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

THIS IS A MESSAGE TO THE ACRONIS STUFF!!!!

Many users with totally different hard/software have this BIG FILE CORRUPTION PROBLEM.

My oppinion: ACRONIS TRUEIMAGE dont cause the problem!

But TI is a software creates BIG IMAGE FILES!

Splitting the image is a only a workaround NOT A SOLUTION!

WHAT CAN ACRONIS DO ?

1. ACRONIS should mention this possible hardware-problem in the MANUAL and HELPFILES

2. ACRONIS should add a option in TI for TESTING the quality/accurity of the ports (IDE ATA SATA USB 1394 LAN-DISK-NETWORK SCSI...... whatever we whant to use)
This test should be made with differnent file-sizes and the results must be written detailed in the LOGS.

3. the verification must be a option in every (sceduled) image with detailed info written in the LOGS (not only the image is corrupt, but the file XXX.YY in this image is corrupt)

HELLO IS ANYONE FROM ACRONIS IS READING THIS THREAD?

DOES ANYBODY OF ACRONIS CARE? ARE MORE THEN 6000 READS OF THIS THREAD NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE A STATEMENT

 

I had trouble "index corrupted" with ATI since a lot of release. The trouble was solved in the past by disconnection of my modem...
But last release created the trouble again with no overclocking (memtest+ without any error) and save of partition from disk C: to disk D: on a brand new installation XP SP2
After looking at all those post, I prefer to go to another software...

 

Re: Still Getting Corrupt Images on USB External Drive

Hey Hoopster, have you fiddled with any USB settings in your BIOS? Enable/Disable Legacy USB support, Enable/Disable USB 2.0 etc? That's an area I would check before I gave up on the external USB drive.

Although ATI has worked perfectly for me (Asus A8V MB, external Seagate USB), I do feel your pain.

Good luck.

David O

 

I bought TI 8 version 786 three months ago and have had the problems with it and all 3 subsequent builds. Currently using build 800.
I am using TI on a home built computer, with ASUS motherboard and Athlon processor, which sometimes works with TI but mostly either creates a corrupted image or won't verify successfully. I'm still investigating why this is so.
I have also tested TI by moving hard disk drives to a DELL computer then used the bootable CD (Linux) version to create and verify an image of the same partitions without any problems so the problems are hardware/software specific.

Corruption occurs with both Windows and bootable CD (Linux) versions so Windows programs such as ZoneAlarm, Antivirus etc are not an issue (well certainly not for Linux version).

I have problem imaging different partitions on different hard disk drives.
Imaging is to Western Digital IDE disks (not external USB/Firewire drive - I do have a Belkin USB 2 PCI card installed but not in use when imaging so I can't imagine how this could be an issue- comments anyone?).

Image creation and verification have been successful for some partitions, generally small partitions.
Corruption occurs almost every time I try to create or verify an image of some larger partitions - I have had problems with partitions larger than 6.5 GB.
Corruption error mesage occurs at random times during image creation and verify. Sometimes during verify of a particular image the error occurs as soon as verify starts, if the verification of the same image is immediately repeated it sometimes proceeds for minutes before getting the error.

The Windows version experiences the above problems as well as other issues such as:
-TrueImageService and Schedule2Helper not responding at logoff and having to be manually ended
-Have had "Acronis True Image has started a scheduled task. The logoff process is temporarily suspended..." message sometimes.
-"Waiting for disconnection from Acronis True Image service" sometimes.
-log file shows 'Pending operation 104 started : "Creating partition image' even though image creation gave success message and bottom right hand side of window showed 'Backup succeeded'.
-very infrequently get Windows Delayed Write Failure message.

Not having any other problems with any other program on the computer.

Following suggestions elsewhere in this forum I have:
Used memtest86 3.2 without problem, also the Microsoft memory check program.
Swapped RAM anyway for another 512MB SDRAM stick, also tried a 256MB stick.
No overclocking.
Imaging to hard disk drive - was using a removable drive caddy (connected to Western Digital IDE hard drive via IDE cable not USB) but also tried with disk directly connected to IDE cable. Tried different IDE cable.
Used SpinRite 6.0 - no disk problems.
Chkdsk /r option - found a couple of problems but when fixed still didn't resolve the TI 8 problems.
Checked the Windows 2000 installation with Belarc - it actually discovered a Windows Update patch which was installed but apparently not correctly so I reinstalled it and now Belarc doesn't report any problem.

