Corrupt Image files =(

Lastnight I had my OS crash on me which was
annoying, but I thought ok I should be back up
and running again by just Restoring a saved
Image file.

So I booted Acronis off the CD and selected my
Image to restore, started the restore procedure
and then after about 10minutes I had a Message
box pop up saying that the Image is Corrupt!!!

So I thought I would try a previous back up
to restore and that had the same problem,.
So I tried all of my 5 backups and they all
were corrupt!!! =(

I dont know why or how all of them are corrupt
as I had created them all from booting up of the
CD and verified them after they were created
and they were all OK.

Now I have had to bite the bullet and go for a
full reinstall of the OS and will have to re load
all my programs etc.. =( gutted.

btw. the backups were saved to an external USB
hard drive.

Anyone got any ideas? or is there a way to
restore a corrupt image?

 

I would try and copy them to another internal drive first to try a restore (or put the drive on an internal ide cable and restore to the crashed drive), before you give up and reinstall. This assuming you have a working ide drive of course

Sometimes it is the type of USB connection that causes TI to spit the dummy especially when using the Linux drivers on the Boot CD.

Were they created and validated on the USB drive?

Was this done from Windows or from the boot disk.

Do you have a BARTPE disk to try? I alway use BARTPE to restore images rather than the Boot CD as my SATA drives aren't well like by the Linux drivers

Also what version are you using?

 

Thanks for your help.

Solorize

 

Do you know exactly why your OS crashed? The cause of the crash could be related to why your archives are declared corrupt - particularly if you validated from the TI CD with the archives in the same location as they are now.

One possible cause is bad RAM. Download memtest86+ version 1.7 available free at www.memtest.org , I would let it run for several hours, preferably overnight.

 

Using the automatic verify after creation option in the TI 10 Windows program I found that most backups on my external USB drive were not verifying. Curiously this same USB drive had no problem creating and verifying backups using TI 8.

I have moved my backup location to my network connected NAS and, so far, all backups have verified.

 

Seekforever
I found this as version 3.3 yesterday, which is better, any ideas? http://www.memtest86.com/

 

AFAIK, Memtest86 (no +) was the "original" memtest but a while back it was left in limbo with no updates or fixes for a long period of time. There are chipset specific issues apparently so you can't just run the same configuration on all chipsets and get good results it seems.

Some people apparently took over memtest86 and updated it (or maybe re-wrote it) and released it as memtest86+ (note the +). It has been updated and the current version is 1.7.

I don't have any experience with the Memtest86 V3.3 in your post but with the updates it probably is good now as well. It seems they want $10 for it which is very fair. However, I would try the free one first since it is a good test.

I should point out that diagnostic programs are not infallible, mainly because they are testing in a somewhat artificial environment. When you run a memory diagnostic, it is not running under Windows, the disk drives aren't being heavily flogged as in the case of running TI which puts more noise in the system, the power supply isn't being loaded as much, etc.

Another test is if your machine has multiple memory sticks and does not need all of them to run is to remove the un-needed sticks and run the TI validation and see if it passes. Then try substituting each stick until it validates (or fails, if it validated with the first stick alone). If it doesn't fix the problem then the problem may well be elsewhere. This technique assumes the fault is only in 1 stick which is the most common situation. This test has the advantage of using the memory much closer to the normal operating conditions.

 

I have rarely been able to make a good image from within Windows (user since V8 now on v10) they generally report as being corrupt, but have always been able to do so from the rescue CD and lately from a BartPE CD. In the past I have run Mempest86+ and it has never found a problem. Just recently I have been getting a number of device driver issues and decided to check my memory, I checked the web for the latest version of Memtest86+ and was surprised to find the version that I linked to. Will give it a try and report back later.

 

Have a look here for BartPE info

http://www.mechrest.com/plugins/BartPEGuide/BartPEGuide.htm

 

I use this front end to create my CD...

REATOGO

 

Hi Thanks for all your replies,

I decided that I would go for a complete
reinstall lastnight, as I had most of my
photo's and programming code saved onto
an External USB HD.

So I just had to re install the OS and all
the programs back on, which does take a
while but at least now I will have a clean
system to work from again.

But it is a shame that all the Backups
were corrupt as I am now unsure wheather
or not to re load Acronis back onto the pc
as I cant seem to get a valid backup made.

Solorize

 

You said in your original post that you made and sucessfully validated archives using the CD. Doing the initial validation with the CD indicates the program is not a problem on your machine or caused by Windows. If you can't do it now then something has broken or has been changed causing a problem.

We already discussed RAM as being a possible problem.

Run chkdsk /r on the partition the archive is stored on.

Have you changed any system or memory timings in BIOS to be more aggressive than the normal setting?

Is the external HD the same one that was used when the archives were first created and validated?

Copy the archive from the external to an internal HD and try validating it there.

You can use a free checksum calculator to ensure your large files are being copied to/from the USB drive properly. However, it like the TI validation process, requires the RAM to be working perfectly.