Analyzing Partion C

I am about to upgrade a customers hardware and booted from a rescue CD (version 937). The New hard drives are SATA (WD1600). The image is on a USB drive.

I can boot from the CD create a partition on the SATA drive but when I go to restore image the system hangs on "Analyzing Partion C". It has been doing this for over 10 minutes.

Should I wait it out or do I have a problem?

now 15 minutes. I am about to reboot and try again without first creating a partition on the c-drive

 

Looks Like I solved my own problem. Even though the message was "Analyzing Partition C", it was must have been referring to the image on the USB back up drive. iOn examination Inoticed the light flashing on USB drive and not on the internal drive. I figured that TI must have been having some problems with the USB drive, so I created a basic windows install on one of the new SATA drives, booted to windows and copied the image file from the USB drive to the second SATA drive.

I then booted with the TI disk and told the program to restore from the image on the 2nd SATA drive over the top of the basic windows instal I had on the first SATA drive. At first I thought I was going to have the same problem but this time in about 5 minutes TI then sent me to the next step in the restore. I guess I should have been more patient when waiting on the USB drive, but I figured after 30 minutes something should have happened.

Is this a problem when trying to restore from USB Drives?

 

Hello Alan Culshaw,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Actually, there should not be any problems restoring the image from the external USB hard drive when booted from special Bootable Rescue CD made using the latest build (937) of Acronis True Image 8.0.

First of all, please try the "acpi=off noapic" workaround as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please also check whether your external hard drive is connected to PC through a hub. If yes, then please connect it directly to the USB port.

If that does not help then please create Acronis Report and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please also do the following:

- Launch Acronis Report Utility once again and select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed
with creation of the bootable floppy;
- Boot the computer from this diskette and wait for
report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy;
- Rename the report created from under Windows to report_win.txt and report created using the bootabale floppy to report_diskette.txt.

Please keep your external USB hard drive connected while creating these reports and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt file).

Send all the collected files to support@acronis.com along with the exact model of your external USB hard drive and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Analyzing New 80 GB HD

I'm using a PCI/USB bridge cable to create the Acronis image on an external HDD and it works fine with no delays on my usual 4GB HDD. One of the advantages of this arrangement is that one can use IDE/PCI internal HDDs as external USB drives and so the other day I bought a Maxtor DiamondMax 16 80 Gig ATA/133 drive for just 54.00.

I got Acronis to write the image to the dern thing but when analyzing the drives on loading, it takes Acronis about 20 minutes to analyze this new large drive, with such successive partioning numbering like 3-3, 3-1, 3-2.

Is there any way to get this process speeded up? Seems like Acronis chokes on the size of the drive even though it had absolutely no files on it.

I'm using Version 8.0 Build 774 and am now downloading the available 937 upgrade. Will this speed it up any? Do I install this on top of the previous build? Is Acronis overanalyzing this 80 Gig HD?

Over to you brethren at Acronis Support. Thanks. /ifurf

 

Re: Analyzing New 80 GB HD

Hello imagefurf,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Yes, installation of the latest build (937) build might solve this sort of a problem.

Please download and install the latest build (937) of Acronis True Image 8.0 which is available at: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/updates/

To get access to updates you should create an account at:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/
then log in and use your serial number to register your software.

Please feel free to install the latest build (937) over the old one (actually, very old one ).

Please also create new Bootable Rescue CD after installing the update.

If the problem still persists with the latest build (937) of Acronis True Image 8.0 then please provide me with the following details:

- How much time does it actually take to analyze the partitions of your external USB hard drive when Acronis True Image 8.0 is running from under Windows?

- How much time does it actually take to analyze the partitions of your external USB hard drive when booted from Bootable Rescue CD (build 937)?

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Thanks Alexey. I already had the account but only had critical updates checked so I changed it to include upgrades.

Also I've got Build 937 now installed but it doesn't seem to make a difference on analyzing this USB connected drive. I haven't yet created the new Boot Rescue disc but will do so and compare the analysis time on that, as you requested.

