True Image 2009 does not recognize its own archive files!?!

I am trying to migrate my hard disk's content to a new, bigger drive.

I first did a backup of the old disks content to an external USB disk drive. This process created a couple of files (MyBackup1.tib-MyBackup8.tib in the root directory of the USB drive. I also created a bootable backup medium (a USB stick).

Then I removed the old HD and put in the new one and formatted it as NTFS drive. Then I booted from the recovery medium and tried to restore the previously generated backup to the new, empty HD. When I get to the backup archive selection and point the "Restore Data Wizard" to the USB drive (or the first file) it keeps telling me "the selected file is not an Acronis True image home archive".

What piece of junk is this Why does TI not recognize its own archive files? How can I convince this stupid program to restore that previously generated backup?

Michael

 

Note: All .tib files must be present and in the same folder during restoration. If one is missing ATI would usually say that the file is corrupted or not supported.

1. Try to select the last backup file instead.
2. If it didn't work, try to validate your backup file before restoration. There is a validation tool; try that.
3. if it says its corrupted; create a new one.

Reason why you have multiple MyBackup1-8 files is because the destination file system of your external USB disk drive is FAT32 which has a limit of 4GB per physical file. So your whole backup file is roughly 28-32GB if I'm not mistaken.

You do not need to do this. ATI can restore your partitions on UNALLOCATED space. It can repartition and format your HD before restoration.

 

The formatting, which is really just setting up the file system happens automatically when the image is restored since it is just part of the image data. You will get the file system of the partition from which the image was created. Anything formatting you do is just overwritten. You can partition the new drive differently and TI will adjust the tables accordingly.

 

They files all were in the same folder. I used the verify tool: it reported "corrupted". So I deleted everything on that USB drive and recreated another backup. Same number of files, etc. When trying to use it: Again: "this is not a valid TI archive"! And the verify tool: "corrupted".
@%*&#$!

So, in the end I tried another route: I used "clone drive" to first copy the entire old HD to the external USB drive and later the USB-drive to the new HD (along with adapting partition sizes). That finally worked. While that was "side stepping the problem" it at least yielded me some result. However, I learned (again): one can't really trust True Image! Already a few times: when things "get rough", it has turned out to be useless and/or buggy!

Michael

 

Michael,

What happened to you is a good reason for validating your backups on the external USB drive immediately after they have been made, as well as including a validation prior to the restore process.

I have made many whole (operating system) partition image backups with TI 2009 directly to two different brand external USB drives, one a FAT32 drive that results in multiple splits, and also restored those images back to the same PC, and not experienced any failures. I have always validated the backups immediately following the initial write, and then again before the restore.

Backing up to and restoring from an external USB drive is not the way I normally work, as it takes longer than writing them to, and restoring from a second local drive in the PC, but I have complete confidence in it working with my hardware. I also know from multiple tests that I can restore from the USB drives when booting from either a recovery CD, or an Acronis bootable recovery on a flash drive.

I know others have experienced the same problem as you - files being written to the external USB drive will not validate. If the backup was made from an installed version of TI 2009, i.e. using the Windows system, then the cause of the problem may be hardware related. You could try writing a backup image directly to a local hard drive from the installed Acronis program, check that it validates correctly, then use Windows to copy that file to your USB drive and re run the validation on it there. If it fails, the problem is in your own equipment.

 

Alas, from experience I have to say that meanwhile I have absolutely NO confidence any more in TI (I am also using 2009)! I also have generated me a recovery medium once (on a USB stick) and TI happily accepted that and eventually reported "success", but when I actually tried to boot from that stick, it did not work. It had apparently forgotten (or been unable) to set the MBR and/or sector 0. But it had reported "success"! ||-(

I eventually found this thread (https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=176958), where others describing exactly the same problem. The HP formatting tool described there eventually did the trick for me.

I tried in total 3 times and each and every time TI refused the just created .tib-files as "this is not an acronis TI archive". I can't create the backup on a local disk, because the point of the entire exercise is, that the local disk is almost full and I wanted to restore to a new, bigger and empty HD! So there is no way, that the backup would fit on the internal drive (and since it's a laptop/tablet, I also can't insert a second HD - no space nor 2nd slot for that).

But as I wrote before: "Cloning" to the external drive and a second time back to the new HD eventually worked.

Michael

 

Not a TI archive is usually caused by reading an archive with a previous version that doesn't understand the new format. It also can be caused if TI can't read the archive properly and make sense of it.

The "archive corrupt" message means that TI cannot read the archive and generate the numerous checksums in memory correctly. TI writes 4000 checksums per gigabyte and stores them in the archive file. A validation reads the archive, recreates the checksums and compares them to the stored values. A single bad bit in any one of them causes the archive to be declared corrupt.

There are various reasons this can happen:
USB device/motherboard chipsets don't play nice together,
USB chipsets have problems with very large files,
cable length too long (use rear connectors, not front),
poor quality USB cable,
USB drive powered from USB connector is starving for power,
USB drive on hub,
other USB devices interfering,
bad sector on USB drive,
bad RAM in PC,
... .

Oldaussiedog has given good advice and if you want to take TI out of the picture completely for your peace of mind, take one of the tib files and use a free checksum calculator to calculate its checksum, MD5 is a good one. Then copy it to the USB drive using Windows and run the calculator on that copied file, it must agree. Now copy the file from the USB drive back to the PC and run it again on the newly copied file, again, you should get the same value.

Run chkdsk X: /r on your partitions. Do the USB one receiving your archive first. Substitute the drive letter of the partiton being tested for X.

Run memtest86+ free from www.memtest.org , current version is 2.1, IIRC. Let it run for several passes but overnight is best. There must be zero errors.

Often the corrupt problem arises in TI's Linux recovery environment rather than in Windows. This is typically caused by a poor Linux driver for the hardware. Note that you must test the Linux environment on the boot CD even if the Windows stuff works because it is what gets used to restore the image to the active partition - even if the recovery is started in Windows.

 

Where is the validation tool? I am having the same problem.
LNEllen

 

mmo,
The only time I have seen your type error message is when I attempted to use V11 to restore a backup created by 2009. An older program will not restore a backup created by a newer program.

LNEllen,
Don't know what version you are using but look around the menu on both the Windows installed version plus the Rescue CD. Maybe under the TOOLs menu would be a good place to start--otherwise in a sub menu off the main menu.

 

See attached screen shot.