I have done testing to try to find a situation where image corruption or any one of the errors is consistantly reproducable - without success.
I suspect the Windows related problems are some sort of interface communication issue between the various processes (TrueImageService, Schedule2Helper, etc) arising from some other more basic problem with TI running on my ASUS motherboard / AMD Athlon processor machine.

I note that other users have had thoughts about 'timing' issues in particular relating to memory but I have not adjusted any of the BIOS SDRAM configuration information. If this were an issue I would have thought that I would have experienced problems with other programs, also the memory check programs should have found a problem.
I know virtually zero about BIOS SDRAM configuration, does anyone have any info on how I could configure for testing to see if any timing factor makes a difference?
Any other thoughts?

 

tachyon42

1. I would try the split option of TI, reduce the size to 100MB
2. Check the IDE settings of your disks in BIOS (UDMA speed) and use a slower setting, if auto setting is selected, disable auto and set it to the lowest UDMA level possible, or you can disable UDMA and try PIO mode

 

Tachyon

What Asus board are you using?

Are your drives SATA or PATA?

Grant

 

Hi Tachyon42,

You have been incredibly diligent in searching for the source of this problem. I really hope you get it resolved after so much work. Checking the hard drives and partitions on the Dell was a nice piece of verification that the drives are not the source of the problem.

Just a clarification, the large file corruption occurs when the image file exceeds a certain size. It's not the size of the partition that matters but the size of the image. If you split an image at 100MB (or 700MB) as Stephanos suggested, you can eliminate the large file problem.

This may be the most important piece of evidence you have. Do errors of this sort occur when you attempt backups from within Windows and after booting from the Recovery CD?

You have been so thorough with the hardware that you could test that if there was a problem I'm sure you would have found it. That suggests that there is a problem due hardware that you haven't been able to test or which is incompatible with TrueImage under both Windows and the Recovery CD.

In this sort of situation, I think going back to square one with the most basic system is the the only hope you have. I would remove all PCI cards leaving only the video card and disconnect all drives except the hard drive. This minimizes the hardware possibilities for errors.

Boot from the TrueImage Recovery CD and try making an image to another partition on the hard drive. It would be a good test if this image is over 2GB in size. If you are successful, use Check Image to veryify it. If it verifies, I'd repeat the process several times. Then start adding hardware back starting with other drives and then the PCI cards. Somewhere, the problem should reappear, and that's the bad hardware.

If you can't make an image successfully, then the problem must be the video card, the motherboard, the CPU or the power supply. You have already tested the hard drive and RAM, and there's nothing else in this minimal system. You could substitute the video card if you have an old one just to eliminate it as the problem. Since changing the motherboard and CPU isn't likely to be possible, all I can suggest is changing the power supply.

If you still can't make good images with a different video card and power supply, what can it be but the motherboard or CPU. I hope it doesn't come to this, and that you find that some other piece of hardware is the source of all your problems.

 

Gidday,
My company purchased ATI 8 build 796 in Jan this year along with 5 Maxtor One Touch 2 250GB drives. Our data is very sensitive (like all company data) and we backup approx 90GB every weekday. This data compresses to about a 65GB image file. I have a full 3 week rotation of backups, and very now and then, I drop an image on to tape (just for something to do).
Initially I was using the USB 2 interface to create backups and like every other person on this thread, I was getting corrupt images 85% of the time. Even when I split the image into 500 MB files, I still got image corruptions.

After reading this thread, I changed to using Firewire (approx 2.5 weeks ago) and have only had one image corruption since.

I've being using Firewire since its birth and have never had a problem with it. I used to be in the Pro Audio / Visual industry and have used firewire for both audio and visual without a hitch. USB 2, I can't say the same thing.
I guess what I am trying to say is, in my mind, Firewire has proved itself time and time again without fail - USB has not.

So my advice is - use firewire.

System Stats:

• Daul 2.8GHz Zeon

• Asus Server Mainboard

• 2GB DDR2

• Ultra 320 SCSI Controller

• 2 * 36 GB Ultra 320 SCSI disks in Mirror Array for OS

• 3 * 76 GB Ultra 320 SCSI disks in Raid array for data

• Sony Tape Drive

• VIA Firewire PCI

• 5 * Maxtor One Touch 2 250GB drives

• Windows Small Business Server 2000 running exchange 2000 and SQLBase Server

• Approx 30 users

Good luck with it all, hope this helps some people.

 

Alright, I have been reading this forum and trying the suggestions that everyone has posted and still find that I cannot create and restore without some sort of corruption. Getting extremely sick of this and my headache is overwhelming that Acronis support has nothing to say about it except to e-mail them the report. I have an older version (7) that I am current rolling my system back to and retrying the whole thing. Hopefully someone will be able to find a solution to this, but for now I have a deadline to meet and cannot waist anymore time trying to pin the problem down. My thanks for everyone's deligence in trying to do acronis' job and hopefully we can all get this resolved soon enough.

 

ASUS A7V133 motherboard (3 years old) with latest BIOS version 1009
Western Digital 40GB and 80GB PATA

 

Similar corruption errors occur when creating image in Windows or with Bootable CD. Also when verifying with either Windows or CD.
I having recently focused my testing on using the Bootable CD since it doesn't have the complication of the various TI processes running simultaneously in Windows which also causes a range of other errors.

I'll let you know results as soon as I've tried this.

I note that another user has experienced similar problems regarding both the symptoms of corruption and relationship to certain hardware:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=387773&postcount=119

 

That's very good because you can do all the testing from the boot CD which, as you say, eliminates all the questions about Windows processes, drivers, etc. as sources of problems.

I reread the message you noted, and it's possible that TI writes a good image file, but that it cannot be read correctly due to hardware problems, so it reports as corrupted.

I'll be watching for your report. Good luck!

 

Thanks for the suggestions.
I've checked my ASUS BIOS and I can configure both Ultra DMA and PIO modes.
I'm unfamiliar with these two modes, can anyone give me some more info about these modes or a URL which discusses them.
The ASUS BIOS allows them to be specified as a number 0 to 4 but the manual doesn't describe what these numbers really mean except to say that a higher number provides increased IDE device performance (PIO mode) and improved transfer speeds and data integrity for compatible devices (Ultra DMA mode).
How is one to know what is the best compatible setting for any particular device? Why would anyone want a setting that didn't have data integrity!
What performance is affected by PIO? Disk rotation speed? What does a specific value, say 3, actually change? Increase/decrease what by what amount?

 

PIO = Programmed I/O - means that the CPU is personally involved in managing the transfers of data to/from the drive. Very slow, very resource demanding.

DMA = Direct Memory Access - means that the CPU dumps the data to a buffer in memory, informs the IDE controller about the location and size of the buffer, and ask it to manage the transfer. Allows the CPU to continue with other stuff while the IDE controller is busy. Fast.

The various UltraDMA modes indicates the clock frequency of the IDE bus (how fast the bytes travel up and down the IDE cable). UDMA 5 is 133 MHz I believe, UDMA 4 is 100 MHZ, 3 is 66 MHz .... The greater the speed, the greater the risk of corruption, retries, etc. Most IDE-drivers in Windows will start out att UDMA 5, but every time a data transfer is retried due to corruption, the driver will reconfigure itself for a lower mode (5 -> 4 -> 3 ...). If you see this happen, I recommend you check your cables, your IDE controller and/or your drive.

 

Dont you know, the new technology hase a name : PLUG AND PRAY
or PLUG AND PAY

Be radical use the slowest f.e. UDMA 1 (lower numbers is slower) if this helps you can try UDMA 2 or 3......

 

Is there a no-fail way to use True Image 8?

I'm a prospective user of True Image 8, but I'm concerned about the hundreds of posts regarding problems creating/restoring uncorrupted disk images on external hard drives. I will be moving to a new job soon, and I will be allowed to purchase a new system for my office using a nice budget.

Since I have the option of choosing everything for the new system (generally, not down to nitty-gritty motherboard details), and I want to include a reliable disk image backup option (right now, I use an unsatisfactory standard backup program, BounceBack) to be able to keep my settings and programs, what would you suggest as the ideal set up?

Should I purchase a computer with two hard drives, using one as the primary drive and the second as the location for disk image backups of the primary? The external USB hard drive option sounds appealing because I could move it more easily to a new system after a huge problem (or use it if a laptop, for example, was stolen), but not after reading about all of the problems associated with it (I don't have the skill or patience to perform substantial tweaks to make everything work on an external drive).

