error E00070020--any way out?

My primary hard drive died completely--won't spin up at all. I have a full drive image created with Acronis True Image 11 Home on a second internal SATA drive, under Windows Vista. I booted to the rescue CD, but when I try to restore the image, I get error E00070020--backup is corrupt. I get the same error when validating the backup.

My copy of True Image should be the latest build, as I bought it only a couple of weeks ago. (I can't check now, as I can't get into Windows at all.)

Is there anything I can do? I have years of data at stake. I switched from Windows' built-in backup to Acronis, but right now that seems like a dumb move on my part.

 

Do you have a replacement hard drive?

If you do, you can install it and try the following:
Install Vista and then download and install the latest build of TI 11 (8,053). Also download the SafeMedia Plugin (Safe Mode version) and install that. Then create a new TI CD that includes both the Full and Safe Mode versions.
Boot from the new CD and try the Full version. See if it will Validate the image. If it doesn't, boot to the Safe Mode version and see if it will.

You can also see if the image will Validate from TI in Vista.

Even if the image is corrupt, most (if not all) of the data in the image should be able to be restored by mounting the image and copying out the files you need.

 

Thanks. I'll try that and report back. I hope the trial version of True Image can do that for me--my purchase info and serial number are on the frozen hard drive.

 

Well, the bottom line is that it didn't work. I installed Windows XP to another hard drive, and then installed True Image. It still reads the archive as corrupt, and it won't mount. I get the same image with the Acronis boot CD.

I tried the file-by-file restoration, which restored about a third of my files, but none of my documents, which are most important.

This is extremely dissatisfying.

 

Try swapping your SATA cables over.
Try running Memtest86+ over night to see if this is a RAM problem
Can you confirm your system is not being stressed (e.g. by over clocking or running non-standard BIOS timings)

F.

 

My system isn't overclocked, and it has been in general stable. I tried a different SATA cable, with the same result. I'll try the memtest86+.

Although for some people, a "corrupt backup" error message occurs without true corruption, I think in my case the backup is really corrupt. I ran chkdsk, and it found unreadable sectors. So, maybe I shouldn't blame Acronis. Still, I would have hoped that a larger portion of my backup would be recoverable even with disk errors.

I'm now looking into buying another drive of the same model as my original one that failed (not the drive with the corrupt ATI file), and transplanting the PCB board to see if I can get it working.

 

Are the unreadable sectors on the drive the TI archive is stored on or the drive you were backing up?

If it is the HD containing the archive and the archive is in a bad location then it won't validate. If the bad sectors are on the source drive then there is a chance it will since the validation is primarily a checksum calculation and if TI read bad data it would calculate the checksum based on that data so it should still validate if everything else is well (possibly!!). Unfortunately, I can't tell you if a badchecksum calculation is the only thing that will produce the corrupt archive message.

 

The unreadable sectors are on the drive with the TI archive. Although I can see how that leads to corruption, it's disconcerting that about 10 unreadable sectors render most of a 60 GB backup file unusable. I would have hoped that a backup program would be more robust than that.

 

A checksum on a 60GB sample will fail if as much as 1 bit differs in the validated version. The problem is actually a reflection of the integrity of your system, rather than on the "robustness" of the backup program.

Whether, on discovering an integrity problem with your system the backup program should be more forgiving and allow you to restore errors is a different question.

F.

 

Can you get ahold of a usb enclosure to put the "dead" hard drive in, connect to any working system and see if you can get at your data?

 

just my cents worth, E00070020 i used to get it until i switched off my USB HHD when making or restoring an image, hav'nt had it since.

 

A little progress...I copied the image file to a new drive. It still won't validate, but I can now mount it, and I've been able to retrieve my documents and most important data.

As for my "dead" original drive, it doesn't spin at all. I'm hoping it's the PCB that's fried; I ordered a replacement to transplant into it.

Since my main drive died and the backup drive developed significant problems at the same time, I'm wondering if there was a power surge or other common hit.

 

Congratulations, making the best of a tricky situation.

F.

 

Swapping the PCB's over may or may not get you drive back, you may get worse problems as the EEPROM on the new PCB won't have the factory bad sectors of your original drive burnt in to it.

Assuming you are lucky and it does work, then Vista or XP might throw a wobbly as the drive signature and serial number will be different.

IF and this is a BIG IF, you can find someone with a corporate version of TI, there is an extra restore option, of restoring ignoring bad sectors - of course this might not be too helpful either.

Colin

 

It is possible but no real way of telling. Your disk with the bad sectors could have developed them at any time and you wouldn't know it. Disk errors are only checked when reading in normal situations not when the data is written. However, if you validated the TI image on your disk when it was created and now it is bad then I would say it is a lot more likely something happened with a common cause. This is assuming the image wasn't created months ago.

 

I was getting similar errors (I think mine was E00070004 and found that it was due to some filenames that exceeded 256 characters in the temp folders. IF you exclude those filenames in the restore, it will get past it. You can find the offending file by restoring specific files/folders and checking off just subsets to see which subsets fail and then narrow it down that way. I was able to get around this type of error by excluding the folders that had filenames that didn't work. Hopefully you'll have similar luck.

 

I spent 2 weeks with this “Error e00070020…” and TI Home v.11 (Acronis True Image Home v.11). I scanned hard disks surfaces with various progs, tested memory chips with various progs and exchanged each other in slots, copied backups onto other USB and network hard disks etc. etc., but I wasted my time.
Finally I decided to format hard disk C: and to install again all the progs (gasp!). Every 5 progs I made an image with TI and everything was fine till I installed group containing O&O Defrag. I noticed it was the only prog in the group that accessed to hard disk heavily. So I thought background defrag is not good for TI when it validates images or makes them. I disabled background defrag and now it seems TI works fine again.
I’m not sure this is the solution but, if somebody has a similar situation, let me know if this works out.
I hope this will be useful.
Cheers.
Belindo Filobeo
P.S. Sorry for my horrible English