Noticing how True Image seems to have its own internal partitioning [3-3, 3-2 etc.] I tried to partition this drive in hopes that Acronis would be able to handle smaller partitions. However the only way I can figure to partition it is with FDISK but in Win98SE FDISK does not correctly report the size of the drive and the partitions. Apparently it subtracts 64GB from the drive size. etc.

So at the moment I am still trying to get Acronis to speed up its analysis of all 80GB. I'll let you know about any difference using the Boot CD as soon as I create it. Stand by and thanks... /ifurf

 

Okay Alexey, it takes True Image about 50 minutes to analyze the 80 Gig Maxtor, spending about 13 minutes each on, 3-3, 3-2, 3-4, 3-1 in that order. However from the Boot CD it reads it without delay and assigns it as a B: removeable drive. Fine. I then created the image on it from there.

I didn't want to go through the 50 minutes of analyzing before creating a new Boot Rescue CD so I used the old one and it worked fine. But now I'm back to wondering why the USB drive is analyzed so slowly when Windows is booted from Disk One. I can read, write, copy, paste, etc. to the drive in any program [including create an image in True Image] without any discernible delay. It's interminable only when being analyzed by Acronis within Windows].

Whaddayathink? /ifurf

 

Hello imagefurf,

Thank you for all the provided information.

Please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please also do the following:

- Launch Acronis Report Utility once again and select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;
- Boot the computer from this diskette and wait for report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy;
- Rename the report created from under Windows to report_win.txt and report created using the bootabale floppy to report_diskette.txt.

Please keep your external USB hard drive connected while creating these reports.

Please also make a screen shot of the Device Tree application in the way described below:

- Download and unpack the Device Tree application;

- Run the application;

- Completely unfold the \Driver\Disk and \Driver\FtDisk branches;

- Move the margin to the left in order to see all the items;

- Make a screen shot and send it to us.

Please note that the application may crash the system when you exit, so we recommend you to save all your work and close other programs prior to running it.

Send all the collected files to support@acronis.com along with the exact model of your external hard drive and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Alexey:

Sorry to say I cannot create the report with AcronisReport.exe.

While it quickly analyzes each of the 5 partitions of the two internal HDDs, assigning each a letter, the report hangs when it tries to access the external USB drive. I can hear the USB drive responding [slight clicking sound] when the report routine first accesses it.

But unlike the analyzing of True Image, there is no 3-3, etc. to assure me that an analysis is in progress. Instead the report just hangs. In the Close Program box I see that it's "Not responding" and have to kill it. I've allowed a half hour or more to see if perhaps it only appeared to be hanging, but no deal. Yet the same external drive remains accessible to the system and to software.

I'm able to create the sys info file

 

Hello imagefurf,

Well, then just send the other information I have requested.

We will analyze it and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Okay Alexey, here's how I finally solved the matter.

I more or less guessed that the problem had something to do with the limitations of the system BIOS [e.g. perhaps the Drive is too big and the BIOS has not been updated for large drives] and/or some limitation in Win98.

I downloaded Maxblast4 from the Maxtor website with the intention of making smaller partitions. But this didn't solve the problem: while Maxblast recognized the drive, it kept dumping to recoverable blue screens but after 3 or 4 recoveries one would get the notice the program is being terminated. I tried this on 3 computers: two with Win98 and one with WinMe. No success there. One must at least recognize the superiority of Acronis TI even here because although under Win98 it took Acronis 50 minutes to analyze the dern thing, Acronis could at least do what Maxblast from Maxtor couldn't do with this Maxtor drive and that is, hold onto the drive without crashing anything.

Today I tried Maxblast4 on a WinXP Home system. Before loading Maxblast4 WinXP not only recognized the drive on the USB channel but somehow knew it was a USB to IDE drive. Using Maxblast I set three partitions 32Gig, 29 Gig and 19Gig.

Back to Win98, TI now analyzes each of the partitions in 7 seconds or less, a far cry from 50 minutes.

Hope you find this helpful for any future problems others may report. /imagefurf.

 

Hello imagefurf,

I'm glad to hear that you managed to solve the problem.

Posting back with the solution is also very much appreciated.

If you have any further questions\experience to ask\share please feel free to post it on this forum.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov