True Image Disk Clone works sometimes...

Dear Everyone,

I have had this problem since version 8. Currently using version 9, build 3854, same problem (all versions). Have exchanged emails with Acronis folks, problem not resolved. They say they can't reproduce the problem. Here is the problem:

I run TI, Disk Clone and go through the dialogue (... ps, I ask for "delete partitions") and eventually click on reboot. System reboots, and Acronis goes through: 1. Analyzing Partitions to 100%, 2. Locking Partitions to 100%, then goes to 3. Checking Partitions, but only makes it to 50%. Then True Image jumps to the page that says press any key to shutdown the computer. Clearly, it did not perform any disk cloning. Then on re-starting, I get 3 Acronis completion bars: analyzing partitions, assigning drive letters, and syncing... then I get the usual Windows XP stuff. This tells me that Acronis software missed something and got confused.

Every once in a while, Acronis TI disk clone starts working for no apparant reason and I am able to perform disk clones (images). Then Acronis stops working and does what I just described above. I cannot figure this out. I have noticed that when I use Tune-Up Utilities (or Norton System Works) to clean up the registry, or even defrag, that's when Acronis goes nuts. I may be coincidence too... As far as i know, these programs are supposed to be 100% safe.

Disk imaging is key to my backup strategy. I prefer to image my disk when I am certain there are no problems. If I have to, and there were ocassions when I had to, I go back to previous image and restart from there. I really need Acronis to work when I need it.

I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone who has had similar experiences.

Many Thanks,
Johnny.

 

First, have you tried doing the cloning from the TrueImage Recovery CD?

Second, why are you cloning your hard drive when you are not replacing the drive? Why aren't you making backup images? You can only clone the whole drive and only once to the target drive. With images, you can clone either the whole drive or just one or more partitions and you can store several images on the target drive.

 

When Acronis gets into its funny mood, the recovery cd doesn't work either. It had the Acronis people stumped too.

I have 2 identical drives, both are WD3200SB drive. I work with the master drive. I leave the second hard disk in the computer, I do not use it, I do not pull it out, and when it's time to "back-up", I simply image the master onto the slave drive. I might get chastized for doing it this way, but that's the way I like to do it. This process works well for me and that's the way I intend to use TI disk clone.

When disaster strikes the primary master drive (like a crappy "upgrade"), I shut-down the system, I put the slave into the primary master cable position, I pull out the messed up primary master and restart the system. The imaged drive becomes the primary master after re-start. Please note: restart the system with ONLY the imaged drive and once it has set itself up as the primary master, then you can install the messed up drive into the slave position (or else the drive letters will swap and the only fix will be to edit the registry and reassign the drive letters - easy but tricky). Then, I shut the system down, reinstall the messed up "master" into the slave cable position, restart, and immediately image the restored primary master onto the slave.

This process has served me well, it results in an instant recovery.

Johnny.

 

Johnny,

Could you consider a professional's opinion on imaging and cloning. Cloning may work for you but I don't think it's the best way to use backup imaging software.

See Reply #7

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1132968474;start=7#7

 

Yes, I know...

However, my problem remains. True Image disk clone does not want to work and I cannot figure out why. Has this happened to you?

Thanks,
Johnny.

 

OK, back to your problem. Sorry, but I've never seen this problem and I have no bright ideas that might help.

 

Hello Johnny,

Can you confirm that you have run chkdsk x: /r (where x: is the letter of the partition being tested) on all partitions of the source and destination hard drives?

Regards

 

Yes, I have run both chkdsk /r and chkdsk /f. Have also done sfc /scannow. My system appears to have no errors. I have not had any "problems" except the one with TI disk clone.

Cheers,
Johnny.

 

Johnny,

I have used ATI 8, 9, and now 10, and several times I have had it ''jump'' to complete when I know nothing has been done. I have also, more frequently, gotten to the ''press any key to shut computer down'' stage and the ''any key'' doesn't work so I have to manually shut it down and restart it.

