Don't back up to compressed disks?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by btobw, Dec 24, 2007.

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  1. btobw

    btobw Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 24, 2007
    Posts:
    17
    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    TI 11.0 (build 8,053)
    Win XP sp2

    I made an image of my C: drive on a Lacie 500Gb external drive. All seemed to go well, until I tried to mount the image (in Win XP). Trying to mount it read-only, I got the message "Cannot assign a drive letter to a partition from the backup archive"; and yet it would mount in read-write mode.

    I then booted from the TI boot disk and tried to verify the image. The progress bar started and all looked fine, but after about 10 minutes it just sat there, with no reassuring clicks coming from the Lacie. After an hour, I tried to cancel out, but, when I confirmed I wanted to cancel, it just went back to the verification screen. I could not shut that screen at all, and ended up having to press the big red button.

    Somewhere in these forums I saw a moderator ask someone if they were using compressed drives. There was no response, but the Lacie is compressed. So I uncompressed all the partitions on the Lacie.

    After uncompressing the drive, that same image mounted fine, and verified without problems when I booted from the TI boot disk.

    Sooooo ... my advice is, don't backup to a compressed drive! I didn't see this advice anywhere in the user guide, and maybe uncompressing my drive and the subsequent disappearance of my problems was just the result of some wild coincidence. However, if you shouldn't back up to compressed drives, it really should be in big red letters in the user guide. This problem took two days out of my life!

    While I'm typing too much, I'll add a comment on the forums. When I was having problems, I searched extensively for some clue as to what could be going wrong. Many, many posts end with a moderator asking the person to send the output from the Acronis report utility etc to Acronis. The problem is, that's where the thread ends. This means that people like me, searching the threads for useful advice, never see the end result. It would be nice if, when the users problem is solved, the moderator came back with a post to say what caused the problem, and how it was fixed.
     
  2. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2005
    Posts:
    4,751
    My guess is the TI Linux recovery environment doesn't understand NTFS compression. If so, it should be obviously stated in the documentation.

    I agree that it would indeed be helpful if those problems did have the final answer posted. I imagine that for the Linux recovery environment problems the answer will be "provided updated .iso".
     
  3. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

    Joined:
    Apr 28, 2004
    Posts:
    25,885
    Hello btobw,

    Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.
    Please be aware that usually when information reports are requested, the problem cannot be solved without Acronis Support intervention (for example, providing driver pack/iso image customized for the particular system), and the solution is specific to the system under consideration. So, if there appears to be no solution already described, it's recommended to submit a request for technical support or post the detailed description of the problem in a new thread. When submitting a support request, one can use Acronis Help Post as a guide to what information to collect.

    Regarding the problem with working with archives stored on compressed drives: the issue is being investigated at the moment, but our Test Team couldn't reproduce it yet. Could you please collect some information to help us investigate the problem?

    Please create Acronis Report, Windows system information and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post (please collect the information files in the state when the problem is reproduced).

    Please download the latest version of Acronis drivers and install it with enabled logging. Then reproduce the issue (mount failure) and collect the log file without closing any application windows (including the error message windows if there are any). The log file will be created at C:\ . The name of the log file will be snapapi [date-time].log

    Then submit a request for technical support with the subject indicating that you want to contact Marat Setdikov. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

    Thank you.
    --
    Marat Setdikov
     
  4. btobw

    btobw Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 24, 2007
    Posts:
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    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    Hi Marat

    I recompressed one of the partitions on my external HD, and started to follow all the procedures listed. The new image I created after compression mounted in Windows without problems this time, so I couldn't recreate the problem either :/

    I haven't had a chance to follow up the rest of my problem, which was that, when booting from the ATI boot disk and then trying to validate the image on a compressed partition, it would just hang. I will do that when I get a chance.

    Is it even remotely likely that compressing the drive as it is formatted (as opposed to compressing after format) would make a difference?

    Cheers
    Dianne
     
  5. jwjw1

    jwjw1 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2007
    Posts:
    11
    Acronis is "Worthless" with restoring a image from a NTFS Drive..it will run a 'validation' of a backup'd image on a NTFS Drive...but will not restore from one....at least is won't from my WD1600AAJS SATA II

    I've really tried to continue with this product...even sent logs and worked with support in the past..but they have gone downhill and continue to ignore Vista,NTFS and USB (Mouse) Support...one minute your hardware works.then the next version update...your not.

    Paragon Hard Disk Manger 2008 Suite (49.95) works 'Flawlessly'
    this isn't a advertisement for Paragon..just letting people know their are other options...if and when they get tired of Acronis Lip Service and increasing incompetence.
     
  6. btobw

    btobw Registered Member

    Joined:
    Dec 24, 2007
    Posts:
    17
    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    I dunno about 'flawlessly'. A thread title of "Failed restore operation has ruined my Christmas" in the Paragon forums doesn't fill me with confidence :doubt: There aren't as many posts; but then, I doubt they have as large a user base as Acronis.

    There isn't a significant piece of software anywhere that doesn't have bugs. Like all such forums, what we see here (and in the Paragon forums) are the things that have gone wrong. With most of software, you just learn to work around the bugs. However, with system critical software like ATI, I know I'm far more inclined to report - and complain!

    Thanks for the post - I'll keep it in mind. I don't think I'd like to be doing ATI support right at this moment.
     
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