Errors during first full backup

I did my first backup today after running Spybot, McAfee Virus Scan, and Defrag. I did get my usual two or three files that defrag said could not be defragmented. During the backup, I had three "Fail to read from the Disk" in sectors 14,339,948, 14,343,876, and 14,346,764. I did a retry, but is still failed. I then said "Ignore" to each of the three. When the backup completed, I got an Information message saying "The operation was successfully completed". However, todays date on the calender is red, indicating a failure. I wanted to run a Verify where the c drive is compared to the backup HD, but could not find how to do it. Do you think this first backup is any good? Where should I go from here? I wa thinking of running a disk scan of my c drive to see if it is anything that could be corrected. I have a feeling my past defrag messages are pointing to a bad spot on my drive, and the backup is failing for the same reason. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Also, please tell me how to do the verify after the backup.

 

Run chkdsk /r then re-do the Backup and see if you get the same errors.

 

I ran the checkdisk options from the c disk properties menu, and had no failures. Where to I enter the command run chkdsk/r ?

 

Hi

What version of Windows are you running? AFAIK you normally run it from a Dos window in XP or in the Search line in Vista. Note that C will not be repaired until you reboot . It is chkdsk x: /r where x is the drive letter
See this http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/chkdsk.htm

Also its not clear whether you have cloned the drive or made an image of the drive/partition which is stored on another drive. The image will be an xxxx.tib file. I am assuming you made an image file

When verifying TI does not compare the tib file against the original drive, partition or data rather it checks checksums that were embedded in the file so ensure that the file is internally correct.

As Seekforever said in an earlier post

"A validate is not a comparison of the archive contents with the source but rather a recalculation of the checksums and comparing their value with the original ones calculated and stored in the archive when it was created. TI writes 4000 checksums per gigabyte of data and every one must compare perfectly or else the archive is declared corrupt. This is a very rigourous test that demonstrates the archive can be properly read into RAM."

You verify with ATI 2009 by selecting Operations/Validate Backup Archive and selecting an archive or clicking browse to select it from the requestor.

 

at a command prompt

 

I am running Windows XP home edition. After running the file scans from the properties menu for the c drive without errors, I ran defrag again. I get the following dfrag errors, which have been there for a long time:
File Fragmentation - Total fragments = 2
Page file Fragmentation - Total = 1
Folder fragmentation - Fragmented foulders = 1
Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation - Total MFT fragments = 3

Do you think these file fragments have anything to do with my sector errors? What is the risk involved by running chkdsk using f or r ? If it changes something in the MFT, will it take down my windows XP? I am not a PC guru, and worry about losing my OS. This is why I went to Adronis. I have no way of knowing if my backup will restore my machine to where it was because of the three sector errors. At the moment, I have no problems with my PC, and have to decide how much risk to take because of this backup problem. It is my only good running machine, that I really need to work every day. I appreciate your help and interest in my problem.

 

Did you run the chkdsk command as suggested by Tatou above from the
command (DOS) prompt?

 

I did not run chkdsk via the Dos prompt. Two suggestions were made. One was to use /f, and the other was to use /r. I did not quite understand what the difference was, and if there was a risk to running them. Please advise which one is better to run. The post said "To repair errors without scanning the volume for bad sectors chose option /f". It also said "To repair errors, locate bad sectors, and recover readable information, select /r". I thought both the /r and /f scanned the c drive for errors.
Also, I ran backup again, this time running Validate after the backup. Validate ran error free, even though I had the three read sector errors. Does this mean I have a good backup in case it is necessary to use it?

 

You can used either /r or /f.

If the file validated it may be good.

If you have a empty disk drive, I would install that and attempt a
restore using the image and see if the restored drive will boot.

 

It looks like the problem is fixed. I went to the Acronis support site and did a search on the sector error I was getting. The first thing is said to run was chkdsk /r, which was one of your suggestions. Stage 4 is where it verifies the file data. A message came up saying "Windows replaced bad clusters in file 53746 of name\windows\service~1\i386\sp2.cab. When this finished, I ran defrag to see if it corrected the files that could not be defragmented. It did not fix that problem. However I made the third backup without getting the three sector read failures. I suspect the fact the error was in a cab file, it is something that is not used in regular program execution. Even though the third backup ran clean, I still show the red box over todays date. I will run it again tomorrow to hopefully get my green box reward.
Thanks again for all who were interested in my problem, and posted suggestions. I am not a PC guru, and this was my first exposure to Acronis. Your comments and assistance were really appreciated.