creating an image of a drive with bad sectors.

Is there anyway of telling Acronis True image that you want it to ignore data stored on bad sectors of a disk? In hopes of restoring that image to a good drive. It is possible that the data stored in bad sectors was not part of the Operating system and the machine may still boot afterward. Anyone have an Idea?? Thanks

 

No. Run chkdsk X: /r where X is the drive letter of the partition you want to check.

 

I ran Windows scandisk w/ scan for and attempt to recover bad sectors checked. Is that as effective?

 

Apparently, TI uses only the sectors that are part of files.

So if you run chkdsk, or some other file system correction tool, those sectors will eithger be fixed or th file will be in deep poop.

In any case, if the sectors are PHYSICALLY bad, that does not cause the sectors on the new drive to be PHYSICALLY bad, just to conatain bad info that should be corrected with chkdsk, or some oter tool of that ilk.

 

Hello actyler,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that when Acronis True Image 9.0 Home creates an image archive of a partition or a disk that has bad sectors (marked in the file system, e.g. using ScanDisk or chkdsk), it records the information regarding the bad sectors as well. So, if you restore the image archive, you will get these bad sectors on the new location. The sectors will not be actually bad, but they will be marked as bad in the file system (because it has been restored without any changes).

To avoid transferring bad sectors to the new location, you should restore the image archive resizing the partition(s). Considering that it is impossible to resize partitions when restoring an image of a whole hard disk, there is no way to avoid restoring bad sectors in such a case. It is only possible to eliminate the bad sectors by restoring the partitions separately with resizing.

Therefore, the recommended workarounds are the following:

- Clone the whole hard disk drive to a new one resizing the partition with bad blocks;

- Create an image archive of the partition under consideration and restore it with resizing.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Is not the solution to run a scandisk before creating the image?
The problem has to be corrected on the source disk, not in the backup image.

As a last resort, could one not create an "image" backup, then restore "files and directories" instead of the image?

 

The easiest way to avoid bad sectors is to restore FILES, not the image.

 

Hello Howard Kaikow,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Yes, this should be done prior to the image creation. As I said above (post #5) cloning the whole hard disk drive to the new one resizing the partition with bad blocks or creating the image archive of the partition under consideration and restoring it with resizing should be done after bad sectors has been marked in the file system, e.g. using ScanDisk or chkdsk. However, ScanDisk (chkdsk) does not correct/eliminate bad sectors on the source drive. Therefore, to avoid transferring bad sectors to the new location one should use one of the workarounds mentioned above.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

This isn't making sense to me. Images only have the sectors in use, once a sector is marked bad, you won't get files written there anymore. So if you scan the disk for bad sectors and let them be marked accordingly, why would TI be copying bad sectors?

sh

 

I don’t think it backs up the sectors flagged as bad, but it does record the table that contains the list of those sectors.

 

The file system itself determines what sectors are used, TI has nothing to do with it.

So, if someone has not yet run, say, chkdsk, and the file system refers to bad sectors, well, ...!

 

So what would happen if you created an image of a drive that has no bad sectors and then restored that image to an identical drive that does have bad sectors, would the bad sectors become good sectors again, or would they remain marked as bad.

 

What I'm saying is that the file system has a table of bad sectors; a table that TI backs up.

 

Again, Howard's speech number 23.
Avoid these problems by always restoring files, not images.

 

Do you advise that for system partitions too?

 

There's no difference, as long as you have properly formatted the partition.

The only issue is whether "activation" schemes have foolishly hidden something in a sector not part of the file system.

Butt, it has been oft stated that TI does not image sectors, so those would get lost anyway, n'est-ce pas?

 

What did Catamaran do wrong then, as described in post #9 of this thread ?

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=132702&highlight=structure bootable

 

Let's try this -
Windows decides sector XYZ is bad. It stores that sector address in its “bad sector list” and never uses it again; there is no data there.
When TI images the drive, the “bad sector list” is part of the image. When the image is restored to a new drive, so is the “bad sector list”. Therefore, Windows still sees sector XYZ as bad even though, on the new disk, it’s actually fine.
TI didn’t really copy bad sectors; it’s just that on the new drive some good sectors may be logged as bad.
Maybe …

 

So it would be a good idea to have an option so you could include/exclude the "bad sector list" when restoring an image to another HDD, if this is even possible.

 

Probably not possible since it’s just data stored in a sector to TI, not a specific file.
I’d rather be able to tell Windows to reset and rescan for bad sectors in order to create a new up-to-date table.

 

FWIW and with these caveats:

1. These were real world tests

2. It was a few (major) versions back

TI never reproduced the bad sector list when restoring an image.

 

"TI never reproduced the bad sector list when restoring an image."

I find that a little hard to believe. It's part of the Windows operating system. Are you saying that during a restore, TI left parts out?

 

It's part of the MFT (all tests were ntfs) and the MFT gets rebuilt obviously since the file locations are different. But, feel free to believe anything that you wish. That's why I said "FWIW".

 

Does the MFT get rebuilt if you restore the image to the same drive without resizing, also if you choose to delete the partition before the restore operation would that also rebuild the MFT or does the MFT get rebuilt reguardless, if the MFT does get rebuilt reguardless then the bad sectors wouldn't be copied, is this right?
Does TI restore the MFT at any point or does the MFT allways get rebuilt regaurdless?

Thanks!

 

All that I can add is that even if you create an image of a partiton and immediately restore it to the exact same place, the file locations are different.