Does anyone know of common problems using True Image in this way (internal drives)? Doesn't this make it possible for a total system failure (hardware problem outside of the hard drives) to cut off access to the back up?

Please note that the limit of my technical knowledge is basic protection of a computer (SpyBot S&D, Spyware Blaster, Anti-virus, software and hardware firewalls) and the elimination of Microsoft products from my computer (other than XP). I've also used Black Viper's tips to cut down on excessive processes, but that's the limit of my ability and interest in tweaking, so it's pointless to ask me about chipsets and such.

I just want a reliable, relatively easy-to-use disk imaging solution that will not require that I worry about constantly checking for corrupt image files.

Any advice would be great.

SBL

 

Imaging to a second internal drive should work fine. Now what that might not protect against is an electrical or other problem that could wipe out both drives at once.

Imaging to a USB2 external drive should be fine as long as your USB subsystem is implemented properly. As others on here have indicated, if you cannot get a bitwise exact transfer of data to a USB drive, then all bets are off.

Alternatively, you could consider imaging to another system over the network.

Personally, I image to another PC set up as a RAID5 NAS machine, and then periodically offload those images to DVD+RW. That way I'm protected against all sorts of failures. (save a catastrophic event that would destroy all my posessions)

I have never experienced a corrupt image from either a second internal hard drive, a USB hard drive, a DVD-RW, or network share. No overclocking and I use ECC ram. (peace of mind is a good thing)

 

For those who have seen this response in another thread, I apologize; however, there are many who follow this thread and may not see the response below in the "External USB/Firewire Drives that Work" thread.

The Macally PHR-100AC external USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure arrived today. I immediately installed my WD 250 GB drive into the enclosure, connected it via Firewire and created a backup image of my internal 120 GB Maxtor system drive. As usual, the image created successfully. Immediately, I started an image verification and, unlike every other time I tried, it actually began the process without an immediate "Image Corrupt" error. Nine minutes later, I had a verified backup image. WooHoo!

Anyone want a cheap USB 2.0 enclosure by Bytecc? It's ALi 5621 USB 2.0 chip was obviously not up to the task. Hello eBay.

The Initio INIC-1430L Firewire chip in the Macally enclosure is up to the task. It is connected to my nForce2 based Asus MB built-in Firewire port via a powered USB 2.0/Firewire 7-port combo hub. I'll try next time on the USB 2.0 (NEC chipset) connection just for a comparison.

Not knowing any better, I initially blamed Acronis for the problem. It appears the problem was with the USB chipset in my first enclosure. Fortunately, it turned out not to be a problem with the built-in MB interfaces or I would have needed to purchase a PCI USB 2.0/Firewire card.

Those experiencing problems, just need to find the right hardware combination.

 

Re: Is there a no-fail way to use True Image 8?

If you want to not worry, you want to have a recent backup that is off-site. That way a fire or theft won't destroy your backup as well as the computer. The only way to accomplish that is either two USB 2.0 drives or DVD disks.

How big will your backups be? Office computers often only have a few GB of programs and data. If that is your case, you can backup to one DVD+RW or DVD-RW disk. The disk holds 4.3GB but with compression, the original partition can be at leat 6.5GB and possible bigger. It's easy to carry DVD disks off-site for security.

Order your computers with DVD burners if the backup will fit on one or two disks. If it's more, no one will actually do the backups, and you are far better off using USB 2.0 external hard drives. Swap them so one is in the office and one is off-site.

You also had an excellent idea to make backups to a second hard drive in the computer. This won't protect against fire or theft or a bad power supply that disables both drives, but it will give you a quick recovery from viruses, spyware and bad software or bad hardware installations. You can make a quick backup before any new installation and recover in minutes from one of those installations from hell without even breaking a sweat.

You only have to test your first few backups with the Check image feature. If you always get good verification, you have good hardware.

 

I downloaded the test version of TI. The image burned fine, but I got a message that the image was corrupted when I did a check. My system is:

Asus A8V Deluxe, AMD 3500, 2 WD Raptors drives in a RAID 0, backing up to an external hard drive connected via firewire. External drive is Venus DS3 enclosure with 300GB Seagate UATA drive installed.

