted backup file is always the same: 40,096 kb. This might be meaningful to someone more "programatical". I tried numerous backup locations (including secure zone) and two installs with the driver upgrade. No joy. Any ideas from Acronis?

I really want to use this product.

 

Here's a summary of what I found with my pc (ASUS P5KR, INTEL E8400, 2x Samsung SATA2 500GB, Win XP prof):
- of course I checked memory & drives and have all sw & drivers at the latest available revision.

I want to make backups from one physical drive to the other. Data backup stalls easily reproducable. the process can only be killed with taskmanger. Pressing 'abort' in the Acronis-GUI doesn't help.

the time the process needs until it stalls depends on the following:
- no, normal, high, max compression: the higher the compression level the less the time it needs to freeze...
- even with no compression the data backup stalls if the selected source-data-folders are 'big' enough.

All the following didn't help:
- using TrueImage.exe from BartPE-pak instead of installed one.
- It makes no difference if I run my sata-controller in AHCI or IDE mode.
- It makes no difference if I choose a destination folder on the other or the same physical hard drive.
- I even added an older drive to the ide-port of my mb and used this as backup target.
- in windows safe mode ( F8 ) the backup (must use TrueImage.exe from BartPE-pak then) stalls.
- removed/completely uninstalled av-firewall-software (kaspersky) ..
- with av software uninstalled I disabled/shutdown/killed almost all unneccessary services and processes (down to at least 14?)
- installed snapapi-337, then the newest snapapi-345, set MaxSplitBlock to 100 as suggested from support, ran it with and without logging
- I first uninstalled snapapi-345 and then re-install snapapi-345 with logging enabled. I don't get a snapapi-log-file on my c-drive or elsewhere. What to do?
- seems like after installing snapapi (without logging as recommended by installer) I get more crashes.
- I didn't expect much from this but even tried setting lanman-parameters-IRPStackSize in registry to 25 as suggested somewhere else.

But:
- DataBackup works perfectly using AcronisBoot CD in safe mode when my sata-controller is set to IDE mode in BIOS
- DataBackup hangs in the 'choose backup source window' with AcronisBoot CD in full mode when my sata-controller is set to IDE mode
Well, AcronisBoot CD can't cope with AHCI.

- DataBackup with compression works perfectly using BartPEBoot CD having additional latest INTEL-AHCI-Driver both, when my sata-controller is set to AHCI mode or when it's set to IDE
- I don't have any problems with copying whole partitions - even compressed.
Guess this means I don't have a hardware problem

The task manager/process explorer shows that shortly before the stall happens the number of handles for the TrueImageHomeService.exe suddenly increases from an average of about 500 during 'normal' activity to 1600 within parts of a second and then CPU-percentage goes down to zero...
It's easy to study this as the time for a certain scenario (set of data-backup-source-dirs) is nearly always the same - 1:46min in one of my cases. process explorer shows that these many additional handles are synchronisation handles - seems to be some kind of deadlock situation ... caused by implementation not configuration? A multithread-safety problem? Maybe a problem which arises more often with multi-core CPUs? Just guessing.


regards, Stephan

here's process explorer's report View attachment TrueImageHomeService.exe_stall.txt

 

Hello StephanWeber,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please let us know your Acronis request number (e.g. [Acronis #123456]) which was sent to you in autoreply to your letter? We will find out how the investigation of your issue is going. If you have not received an autoreply then please send us a Private Message containing your e-mail address.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

I have exactly the same problem.
I have been using full data backups with normal compression many times in 2007 without a problem.
I thought it was about time to do a new backup and tried to do it about 10 times this week. It keeps hanging at about 7% each time, but not exactly at the same location. I tried to copy those directories manually, and that worked fine. I did a complete harddisk check, but that did not resolve anything.

It is weird that the backups have been working for a long time, but since about 2008 stopped working. Perhaps some windows update that made it incompatible? I am using Windows Vista Ultimate (without SP). I use RAID0.

Please let me know if the cause has been found and when a fix or workaround can be expected. Or let me know how I can help to resolve the issue. I feel unsafe without any current backup now.

 

The workaround seems to be to turn off "compression", it helped me at least.

Please, don't forget to report this problem to Acronis, since I haven't seen any official confirmation of this problem I assume they are not in a hurry.

 

Hello SmellyCat and everyone interested,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that we are currently investigating the problem, but the exact cause is yet unclear.

Please make sure you use the latest build of the respective version of Acronis True Image. To get access to updates you should first register your software.

If the latest build doesn't solve the problem, please download the latest version of Acronis drivers and install it with disabled logging.

If the issue persists, please collect some information to let us investigate it thoroughly:

- Reinstall Acronis drivers with enabled logging;
- Reproduce the issue and collect the log file without closing any application windows (including the error message windows if there are any). The log file will be created at C:\ . The name of the log file will be snapapi [date-time].log

Please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

I submitted the issue to Acronis, and this is the reply

 

Can folks confirm

1) which versions this happens with
2) whther it happens with full disk/poartition backups or file by file
3) whether the no-compression work-around is permanent or temporary

 

1) True Image Home version 11.0 (build 8,053)
2) Data Backup with a selection of files.
3) Permanent... so far.