I have never paid too much attention to these situations, just kept on doing what need to be done. I have no idea why they happen when they do, they just do - not a very technical answer. ;-)

I too kept a cloned HD of my OS ''just in case". OS on C, clone on D, which I shut off in the BIOS - it was a separate HD. Since posting here several days ago on another issue, I have learned about the back up feature, rather than cloning. It is what I now do. BUT - I think you should do whatever you feel comfy and secure with.

Bill

 

Johnny

I'm interested in if you have ever tested your backup cloning and recovery procedures.

I basically do the same procedure (you can look at one of my responses documenting my procedure here ->
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=155092

Whether you are using WIN/XP or BARTS, if windows see's your newly cloned disk, it will disable the booting capability of that drive. TO recover your going to have to muck around with the MBR to fix it.

If you clone using the TI Recovery disk, before you re-boot into windows, remove the newly cloned disk. Then you will have a recovery disk that can be used in case of a disaster.

Storage_man

 

Johnny

I also noticed a comment stated above "I run TI, Disk Clone and go through the dialogue (... ps, I ask for "delete partitions") and eventually click on reboot." WHY are u rebooting before you start cloning ?

Storage_man

 

rebooting is part of the clone process

 

BCHAT

I assume that (Rebooting) is due to that one is cloning from within WINDOWS ? What is it rebooting too, The SAE environment ? I never tried cloning from within windows, I'll have to try it.

Storage_man

 

Johnny Stecchino - I am looking for software that will do what you are doing.

I currently run a program for WinXP that uses a second disk so if you want to keep a copy of C drive you make your original copy they set the schedule how you want. I have it set so at 6 AM every say all files on C that have changed get changes on the back up drive also. This it totally automatic so if during the day say my Firefox profile get damaged on a Firefox crash I have a copy for that morning. An of course all files so I use this a couple of times a week.
IN the much more rare situation that the OS gets corrupted or the hard drive dies - I simple change the back up drive jumper to master and the old drive jumper to slave and reboot and the former back up drive is now the boot drive exactly as it was at 6 AM. If the former boot drive is still readable I then copy over any files that had changes since 6 AM. I rally could really not function without this protection but this program will not work with Vista so I am looking for something that is similar. Making Raid drives will not do the same so maybe True Image Disk Clone will but of course it cannot copy the entire drive each day but only the changed files as it is 150 gig so would take to long to copy all each day.

Do any of you know if True Image Disk Clone can automatically copy changed files each day then be used as a boot drive and/or just copy individual files?

Thanks

 

Johnny,

While you are waiting for an answer to your question, would you mind telling us how often you update your clone? Daily? Weekly?

 

Dear All,

I have found the most convenient "backup" procedure is for me to disk clone my C: (primary master) drive to my F: drive (primary slave). All of my drives are jumpered to use the "cable select" option. This makes it real easy to change drives around. I use acronis TI (when it decides to work) to do the disk cloning. This method works really well and you are up-and-running very quickly. Because C: is "imaged" onto F:, nothing gets missed ever. If I had enough money, and drives, I would have a pool of rotatable drives that I could cycle through. Recovery is as simple as slapping in the cloned drive into the primary master cable slot (but make sure the primary slave slot is empty the first time the cloned drive is booted in the primary master slot). Anyways, it's very convenient and it works for me.

I do the disk cloning interactively in windows. Whenever acronis gets funny like this, it does not matter whether its interactive, or off the rescue disk. I have been there and tried it. I strongly suspect it has to do with the "scheduler" function that Acronis has. This function is written into the Acronis boot partition of the primary master disk. This function comes "alive" when the disk cloning process becomes active (after re-boot). I strongly believe this function gets started incorrectly and clearly misses something. When that happens, disk cloning does not happen. These are my observations, I cannot go deeper than this - this is something Acronis has to answer... or someone who has already lived through this.

I clone once I have accumulated enough "changes" on my disk that I feel are worth saving and protecting. I will always clone before a major install of either hardware or software - I need to have a way of going back in case of disaster. So it can vary from days to months. On average, I would say once a month, mainly because I do not do major things more often than that - I kind of plod along day to day.