I am using firewire, not USB, so USB cannot be the problem. The funny thing is, when I use the TI feature that allows you to view the files in the image, it works fine and I can view all of the imaged files. Would I be able to view the files if the image were really corrupted? Maybe this is a TI read software issue.

Any replies appreciated.

 

I'm interested in how many of us with ASUS motherboards and AMD processors are experiencing the corruption problem.
Any comments would be appeciated here:
Image corruption - ASUS or AMD ?

 

Hi everyone!

I found one of the old image corruption threads via google, because I ran into the same problem. I made a - successful - backup of my system partition on another partition on the same harddrive. Now after a systemcrash I tried to use that image, but TI told me that it was for whatever reason corrupted.

But I managed to use it, because obviously it wasn't corrupted (or at least I couldn't think of ANY possible reason for a file corruption).

I don't know and don't assume that my solution will apply to everyone with this problem.

Solution:

In my case, the NTFS partition I used to store the backup is a "special" one. I normally use it for video capturing or other very large files and therefore I formatted it with a cluster size of 16 bytes, which is not the default for NTFS (which can use a cluster size up to 64 bytes).
Windows always assumes per default a cluster size of 4 bytes for partitions with a size of > 2 GB. This is because almost all third party partition tools can't handle a cluster size larger than 4 bytes.

During the image creation that won't matter, because Windows itself handles the file writing in the background. In the case of a systemcrash - using the Acronis standalone program - it isn't able to handle the cluster size and therefore reports a corrupted image!

So I simply installed a fresh copy of Windows, just for the purpose to copy the backup image to a "normal" NTFS partition. And voila -> no corruption anymore.

I hope this will help some of you.

Greetings

Joe

 

You might want to add edit some Ks into your information as in "cluster size of 4 Kbytes"

 

Hello Joe,

Wrong conclusion I'm afraid. I (and I suspect many others) have imaged and recovered successfully to/from 4Kb, 16Kb and 32Kb cluster size disks/partitions via the Linux based bootable rescue CD.

Regards

 

CHECK YOUR MEMORY!!!!!

I have read nearly every post here and had been having the exact same issues with corrupt image files using Acronic True Image 8.0, but it is now FIXED!.

My laptop hard drive developed bad sectors and I wanted to replace the drive (still under warranty) and just copy an image of the old drive to an external hardrive and then back onto the new hardrive. I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 Laptop with 1GB of Corsair ValueSelect memory and a Maxtor 60GB external USB 2.0 hard drive. This external drive is connected with a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card made by PPA. It uses the NEC brand USB ports. I downloaded ATI build 903 and made an image of my hard drive (13GB using normal compression). It was corrupt. I tried again after cleaning up the drive (CHKDSK, defrag, delete useless files, etc.). This time the image checked good in Windows, but when I put the new hard drive in the laptop and used the boot disk interface of ATI, the image was now corrupt. Then I plugged the external hard drive into the USB 1.1 port of the laptop (to bypass any problems with a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card). I also used ATI's built in image size feature to divide the image into 650MB files (to bypass issues with large file sizes). The image was still corrupt. Then I tried another disk image program (R-Drive Image) to make an image file. The image was corrupt. Then I used Microsoft Backup to at least back up the data in some form. The backup file could not be verified.

Then I decided to try the memory testors mentioned in this forum. I used memtest86, memtest86+, and the Windows memory testor. My memory failed all 3 tests. I then tested each SODIMM separately and discovered that one was bad and the other was good. I removed the bad one and tried using ATI again. THIS TIME THE IMAGE CHECKED GOOD AND I WAS ABLE TO SUCCESSFULLY RESTORE IT TO THE BLANK HARD DRIVE. All of my images were made in the Windows mode (instead of using the boot disk) and used normal compression. As a side note, during normal operations with the bad memory (email, internet, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop Elements, etc.), I did not have any major problems (other than the hard drive bad sectors) with my computer. I had small problems maybe once a month or so, but nothing serious and I just attributed it to buggy software. I honestly did not think anything was wrong with my hardware.

THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO SUGGESTED CHECKING MEMORY. Also, at this point I can highly recommend ATI. It worked flawlessly when I removed my bad memory. Maybe Acronis could mention this idea in their help section since this has worked for at least a few people in this forum.

PLEASE CHECK YOUR MEMORY!