True Image and Disk Director cannot read sectors

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by wallow, Apr 11, 2009.

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  1. wallow

    wallow Registered Member

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    I have had no resolution of a problem I posted about earlier.
    From time to time, and with no apparent reason, while initialising, both True Image and Disk Director will say they are unable to read the first few sectors of both of my external drives. I click on ignore. Once fully initialised, Disk Director will show the first partitions of both disks as not being partitions at all, having no drive letters and no file system. I have no problems accessing these partitions with Explorer, and Vista's Disk Management shows these partitions to be healthy, with the NTFS file system and the correct drive letters.
    At this point, I have two options. I can either run the system filechecker (sfc \scannow) or I can reinstall the Acronis drivers (SnapAPI), reboot, and all is OK. True Image and Disk Director both now read all partitions correctly. But sooner or later, often within the same day, the problem recurrs. I need to know the reason this is happening. It is not a problem with the external drives or with memory. It is a problem with the Acronis applications.
     
  2. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    We could use a little more information. If you posted it previously, I apologize for not remembering the data.

    1. What version of TI and DD are you using? (Version and build number)

    2. Since SFC checks Windows files and SnapAPI is a TI file, it's odd that either procedure restores the drives. Have you tried just rebooting without either procedure?

    3. Is there a difference between a Restart and a full Power down cold reboot?

    4. What are the external drives? USB, Firewire, eSATA? Brand?

    5. How are the external drives connected. Directly to the PC or via a hub? Are they connected to a front port or to a rear port?

    6. If these are USB drives, what other USB devices are connected to your PC?

    7. What type of PC is this? Desktop/notebook? Brand/model?

    This is very odd behavior, and I'm just looking for some data that will spark an idea from the crew here.
     
  3. wallow

    wallow Registered Member

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    Thank you for your reply.

    1. What version of TI and DD are you using? Latest version of both

    2. Since SFC checks Windows files and SnapAPI is a TI file, it's odd that either procedure restores the drives. Have you tried just rebooting without either procedure? Rebooting on its own doesn't work

    3. Is there a difference between a Restart and a full Power down cold reboot? Haven't checked this out

    4. What are the external drives? USB

    5. How are the external drives connected. Via a hub and to a rear port

    6. If these are USB drives, what other USB devices are connected to your PC?
    Printer, card reader

    7. What type of PC is this? Desktop. MSI motherboard, dual core 3 GHz processor, 4 GB RAM, Vista Home Premium

    I hope this helps. The software works well apart from this but I cannot afford to have this particular problem constantly recurring, and I will be forced to abandon the software if I can't get it sorted
     
  4. wallow

    wallow Registered Member

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    Problem recurred

    It just happened again when I woke the computer from sleep ... Could that have anything to do with it? And this time it only misread the first sectors of one of my drives. The first sector is coloured yellow, i.e. it is primary, there is no drive letter, and written on it is 195.3 GB FS: None Partition: 0x7 (NTFS, HPFS. Clicking on Properties, under Errors I get File system error: Invalid format. However, there is nothing wrong with the partition; it is visible in Explorer with the correct drive letter, the files are accessible and so on, and if I recover from the issue in the above-mentioned way, on rebooting Disk Director \ True Image will come round to this way of thinking too.
     
  5. wallow

    wallow Registered Member

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    Suggestion

    Further thought: these external drives were initially formatted with Partition Magic on my old XP computer. Could that be why the Acronis software is having problems with them? But why would the problems only be sporadic?
     
  6. wallow

    wallow Registered Member

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    Correction

    I'm sorry but I gave an erroneous reply earlier on: simply rebooting does solve the problem; what I did before rebooting was irrelevant. The question still is what goes wrong and why rebooting fixes it.
    I seem to be talking to myself here: does anyone have any ideas?
     
  7. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    The first thing I'd do is disconnect the hub and plug the drives into USB ports on the REAR of the computer.

    Hubs can have some odd results with Acronis software, so let us know how this works.

    Thaks for rechecking the reboot. I was really confused when I read your first comment that rebooting didn't fix anything and very happy when you corrected that.

    Also, since the problem is with more than just Acronis software, this appears to me to be a hardware problem. Removing the hub from the connection will help identify where the problem is.

    And, I'm sorry it seemed like you were talking to yourself for a while. I was doing other stuff.
     
  8. bodgy

    bodgy Registered Member

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    Your comment about TI and Vista comming out of sleep mode. I have found that Vista is a little shaky coming out of sleep and standby, for me (TI is OK) it loses connection with my WiFi and even though it recognises their is a beacon, it will not connect until a cold boot is initiated.

    I suspect from your description that your Vista is doing something similar, but of course in your case it's manifesting itself with TI.

    However as JMK says, TI and external hubs are not good.


    One reason this might happen is the way Vista rechecks loaded drivers via power management when it re-awakes.

    Colin
     
  9. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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    Hello wallow,

    Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image

    First of all I would recommend you to check the disks (including external) for errors:

    - Go to the Command Prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd)
    - Enter the command: "chkdsk DISK: /r" (where DISK is the partition letter you need to check) for every partition that is visible in My Computer. Please note, that checking the C: drive may require you to reboot the machine.

    If you have any antivirus installed disable or uninstall it temporarily and see if the issue persists. Then follow instructions I have sent you via PM. Let us know the results.

    Best regards,
    --
    Dmitry Nikolaev
     
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