The disk clone process in Acronis requires you to reboot - it's a menu option that you have to click on to go forward with the imaging. Acronis then does some "magic", shuts the system down, and then reboots in disk clone mode under acronis program control. Once under acronis program control, you get to watch the disk cloning process - you have no inputs into this. Once acronis PROPERLY or IMPROPERLY (as my case at the moment) completes this process, it jumps to a "press any key to shutdown" page. After pressing a key, the system shutsdown. Then reboot/re-power the system. Windows XP will come back, usual login etc... everything back to normal. Simple as that, assuming acronis disk clone works....

Today, Acronis TI is still refusing to perform the imaging... FYI, I have re-installed Acronis TI v9, latest build.

Cheers,
Johnny.

 

Johnny, you could use imaging while you are waiting for an answer to the cloning problem. At least you will have backups but you will need another HD to hold your images.

 

When I cloned from C > D I did it within windows. I used the Clone Disk Wizard. You select disk to clone from, disk to clone to, and several other options. The last thing done is to reboot. A blue screen comes up and shows the different operations and progress of each. Try it some time , I did it for years. When I messed up C, I'd clone D back to C and all was well - usually.
BChat

 

Anyone from Acronis out there?

Thanks,
Johnny.

 

Johnny, read this post it gives some instructions, among other things, for contacting Acronis support. Their responsiveness in the forum has been erratic at best since the release of V10.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317.

 

I am currently having the same issue. I just installed 2 new Raptor 74gig drives in Raid 0 format. I wanted to clone my current boot drive(C, which is raid 0 but 240gig(however, it is only using 100gig) to the new Raptor drives. I can start the process(I tell it to delete all partitions) and after the reboot, it starts the copy process and then, within minutes jumps to it saying it has completed and to press any key to shut down. However, since it only took a few minutes, I know nothing happened and as BChat mentioned, the press any key to shut down doesn't work, so I have to manually reboot.

After the reboot, looking at the new drives, they remain as they were prior to the process(basically empty minus Windows XP recylcing and volume info folders). I've attempted this process 3 times now and no go, so it hasn't worked for me yet. I'm using version 10 btw.

 

Hi,

I have had this problem with Version 8, all builds, version 9, all builds, and I suspect you will have the same issue with version 10. There is something not right at the "fundamental" level of the Acronis disk clone software. Acronis says they cannot reproduce it. Well, it has been intermittent, and now it is simply not functional as I have described above.

Dear Acronis, you are welcome to remotely login.

Anyone else with same problem? Would love to hear from you.

Cheers,
Johnny.

 

Thanks a lot for the comments - guess the clone is not for me as I need a totally dependable backup that copies the whole drive each day - of course only changed files)

The other company who does not have a program for Vista actually never made one for Service Pack 2 of XP so I never used SP2 - only parts.

They were goofy for not selling it with two hard drives as a package as there was no competition at all for what the program can do. I will stay with XP unless I can find a program to replace it that works in Vista.
If you are using the computer it makes no difference as it continues its back up every day with never a mistake that i have found in 4 years.

 

The thing of it is that the disk clone procedure is completely reliable, when acronics actually does the disk cloning! This strategy gets me up and running in <5 minutes and it is completely clean (assuming that a clone of a clean drive was done). It has saved my bacon a few times and for that I am very grateful. It's a great back-up strategy. BTW, I have about 80Gb of data that I protect. That's a lot of data and that's why I chose disk cloning as my prefered back-up strategy. And that's why I am begging anyone out there to step in with some insight, help, anything.

Cheers,
Johnny.

 

Hi Johnny,

Unfortunately I have just run into the exact problem you are having, when I try an automatic clone. Looks like a possible software bug in Acronis SW. Acronis program would skip the copy operation, but continue and say the clone was successful. After the clone there was only a very small amount of storage used on the destination drive, the copy had not occurred.

Anyway, heres what I tried as workarounds;

Repair of Acronis - no luck
Reinstall of Acronis - no luck



Thanks for the post, it is a very weird behavior.