 

It's a known bug that ATI11 hangs when attempting file by file backups on some hardware set ups. Interseting that prob only occurs with compression on. Or that might change from one machine to the next, depending on the reason for the prob. Turning compression off seemed to help with a prob where ATI 11 doesn't reliably run tasks, but wasn't a permanent fix.

 

Well, let's hope that their new version comes soon, and the problem is fixed as they say.

 

As has happened to me before, I just wasted an hour or two experimenting when I should have looked here first

Let me just echo that my data (aka. file/folder) backups consistently hang partway through unless I turn compression off. This is with TIH 11.8053 on Vista.

 

WinXP-MC, SATA drive 300 GB, 1 disk, 15 partitions

It's a total disaster. Ver 9.0 has been working like a charm for almost two years and out of the blue started to freeze-up about a week ago. Upgrade to v11_8053 didn't help. Never mind playing around with compression settings, half of the time the TI won't even start properly, it hangs when it tries to scan all the drives, sometimes at drive M, sometimes right away at drive C (progress bar in the bottom left of the main window). During attempt to create SZ from scratch TI hangs three steps before finish, during backup attempt it hangs at the last step.

All this affects only the version installed on the hard drive, the bootable CD works just fine. Microsoft Windows update looks like a likely culprit here.

One possible suggestion for developers would be to add the option to run TI (full version with all relevant features) after booting out of Windows, in Linux. This would be ok with all those users who don't need to run backups in real time but do it once per day or so. F11 is not sufficient here because it has limited features and also won't work with third party boot mangers.

~~ edited to remove links and comments off topic to the Acronis True Image Support forum - snapdragin ~~

 

Hi All,

Before blaming Acronis, do Disk Maintenance on the partition you are creating a Drive / Partition image for.

Run Disk Cleanup, then Schedule Chkdsk with both options being checked and reboot to run. Then run Disk Defragmenter.

Finally run Acronis and create a Partition Image.

Note: Do one partition at a time. Don't do multiple Partitions or entire Large Hard Drives at one time. And disable your Background Anti-Virus Scanning as well as any Active Spyware scanning.

 

Disabling anti-v didn't help, I don't have anti-spy running in real time. Reducing number of partitions per one backup run sounds like a good idea, but you don't need to bother with this if you run TI from the bootable CD under Linux.

I never do Chkdsk because it can get you in trouble but I do everything else regularly. I defrag all partitions sometimes a few times per day with Windows Defrag /f (from a batch file) and run MS Disk Cleanup every day.

I partitioned my HD two years ago using Partition Commander, it boots out of Windows and does all the work in its own "DOS" environment. I wouldn't touch my partitions with any Microsoft product.

After wasting hours on installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, formatting SZ from Partition Commander, checking partitions integrity, etc. all with no results, I'm just giving up on using TI from Windows and will try to set it up outside of it in its Linux environment.

PS: thecreator, I noticed that you still use TI-10-Home, don't rush to upgrade to v11, some users report serious problems with this version:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=200937

 

I have experienced the same issues trying the data backup of selected folders, etc. (WinXP SP2) Total disk imaging has not been an issue. My backup would always stall at 26% complete, which was 6.25GB. I had used the default compression settings. After changing the compression setting to HIGH, however, the backup proceeded smoothly and I have been able to do some test restores of selected files to test the integrity of the save. By the way, this was after installing the most recent SNAP drivers. This now works for me, but clearly there is something wrong with the software and ACRONIS had better correct the issue or run the risk of losing all of the goodwill and product loyalty with their customers (I've used ATI since 9.0). It really irks me when you send in a description of the issue and you repeated get the "form response" (it is even posted in this string!!!). Surely they must be getting the message that this is a problem with their software and not settings or other issues with individual computers.

 

Prior to this past weekend, I installed had the latest Win XP updates. I went away for the weekend, and when I came back ATI 11 was hanging and stalling whenever I tried doing a max compression data backup. Found this thread, and downloaded and installed the Snap drivers linked to in this tread, and now everything seems to be working fine.

Not sure if the Win update had anything to do with it or not, but the Snap drivers worked for me. I was able to explore the backup contents, and I tried restoring a couple of files my most recent data backup. Everything appears to be kosher.

Knock on wood.

 

Just to add, ATI11 on my XP Pro system also has the same issues. I was not able to run a complete backup until I re-installed and turned compression off. I had previously tried compression off but it did not work until I re-installed. Now I find however, that although it was set to create file splits of 4.3gb it now created one large 102Gb file! I was able to test this using ATI10 and everything worked just fine. I am beginning to think that ATI11 is not worth the download let alone the $$$. I am so uncomfortable with Acronis 11 backups that I have been making straight file copies just in case. What a waste of time this product is. I have logged these issues with tech support and waiting on a reply with a fix or I will be asking for a refund on the upgrade.

 

I guess I didn't knock hard enough. @#$%*ing thing is stalling again on a new full data backup!

Any chance of Acronis fixing this thing in my lifetime?

 

I started this thread back at the end of 2007 and I see that it still isn't resolved. After about a week of back-and-forth with Acronis ("try this, try that", "try this again") I gave up and requested a refund for ver 11. I'm back to ver 9, which doesn't stall. I just didn't have the time - or the patience - to debug the product.