Image validated ok, restoration corrupt!?

Hello everyone:

This is my first time on the forum. I need a little help and some answers! I made a backup image on my Drive "D" and when needed I was able to restore the image to Drive C without any problems. However, the last time I tried to restore the image the restore process went to the very end, with just seconds to go, a pop up message said something like, " sectors counted not the same as recorded.", then I clicked OK. Rebooted the computer and nothing happened, the entire partition and OS was gone! Seems the entire partition was wiped out during the unsuccessful restore.

After reformatting and reinstalling Windows XP Pro SP3 I installed the latest Acronis 11. Just out of curiosity I had the new program validate the old "failed image" and at the end of validation it said "validation suceeded". Now I have a problem and some questions.

1)Does "validation suceeded" mean that the saved image is not corrupt and ok?

2)Can a newer Acronis program do a successful validation and restoration of an image made by an older version of Acronis Ture Image?

3)Can I restore this image unsing the newer Acronis software?

4)Why did the failed restore wipe out the entire restored partition and OS? Is this typical of a failed image restore? Is so, this really sucks as I had more than 6 years of data on this drive and relied on Acronis to backup these files.

I am now scared to death to attempt another "restore" until I get some solid information from the experts.

Your comments and help on this will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Yellowstone7

 

Hi Yellowstone7 I am sorry to hear you had major problems.
I will attempt to answer a few of your questions.
1 yes but the true test unfortunately is an actual restore a lot of the people on this site do a "test" restore to another HD.
2 Yes.
3 You should be able to, but again the only true test is a "test" restore mentioned above.
4 The restore erases the disk and "hopefully" recovers to the state of the original Image.
Now some questions did you do the recovery using the "rescueCD", or from the windows environment? If from the RescueCD did you validate it using the CD, before hand and have you tried it now?
When you say that you have 6 years of "data" do you mean data, such as pictures, music etc. this data can be saved by mounting the image and copy and pasting to the HD. If you mean software programs then of course they would have to be reinstalled.

 

Hi Dennis:

Thanks for your very quick and useful reply! I guess I had such good luck, for so many years with Acronis (in the older versions) that I got careless and lazy with this one. I did the fatal restore from the Windows environment and not from the Boot CD. I didnt think to do a validating of the old image before performing the actual restore. Now I wish I had done that. I will attempt to mount the defective image and recover some data from it.
On the validating question, I do have three HDs installed in my computer. I can perform a test restore to the E Drive, the third HD. How would you go about doing this? With the Rescue CD or via Windows? After the test restore, AND if it is successful, what would I need to do to go back to this image to make it work again in my C drive? Can I make the successful restored in Drive E the active system? Using the E HD but renaming the drive to C? Please bear with me as I am pretty new at this.

Again, many thanks for your help!

Yellowstone7

 

Can't tell you much about restoring to a different disk and then making it bootable. It will restore but you may have to go through some gyrations making it bootable.

One thing you should be aware of is that even though you start a restore in Windows and enter the data for it, the actual restore is done by the TI Linux rescue environment if the partition being restored is the active one, typically C. That is why the PC reboots - it loads the Linux environment. It is also why a lot of people come unstuck at the recovery phase. They validate an image in Windows and think all is OK but Windows isn't what has to read the image when it is being restored.

When new hardware is being used or a new version of TI is installed, it is imperative that the Linux version be checked out. Best way, as mentioned, is a test restore. Next best method is to create the archive using the TI CD and then validate it using the TI CD.

Try validating the bad archive both in Windows and with the boot CD and see if you get the same, or any error message in both cases. The message you got about sector count has been mentioned before but it isn't the most common one which is "archive corrupted". It could be that your system has a problem with the driver that creates the image under Windows.

 

Sorry yellowstone7 I was hoping someone who had done a test restore recently would post an answer here It's been a while since I did it. I will have to go from memory and it is fading.
First it is not a good idea to have two "C" drives on the computer. If memory serves me right, I uninstalled the C drive and installed my test drive and did an image to it, if that didn't work I would just plug my old drive back in.
Hopefully someone will help here, I am fairly sure that once I had the "C" drive in place and plugged in the proper order that I then booted up and when everything worked fine, I removed the "test" drive and installed my original C drive back in, booted up and then reinstalled my test drive back in it's original position and windows reassigned a name to it on bootup.
Were you able to mount your old image?

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

I can add that the initial error message "sectors counted not the same as recorded" was caused by file system errors that were present at the source drive during the backup. The Backup Archive Validation Wizard checks the compliance of the information that was read from the source drive with the information stored to the backup image. That's why the validation didn't report an error. The program has created the exact copy of your old hard drive.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee