TI and ext3 backups

I have a NAS device which I have installed Debian Lenny on (the NAS boots primarily from its attached drive). I'm not that familiar with linux but it looks like there are three partitions: a small ext2 system partition, a large ext3 data partition, and a small swap partition.

I removed this drive from my NAS and attached it to my computer via USB. I booted from the TI rescue CD and attempted to backup the drive. I tried this with the latest version of Echo and TI Home 11.

In both cases, I was told that all partitions contained errors and could only be backed up as raw. As far as I can tell, however, all partitions are healthy.

My goals are two-fold: At the very least, I would like to make a full backup of the drive. While I can do this sector-by-sector, that is not optimal. Secondly, I would like to clone the drive to a smaller destination drive. As the data partition (ext3) is 90% empty, this would be doable if TI could resize the partition -- but this is not allowed as it is reported as damaged.

I was under the impression that TI supported ext2 and 3 natively. Am I missing something here?

Thanks for any help or information.

 

Have you checked the partitions for any errors when the drive was in the NAS enclosure? (Probably best done from Lenny or the Live CD.)

Does a Live CD of Lenny (I assume there is one) show errors when you check the partitions when the drive is in the USB enclosure?

Do you know the I-Node size being used on the partitions? 256 byte I-Nodes are not yet supported.

 

From google, it looks like the default inode size for debian is 256. That probably explains why this used to work when I had a much older linux distro installed, but fails now.

Do you know if Acronis has announced any plans to support the new size in TI Home 11 or in Echo? I know there's supposed to be at least one more build of Echo at anyrate...

Thanks for the help.

edit: on the plus side, I learned what an inode is.

 

Acronis doesn't release any dates for updates, but they are aware of the problem. If I had to guess, it should be supported in a future build TI 2009 (or the next version) and they'll probably update Echo to support it too. I doubt they'll release an update for TI 11.

 

Thanks for the info re the updates. Hopefully I'm not bothering you with the continued questions...

I searched the forum and it appears that Home 2009 may support 256 bit inodes now. I could find no information on whether Echo support was planned.

Any idea if the trial of 2009 is full featured? Assuming it supports 256 bit, would the trial version allow me to clone and resize the drive? I can deal with sector-by-sector backups in the long term, but I'd rather not reinstall from the ground up (which would also require me reflashing the NAS).

I emailed a support contact regarding future 256bit inode support for Echo. I'll update this thread if I get a response.

 

You can certainly try the TI 2009 trial and see if it will work. The trial CD will only do restores. If you want to try a clone, you'll need to do it in Windows (supports all features for the trial period).

I forgot that 256 byte I-Nodes were supposed to be supported in the last (or later) builds of TI 2009. I was going to test it, but never got around to it. There are also some conflicting posts from Acronis Support:
Not supported (newer post).
Supported (older post).

 

Hello MudCrab and nemesisdb,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

The appropriate article in our database has been updated yesterday.

Acronis True Image Home 2009 Build 9709 officially supports ext3 file system, which has i-node size equal to 256 bytes. This is available in English version at the moment only.

The latest builds of the corporate versions of Acronis True Image Echo also support 256 byte I-Nodes.

nemesisdb, could you please let me know your license numbers via PM? I will provide you with the ISO files to create another Acronis Booting rescue media.

Also, please correct me if I am wrong. You are able to boot from the Linux drive directly, is this correct?

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

Oleg,

Thank you for your reply. I actually just received a link to the ISO from support as well. Unfortunately, I am away on vacation and will not be in a position to test for another week or so. Perhaps I was mistakenly using an older boot CD.

I have never tried booting to the linux drive directly (by installing it in my computer). The drive primarily contains the OS files for my NAS. The NAS itself is a linksys nslu2, which has been flashed to debian. Presumably whatever is contained in the NAS's (small) flash contributes at least something to the boot process -- so I am not entirely sure that the drive would boot if it were installed in my PC.