Backup not recognized by TI

A friend needed me to fix her badly damaged WinXP Pro installation on her laptop, so I used my TI boot disc to make two folders & files backups. She was sitting next to me and was telling me what stuff she needed and what she didn't. It was obvious from the start that she did not need the entire drive backed up. We selected the bunch of folders that she needed and as I made that image, she remembered of another specific location she'd like backed up, so I repeated the same process.

Both backup process completed successfully and went fine. For all I could see, there were no problems. However, when I tried to mount the backup archives later to check if everything went ok and to burn her data to DVDs to give to her, I found that only one of the backups could be mounted properly.

For one, TI had created two parts of the second backup, and I still don't understand why. It had no reason to split archives into pieces because I was backing up to an external hard drive with plenty of free space. It all ended up looking like this:



See how the second, larger backup is split into two parts, 1 and 2? And see how #1 is 0 bytes in size? Clearly, something went wrong. Now when I try to mount this second backup, I get the following:

http://i9.tinypic.com/4fwac1e.png

This is what the backups look like from inside TI:

http://i9.tinypic.com/451g4kg.png

http://i9.tinypic.com/2ekj3g1.png

As you can see, the second backup that I'm trying to mount most definitely contains data. After all, it wouldn't be 7+GB in size if it contained no files. My problem now is.. how do I get at those files? Is there any way to do so despite something being quite wrong with the archive?

I've been using TI for quite a while and have never had a problem like this before. It sucks that it happened precisely when I was doing a friend a favor rather than dealing with my own data.

 

Nobody?

 

It's hard to say but I'll give you some typical answers which may or may not be applicable.

If an image is >4GB or so and the destination drive is formatted FAT32 the image will be automatically split by TI since the maximum filesize for FAT32 is about 4GB. This should not cause any problems. Why the first one reports as 0 length I don't know.

Usual cause for an archive not being recognized as a TI archive is that it was created with build 3567 or later and an attempt is being made to read it with a build earlier than 3567. Builds 3567 and later can read the earlier archives since they are backwards compatible.

FWIW.

 

You make a good point. When I was making the backup, the file-system in use was FAT32 and I was backing up to an NTFS external drive. I guess the splitting makes sense now. I made the image with build 3633 though and tried to mount it using the very same build..

 

I'm not Nobody, but I'lll respond anyway.

You stated that you did a files backup.
If so, you cannot mount from a files backup, only from an image backup.

 

Ok.. makes sense. But so.. how do I get at the content of the files & folders backup?

 

I would guess from within TI.

 

I guess that data is history then. Well, thanks anyway. First time TI completely failed me after quite a while.

 

Do you not have a full image backup of the system?
If so, and the files are in te image backup, can you mount the relevant volume and read the files with the following program:

http://www.standards.com/index.html?ReadFile

 

I do not have a full backup of the system. Is there no way at all for me to get at the data that is stored in the file that is of 3.50GB of size as shown above in my screenshots? I downloaded the program you suggested, ReadFile, and read its description, but it really does not do all that much, does it? It's only intended to demonstrate whether the file can be read.. and well, it can. My specific problem is that I cannot access those files.

I do remember, in case I have not mentioned this before, that the system I was making backups of was formatted with FAT32, not NTFS. Would that make a difference?

 

When I was helping out a friend with exactly the same problem I used a different way of doing things.

I booted the sick machine with the TI CD and made a full image of the hard drive to a USB drive. I mounted this image to my PC and only then were selections made which were copied to optical discs.

The whole operation went without a hitch and we were able to transfer far more to his new computer than we had first thought possible.

I did feel a twinge of guilt using the Arconis CD on another computer but as my friend was so impressed with what was achieved he has now bought his own copy of TI

Xpilot

 

All REadFile was intended to do was to demonstrate th speed of reading a file with different buffer sizes and whether a file can be accessed using the built-in APIs.

The proper solution is for Acronis to fix their software as I indicated in http://www.standards.com/index.html?CreateFileFailure

THe other alternative, since ReadFile can access the files,is to write a program that would copy the files to the hard drive.

THere are three aspects of doing this:

1. For the general case, just copying the bytes of a file should be easy.
2. Not easy, is copying the attributes, permissions, etc.
3. Not easy, is knowing whether there are associated files that also have to be copied, e.g., for an HTML file are there subdirectories containing, e.g., image, files that also have to be copied.

I've thought about writing such a program.
I expect that such programs already exist, but you gotta find them.

 

I now have a program that seems to work with my 5 bad files.

I can Move, Copy, Delete and Rename them, using the methodology I describe in URL="http://www.standards.com/index.html?CreateFileFailure."]http://www.standards.com/index.html?CreateFileFailure.[/URL]

Acronis reallydoes need to fix their code to handle this.

 

I am having the same (missing Volume) problem, as described at the top of the thread, but have little programming experience. I can open word documents then save them to my hardrive, but I cant open things like pictures, and MP3's...even though i can see them in the explorer. I would love a copy of the program you speak of.

 

If a backup archive is created from individual files or folders, then Acronis True Image 9.0 Home cannot mount it. In this case, if some data from this archive must be restored, use the "Recovery" wizard to restore the needed files or folders. You will be able to see the contents of this archive and choose files or folders you want to restore.

Good Luck

 

Not if the files have the problems described in http://www.standards.com/index.html?CreateFileFailure/

I have 4 naughty files for which windows explorer lists non-zero sizes, yet if you run, say, a defrag program, the program might believe that the file lengths are zero, andnot defrag them.

The program I mentioned earlier can recover those files, 3 of which are RIFF format files. So, after recovery, I can add a.wav extension and Windows Media Playe will play them.

The 4th file is a cursor file. I dunno what program opens them.

 

What is this program you keep speaking of? Why don't you mention its name?

 

http://www.standards.com/index.html?ReadFile

http://www.standards.com/index.html?CopyMoveDeleteRename

The latter program has not yet been released because I am building the interface and have been interrupted by significant personal events.