Who DOES NOT have a problem with corrupt images...

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by hoser_d, Feb 5, 2005.

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  1. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    Stefanos,

    Now all we have to do is to get you to disable the USB 2 on the motherboard and install a PCI USB 2 card with an NEC chipset and drivers to see if that works better than the one on the motherboard. I've read that NEC is the best chipset, and I've had good results with a USB 2.0 PCI card with NEC.

    If it worked without corruption, it would confirm that the motherboard USB 2.0 chipset (and driver) is the problem.

    Do you mind buying a card and tearing your computer apart to satisfy our curiosities? :)

    John
     
  2. hgratt

    hgratt Registered Member

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    If I were Acronis I would pick up the tab for this. It would put to rest a nasty problem and vindicate, to a large degree, their imaging product.

    Harvey
     
  3. FanJ

    FanJ Guest

    In case this might help:

    As far as I know my Sitecom USB2/Firewire-card uses the NEC chipset for USB2.
    Just checked with Everest.
    Please note that I'm on W98SE ;)
     
  4. brandis

    brandis Registered Member

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    USB20 is only one problem. I have a problem with 1 pc (compaq armada 5000 labtop) when I tryied to recover via LAN. But I did not make tests to isolate the problem, and our PC server use also USB20 to connect to the extenal backup drive. This hase to be tested because the most corrupt files where written with this PC....
    My task is to be shure that all the pc in my company are working well and can be restored. I can only do testing AFTER I finished my daily work....
     
  5. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    Stefanos,

    All I was asking is that you stay up all night to do more testing because your results are so interesting. :)

    Seriously, I appreciate all the testing you have reported.

    John
     
  6. SLR

    SLR Registered Member

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    I just bought a new laptop and an external USB drive to back it up, and I also experienced a strange problem, not with the laptop, but with my old desktop. I successfully backed up and verified an image of my laptop, so I decided to try the same thing on my desktop, which I had been backing up to a second internal drive. Well, the backup completed successfully, but when I tried to verify the image, I got a WRITE ERROR message part way through the process. This is not the same as the IMAGE CORRUPTED error that I got when I first tried TI on my desktop. That turned out to be due a bad memory module that worked fine for normal Windows stuff, but couldn't handle TI work. Anyway, to make a long story short, I read all of the messages in this forum, and then tried some tests.

    1. Try CHECK IMAGE on laptop. Both laptop and desktop images checked out OK.

    2. Try CHECK IMAGE on desktop using USB 1.0 port. It took a looong time, but again checked out OK.

    3. Try again using a different USB 2.0 port on desktop. OK again.

    So, it appears to be definitely related to the USB 2.0 PCI adapter card in my desktop.

    Some facts:
    I am using TI 8.0 Build 791. Both images are a little over 5GB

    Desktop - Micron Millennia 733MHz P3 with VIA chip set USB 1.0 ports built in and 512MB of RAM. Syba USB 2.0 PCI board with NEC chip set installed recently. Running Win2K SP4 with all the latest patches and updates. Disk format is FAT32.

    Laptop - HP Pavillion zd7000 3.0GHz P4 with Intel 82801EB chip set USB 2.0 ports built in and 1GB of RAM. Running WinXP SP2 with all the latest patches and updates. Disk format is NTFS.

    USB Drive - no name 80GB USB 2.0 external drive bought from FlashMemoryStore.com. I have no idea what is inside the box. Disk format is NTFS.

    I hope that this helps.

    Steve
     
  7. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    Steve,

    Did you try connecting the external drive again to the USB 2 port on the Desktop and checking the image? Is the WRITE ERROR (strange message when you are only reading the file) repeatable?

    John
     
  8. brandis

    brandis Registered Member

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    Hello Steve,

    1. you hade corruption with your desktop using TI
    2. you found that your memory stick had some problem (how did you confirm this?)
    3. you did change it, now its working
    4. Now you did try to backup the desktop via USB20
    5. You check the Image with the labtop and it is o.k.
    6. check with Destop USB1.1 is O.K.
    7. check with desktop USB2.0 you get write error with other USB2.0 port its o.k.

    Is this repatable with the USB2.0 ports??
     
  9. SLR

    SLR Registered Member

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    John and Brandis,

    The memory problem was diagnosed and fixed a couple of months ago when I first got TI and tried to use it to back up my desktop to a second internal drive. People in another thread in this forum helped me figure that one out. I was skeptical at first, because my computer seemed to be working fine. However, a few mysterious crashes and the fact that I could successfully create an image with the TI boot disk convinced me to hunt down a memory test and try it out. I used MEMTEST run from a DOS boot disk and found that one of my two 256MB modules was so flakey that it wouldn't even pass the initial test to find out how much memory was installed. I was really surprised, since I had purchased the board directly from Micron, not some cheap no name place. Even though the board was three years old, I was able to exchange it for a new board for only the cost of mailing the bad one back to Micron, because their memory has a lifetime guarantee.

    On the subject of USB 2.0 problems, yes, the WRITE ERROR occurred every time that I tried to verify either image with the desktop machine. No, I did not retry the original desktop USB 2.0 port. At that point it was way passed my bedtime, and I had already spent several hours on the problem. I also have not tried running several checks on the new port, so I can't say for certain that the problem is completely resolved. Perhaps I should also note that the other 3 ports on the Syba card have nothing much plugged into them. Two of the ports have cables for two different Nokia cell phones plugged in, but no phones attached. The third port has a compact flash card reader attached with a 32MB card in the reader. I'm not familiar with the workings of USB chips, so I don't know how much, if any interaction there might be between the ports.

    Steve
     
  10. seejayohh

    seejayohh Registered Member

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    Re all,

    I DO NOT have problems with corrupt images, so I thought I would pipe in and share my information.

    I have tested and used TI8 (764/774) on 3 different PC's with an external USB2 HD for image storage. I should also note that I've tested with a NEC chipset based USB2 PCI card as well. (Vantec GO2.0 USB2 PCI card Model: UGT-PC205)

    Essentially what I'm doing is using the full boot disk of TI to create images of drives...PC's or notebooks. Therefore I'm NOT creating my images inside windows. I've successfully verified via the boot disk only OR within Windows.

    PC1 - VIA KT400A chipset using onboard USB
    PC2 - VIA KT600 chipset using onboard USB
    PC3- Intel 865PE chipset using onboard USB (Asus P4P800SE)
    IBM R30 Thinkpad (unknown chipset..possible Intel)
    IBM T23 Thinkpad (Intel chipset)
    Vantec NexStar2 USB2.0 only, enclosure
    Seagate Barracuda 7200.7plus 120GB drive, 8Meg cache (5yr warr.)

    I have tried all the combinations that people have been having with corrupt images, but I just cannot reproduce any of them.

    - Created images over 100BaseT network & stored on RAID1 array
    - Created images directly to USB2 hard drive
    - Copied images created above from the USB2 drive to other PC's, and back again

    I've downloaded and used the md5sum.exe tool provided by acronis, and no matter how many images I create and copy to and from the USB2 drive/network drive, or to other drives, the sums are ALWAYS the same, and Acronis ALWAYS reports good images.

    This makes me think the following:

    1) Either I'm lucky, or the combination of hardware I'm using doesn't have "issues"
    2) My hardware isn't flakey. I build everything myself (only quality parts) and throughly stress test.
    3) It seems that most of the posters with problems are those with large 160GB & greater capacities. Perhaps 48bit addressing is wreaking havoc?

    There are just too many variables at play. The only way is to reduce as many as possible, and hopefully enough of a pattern will emerge.

    I encourage everyone who's having problems to test their ram with "memtest86" and check/certify the drives they're using (WD DL-Diag, Seatools, PowerMax etc). Flakey RAM or HD could be the culprit. It also wouldn't hurt to change IDE cables and drive enclosures as well...they're cheap.

    Good luck to all.
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2005
  11. Steve1947

    Steve1947 Registered Member

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    The corrupt image problem has been around for a long time! Rather than wait for Acronis to fix the problem I suggest that they (someone) provide an earlier version that appears to work, reference the second post on this thread. Apparently there was earlier image that did not have the corruption problem.

    Why this problem cannot be fixed baffles me. I suggested in earlier posts that a simple program modification that would identify the files that were corrupted would assist the user in having, at least, a partial backup.
     
  12. Ed Y

    Ed Y Registered Member

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    I'm creating an image on an external USB 2.0 hard drive (TEAC 80Gb) using a Belkin PCI USB 2.0 card which using a NEC chip. I appear to have solved my corrupt image problem (at least for the time being) by sizing the images at 700MB rather than only 1 image that is approx 5GB. Only time will tell, I guess.
     
  13. bigg1

    bigg1 Registered Member

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    I've tried splitting the image into 650MB chunks.
    No luck, after moving the files to another place (different than the place they were originally created/saved to) and checking the files, TI reports the same error.
    I copied all the 650 MB pieces to an USB HDD , burned them to a DVD, and copied them to a network drive. Then checked all the above.
    The files stored on the original location (my D: partition) were reported to be OK.
    The same files on my USB HDD, DVD disk and network drive were reported to be corrupt.
    For now, I can't trust TI anymore - I'm having nothing but problems with it, and nobody seems to be able to solve them.
    I'm sorry I lost so much time with it(days, really) , trying to make it work. Obviously, this is not not a finished product but some sort of 'try it and hope it works' thingie.
     
  14. bocsor

    bocsor Registered Member

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    A question for brandis, or anyone else:

    If, as seems to be the case, many of us have read/write problems with USB storage devices, as evidenced by Acronis "corrupt image" errors, then why do we not always see low level error messages from the USB drivers which by specification utilize some implementation of CRC error checking during the read/write process? We only see evidence of these errors from the "check image" utility after the fact, so to speak. If, for example you are printing to a USB printer, and there is a write error, you WILL get an error message from the printer driver. I've gotten "corrupt image" messages from Acronis, but never from the USB driver or OS.
     
  15. wdormann

    wdormann Registered Member

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    Not having seen a corrupt image error myself, It's just a guess.... Is the error seen when using the rescue CD or Secure Zone? If so, then it's not using the windows drivers.
     
  16. Ed Y

    Ed Y Registered Member

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    I still don't think the problem is in TI. Think about it. I can create an image my C drive all day long (approx 5 GB). I then run a MD5 hash count on it and save it. Run TI "check image" on it and never have a problem. Run the MD5 hash count on it again and it's still the same. If I do a copy to the external USB drive (not TI but Windows), then run the MD5 hash count, it's different. Obviously if I now run a TI "check image" on it, it will show corrupted. This approach, for me anyway, is sporadic. Sometimes the Windows copy will work fine.

    If I create 700 MB segments to the external HD or to the C drive and move them to the external drive, both TI "check image" and MD5 hash count show the image is good (at least so far, I'm about done testing for now.I'm just going to do weekly backups). I've run memory tests with no errors, swapped PCI USB 2.0 card from a Mercury/Manhattan card with Via 6202 chipset to a Belkin card with NEC chipset and still get the same. I've run defrag's and CHKDSK on the external drive. I let a small PC shop in the rural Mississippi town close to me take the external disk and try it on some of there machines (they also use TI to build machines or replace hard drives, they never had one failure no matter how they made the "create image" run.
     
  17. brad stout

    brad stout Registered Member

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    I have backed up my HD three times to CDs (Using a Yahama CD burner and Nero software) and each time I check them using the image checker I get the Corrupt Image message. The last time I backed up using the TI Boot Disk and there were no other systems running. There are other threads here that suggest that the problem may be with the Image Checker itself. Some folks have reported rebooting their system and then running the image checker again and the "corrupt image" being OK.

    It appears that folks are having this corruption problem with different sorts of external burners and drives. Any thoughts?
     
  18. brandis

    brandis Registered Member

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    During my tests with my home PC and USB2.0 I did get 3-4 blue screens of W2000 and a view time an W2000 error message saying that I did have reading writing errors.

    On one other PC I did get EVERY time a blue sreeen trying to save a 80GB drive via USB20 to my 250GB disk (after 2 hours)
     
  19. brandis

    brandis Registered Member

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    Most of the problems we have using computers are caused by SOFTWARE, for example WINDOWS with its endless bugfixes. This lead us to the believe that all errors come from the SOFTWARE. To accept that the hardware is the cause of an error is more difficult to believe. I had to make many differt tests to believe this myself, I dicussed this with some friends, and they cant believe it....
     
  20. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    Hi Stefanos,

    Have you found a way to make good backups to the USB 2 external hard drive on the File Server at your work? I know this is a major concern for you.

    John
     
  21. KCXLT

    KCXLT Registered Member

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    Add me to the list with corruption issues. If only I had found this forum before I bought the product. I've read some posts and this is what I tried. I've got 2 harddrives, 1 is C,D,E and the other is K. I deleted everything off K except for 1 file that was about 1.5gig. I backed up K to K, the file size reported was 3.2Gig. Verified the image and it was ok. Then I backed up K to D and verified the image and it was corrupted. The drives are on the primary IDE controller as master/slave. This along with the problems creating the boot cd are not making me real happy about my purchase(I finally got the boot cd made by hitting proceed and letting that close the cd tray, other wise I got and error)

    So it appears to me that I can't rely on this as a backup yet. I guess I'll try making the image from the cd, which gives errors on startup, but eventually makes it to the Acronis screen.
     
  22. martyr4

    martyr4 Guest

    I use both a Maxtor One Touch 120 and 250g. I get perfect Images everytime and have performed many restores.
     
  23. KCXLT

    KCXLT Registered Member

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    I fooled around some more. Booted using the CD, imaged a 3.2gig file to another computer in my house, then verified. It was ok. Then booted to XP and re-verified and it was ok.
     
  24. earther

    earther Registered Member

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    I also have encouraging news to report. This week I got a new computer:

    P4 2.8Ghz
    Asus P4800SE
    NVidia GForce 64MG ram
    2 80GB SATA drives (but RAID not yet functioning - maybe down the line)
    2 x 256 DDR RAM

    Once I got it set up and all progies installed I imaged from the boot disk to the second internal drive. Then I copied the image to a 40GB external USB2 drive. Image size at normal compression is 2.57GB.

    I am using TI build 791. Both the original and copied images verified OK. I'm keeping my fingers crossed . . .

    A special thanks to Menorcaman for his suggestions about taking the plunge and working from the boot disk.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2005
  25. JerryM

    JerryM Registered Member

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    I am a little embarrassed to ask this, but is an image a photo or just data?

    I had wanted to back up my system, but after reading all the problems with both Acronis and Ghost, I think it is more than an average user like me can handle.

    Jerry
     
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