The link is here https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/macrium-reflect.356309/page-196 and I think quite a few people are already subscribing to this excellent service
This one was enough to force a post out of me on this. Pete states they (tune up tools LoL) are a disaster (agree) Stigg is utterly shocked/amazed to discover TheFrogger actually has one of these on board. (and causing an issue?) FWIW The "AVG PC Tune Up" tool I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole anyway
I was using a microSD card in my HTPC as my 'drive' for my Macrium backups. Because it was formatted in FAT32, it split up my backups into 4gb fragments. The consolidate utility won't work on split backups. Is there an easy way to join these splits into usable single file? I am reformatting the microSD into an acceptable format. Could the old timey dos command "copy myfile1.txt+myfile2.txt" work? Looking at the hex data from the beginning of a few sections, it does not look like there is any specific 'header' info tacked onto each split. EDIT: Nope, just a "copy /b x + y + c" won't work. File ends up corrupt.
Now i'm back in this thread for another reason. Macrium on backing up is suddenly showing this at 80%: Bad Sectors: Clusters located in bad sectors. Data may be lost. I aborted and reimaged but got that message again so.... Should I run ChkDsk? I gone so long without running into any issues for quite awhile that some things I forgot. And is running a Surface Test with Easus also a good idea just to confirm the matter.
Install Windows 10 Creators Update, format your data drives using ReFS, keep at least two copies of your data on two different drives.
If you wanna get a jumpstart, go to "Reflect Defaults/Advanced/Advanced Backup Options," CHECK the "Ignore bad sectors when creating images" option then make an image... at least you should get what's there to get. There's an outside chance it may be a heat problem... if so, shut it down and let it cool off before doing the image (of course it may never reSTart again).
After you get the above image, run any surface test to confirm the problem, then do a "ChkDsk /r" (it'll take a while) to see if it can repair the bad sectors. If so, image the System as fast as you can once the repair is made...
Good thing it's only a malware testing HD. Western Digital 320Gb. But still odd (maybe?) Easus is running another surface test and one red dot did display before I stopped it at about 76%. And I set ChkDsk to run after a reboot so will keep an eye on that result. Afterwards if it is still showing bad sector/clusters I'll follow that advice and see if Reflect will be able to finish this time by "Ignore bad sectors" as you recommend. Thank You TheRollbackFrog.
Well that didn't take long. Wasted more time running the Easus Surface Test then ChkDsk. I guess I don't give ole M$ as much credit that they might deserve in improving "speed" or else the disk just had some other minor anomaly that let Win 10 ChkDsk repair in under 2 minutes. Not bad. Am re-running again the image backup.
EASTER, If it took 2 minutes then chkdsk /r didn't run. Open an Admin Command prompt. Type ... chkdsk /r Press Enter
What about "/scan" online and then "/spotfix" offline? "Spot Fix is a parameter that checks the disk and fixes any problems in just a few seconds. The time it takes to run chkdsk using spotfix is based on the number of corruptions instead of the number of files as in older versions of Windows. This means everything is fixed in seconds."
Yep, it stuck again same exact percentage and the transfer rate dropped This pattern is been regular. Let me get right on that. EDIT: ChkDsk at 11%.................that's more like it. I don't know what happen before but I eyeballed the command line this time and followed the whole thing through.
Now I finally got ChkDsk to really run, how long is "a while"? It's ok if even overnight just curious about a rough estimate on of this operation with a Win 10 x64 O/S.
Yes I did, and whether it helped or was needed or not I perform chkdsk /spotfix AFTER first allowing the normal chkdsk /r complete first. What I found so far is that spotfix went through it's scan too and seemed to found something as it stopped around 63% point and a few others beyond and now am trying for the umpteenth time to maybe finally get an image back completion. Whether it's this particular Western Digital's mechanical/magnetic limitations or something else that caused to reveal bad clusters, a completed image this time should show if the ChkDsk repair was enough and rerouted, or the disk is on a final go round or not. But it has been holding up well before now but then again I've introduced some fairly rugged nuggets of foulware which I also suspect might have something to do with this because earlier backups always went off without a hitch. Anyone care to offer their opinion on that speculation?
Hey Easter 2 questions. 1. Do you have any valuable data on that drive 2. Do you have a good older image. Pete
Hey Pete! Eureka! Only a few minutes left and all is well again. It wasn't so much valuable data as a precise layout with a few choice security programs and tools to better further foulware experiments. I almost am under the impression (I seen mention before on earlier systems) (remember the invisible ink pen?) that a foulware might have "done this deed" OR else just some normal wear to disk. I will have to study this further. LoL You have no idea how time consuming it is to set everything up just right (screen recorders/process logging/etc.) with certain programs not to mention fine tune Windows itself to peak performance for me, because a sluggish PC just won't cut the muster when confronted with some foulware. Special Thanks @Robin A. (again)-Maybe I tried this earlier would have saved time. Special Thanks @Briank for the suggestion. Although late in implementing it apparently it perhaps assisted after all. Maybe not but now I know And always Special Thanks @TheRollbackFrog - Appreciate your concern (like @Peter2150) for the safe recovery of data if it had been a HD failing. Although this time it wasn't needed to select that option in Reflect, it would have greatly made preservation of files/programs/folders from off the disk a huge assist. Will have to remember it on some other encounter. Of Note: Windows regained some snappiness after doing the ChkDsk run so something was causing friction and that was well reflected in Macrium's File Transfer Rate counter when it came up on it.
Oh yeah and this. 1. Do you have any valuable data on that drive-Only installed programs and components I DIDN'T want to have to install a second time. 2. Do you have a good older image-Thanks to your persistent needling over this, YES! .
@Robin A.-When you mention in terms of corruption regarding the disk and where spotfix is designed to help reallocate sectors/clusters etc. Could you please explain what entails "fixes"? I assume as mentioned it's about relocating areas of the data disk to allow normal movement of data to flow as initialized at the first making/creating of the partition. Been probing deeper into this in an effort to get a better handle on disk "corruption" and satisfy or not whether a disk can be also maliciously made to seem corrupted via software/command and make a user think their disk is failing when it's perfectly healthy after all.
chkdsk /scan, then /spotfix if problems are detected, can correct the vast majority of problems in the disk. /r is only needed in case of severe corruption. See Redesigning chkdsk and the new NTFS health model.
