Corrupt unrestorable image SOLVED!

I own an HP dual core machine with a handy slot to insert a Personal Media Drive (which is really a external USB drive with quick connection). I made several .tib files to proect my computer. I finally had a true crash, still uncertain why. My main drive became so inaccessible I had no choice but to erase it and reinstall Windows. The computer was then operable but had no programs on it.

When I inserted my USB drive and booted from the program disk, I was able to see an acronis file on the drive, but When I tried to open it to either explore it or restore, it would not work. The "next" screen in the restore wizard would be greyed out and I could not proceed. When I right clicked on the .tib file in windows explorer and tried to open it using the "open with" command, and pointing to my newly installed Acronis software, the error read "image corrupted." This was a critical restore to me, and the stories of failure on this forum made me feel worse.

But I could see there was a file on the external drive, with lots of data on it. I began to investigate whether some recovery software might recover data from the backup image, even tho it was corrupted. Sort of like people trying to recover data from an erased or deleted disk.

But I finally blended 3 or 4 different pieces of advice. First I put a 2nd drive into the computer, so I had 2 internal drives, not one. Then I used Windows to copy the external .tib file to the 2nd internal drive. Then I made sure I had the latest build of acronis. (my original acronis was old version 6, but my .tib had been made with my later-installed version 8.) Sure enough, after several fits and hisses, the image installed, even tho I had actually seen the worlds "image corrupted" at one time.

I think the problem is this--altho Windows might be able to 'see' my external USB hard drive, the Acronis software, at least when booted from the acronis disk, could not. For some reason Acronis can 'see' an internal 2nd drive with no problem. One delay I had is that I partitioned the drive when I reformatted and reinstalled on it. I did not make the C partition big enough, so there was insufficient room to restore. I did not have "particle magic" or some other partitioning software, so I was stuck reinstalling Windows a 2nd time and making a generous partition to take the image. During all this time I was uncertain it would work, and when the restore took place, I was ecstatic.

My advice from all this, though, is to make your backup, look for the "successfully created" verification, then copy that .tib image to another location. In my case I am going to put my backup images on the internal drive which I've left in the computer, but immediately copy it to the external as well. On simple restores where the OS is accessible and the drive still working, I can use the internal 2nd drive file, but if there is total failure as I had this time, I will revert to the image on the external drive. Hope this helps someone, I felt sick for 2 weeks until I tried this process.

Bruce

 

Glad you got your image restored.

Your situation points to a problem with the Linux recovery environment working properly with your HP Personal Media USB drive.

The most trouble-free place to store an image is on an internal HD as you found out. It also has the benefit of being the fastest place to create/restore an archive. I always make my images to a second internal HD and then copy selected ones to a USB drive for secondary backup. I do this even though TI works well with my 2 USB external drives just for the speed and convenience.

 

Making a backup to an internal drive and then copying the file to a USB drive is not faster than making a backup to a USB drive. It's actually much longer since you are writing the file twice.

Still, it's a good idea to have some backups on disks that can be stored at a diff location.

 

Yes, correct, I meant that for making a quick backup to test something and then doing a restore it is fast. In practice, I only copy an image to the USB drive about once per month - which suits the way I work just fine.

 

Hello bbbacres,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that version 8 of Acronis True Image is a very old one and is not guaranteed to work flawlessly with modern hardware (even more so for version 6).

The current version is Acronis True Image 11 Home.

We recommend you to download and install the free trial version of Acronis True Image 11 Home to see how the software works on your computer. With the trial version of the product you will be able to fully use the Windows version for 15 days. The bootable rescue media will be limited to restore function.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to use Acronis True Image 11 Home in the respective User's Guide.

Please visit Acronis online store to purchase the full version of the product. Please notice that as you own the previous versions of the product, you can purchase an upgrade instead.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov