Disk Problems?

I have a simple back-up environment/process. I simply do a full backup sometime each weekend to an external, USB2.0 attached harddrive (Western Digital). I erase the oldest archive and add a new one so I've typically got the last 3 or 4 on this drive (and not much else at this point).

Recently when I start Acronis TI (Home) I get multiple 'bad sector' warnings. It is usually the same 3 sectors and the only way to get through the Acronis initialization process is to finally just check 'ignore all'.

All of my archives have been validated and I have not encountered any problems to date. I have used the Vista Tools Error Checking option on this drive (both 'fix file system errors' and 'scan for bad sectors'). The first time it found around 20 file system errors and reported no sector issues. When I re-run this tool it now finds no problems (and the darn thing takes 8-10 hours to complete).

So in 8-10 hours of disk crunching Vista can find no problems. But Acronis in a matter of seconds finds many of them.

Do I have a problem with my hardware? I'm not sure where to go next.

Thanks.

dave

 

Dave

I very recently had this happen to one of my external IDE drives that is connected to my pc via a Firewire interface.

The same 18 sector read errors occurred every time I started TI-2009. The errors came up very fast, too fast for the drive to have been scanned.

I ran chkdsk and the drive was clean, TI still finding the errors.
I ran HD Tune and it was again clean, TI still found the same errors.
I deleted the partition and rebuilt, same errors.
The old IBM IDE drive had a jumper on it that chose between 16 or 15 heads, it was in the 16 setting. Having nothing to lose, I set it to 15 heads.
Bingo, TI now was happy with the drive.
I set it back to 16 heads and TI was still happy.

I'm thinking that the drive had some report stored on it that TI read and reported errors from. Changing the head configuration may have reset the stored info. If there really is damage it is still damaged of course.

The only problem with this is that this is the only IDE drive I can recall having such a jumper. The drive is old, it was a warranty replacement sent to me in 2003.

Maybe someone can tell us if these sector read errors mean we should junk the drives or if we can trust them with backup files.

Fungus

 

Interesting - thanks for the info.

dave

 

I'm doing this just to bump this back up to the top. There may not be an real answer here, but what I am seeing from ATI certainly leaves me with some concerns, and some frustrations since Vista Tools (chkdsk under the covers I assume) can't seem to find the same issues.

dave

 

This may or may not be related but I use a Maxtor 160Gb drive as one of my backup drives. Recently I tried to use it as the destination for a backup and the Acronis Rescue cd reported sector errors. I decided to boot into Windows and update my 500Gb drive (which I use as a backup for three backup drives) by copying all the files from the 160. I then decided to format the 160 in windows. The formatting progress bar was moving very very slowly - I suspected something was wrong. After over 24 hours, yep I know I was in trouble, windows said the drive couldn't be formatted. I then tried Spinrite and it also reported errors. Next I tried a low level format and that also failed. At this point I gave up on the drive.

So it seems that True Image will report errors much sooner than Windows is able to.

 

Thanks for the response. That is kind of what I was afraid of (there really is a problem here).

OTOH, I am surprised to hear that a (apparently) couple of sector problems could prevent a reformat. Can Windows really not handle a bad sector or two when formatting? I would never have guessed this to be the case, but I am hardly well informed here.

dave

 

I believe that this well-beaten horse is quite dead at this point. But I am running into an interesting pattern ...

1) Things are 'normal' (no disk errors and 'Manage and Restore' shows all of my backup archives as you would expect)

2) ATI starts to indicate bad sectors on start-up (and occasionally on the front end of a backup)

3) ATI 'Manage and Restore' will suddenly 'lose track' of all my archives (none of the archives show up in the 'Manage and Restore' screen)

4) Manually 'browse for backups' and select the ones of interest

5) Go back to #1 and repeat on a 2-4 month cycle (weekly backups)

As of yesterday morning I was at #2. After my backup last night I completed the cycle and am now back to #1. (IIRC) this is the 3rd time that I have been through this cycle. This 'feels like' an ATI problem to me, rather than a disk issue but I don't know how to be sure.

dave

 

If you have a place to move the files from the problem drive, do that then and fdisk and format of the drive. If it survives that move back the files to it - the drive might be okay afterwards.

 

That might work or be helpful, but unfortunately I don't have the external space to do it. I suppose that there are some online services that I might be able to use for a small fee.

Thanks.

dave