Integrity errors common?

I've got a 2011 MBP that I had a windows 7 boot camp partition on. Up to Lion, I had been using win clone to back up my boot camp partition, but it doesn't work in Lion, and the hacks and such out there have all failed for me. So I saw posts that indicated that booting from the rescue disc with the Paragon backup and recovery would let people do boot camp partitions as well.
So I purchased a license last night, downloaded, burned the CD, booted from it, and was able to back it up just fine. Problem came with the restore, where I got integrity errors.
I also use True Image for PC's, and both win clone and true image would warn me when the image was created if there were problems. So I didn't think to check the integrity as a step before testing the recovery process, so of course I've lost my boot camp partition now.
Not that critical a thing at least, since I do have a win clone image from a week or two ago, that I can still mount to access files on it, so I can rebuild Windows without any issues other than lost time. I was just wondering if it's common for the Paragon backup to have errors when it backs up that it doesn't see or report itself? Is it pretty much a requirement to run the check on the image when it's done to make sure it's actually a good image?

I was impressed with the speed of the backup, but the recovery went for like 1.5 hours just to get about 75% of the way done before it errored out, which seemed extreme since the exact same partition restore with win clone was about an 8 minute process.

Thanks for any enlightenment.

 

True Image, as you know, allows you to check the archive integrity after it is created. However, in Paragon I don't see any obvious way of doing this without perhaps getting into scripting. If anybody knows what to set to achive this let me know. So AFAIK you have to manually do an archive verification.

The description of archive integrity checking in the Paragon documentation is very confusing. In some places it makes you think if you tick the appropriate box it will do careful archive checking while creating but in other places it says that it only permits the archive to be verified before restoring. I asked Paragon support and the best I get out of it is that checking the box puts the checksums into the archive that can be used later for checking but nothing more.

I also have a support request in because I cannot get the verification to do anything using the regular (Linux-based) recovery envronment in both Backup and Recovery Home 10 and the 2011 Free version on more than one machine. So my impression is that you can verify the archive in Windows but not in recovery stage.

I can't say this forum is loaded with verification/restore problems but they do happen. All of these programs assume you hardware is solid so the restore problems can be caused by hardware issues and if you are using a Linux recovery CD instead of WinPE then you have a possible driver compatibility issue which normally is a bigger issue with the latest hardware.

The verification process means reading the archive into RAM and re-calculating the checksums that were calculated and placed into the archive when it was created. If they don't agree the archive is seen as bad. In the True Image case, 4000 checksums/GB of archive are created and stored. I don't know about Paragon.

If you can verify the bad image in Windows you may have a Linux issue. If it won't verify then possibly a hardware issue unless there is some program issue. I have no Mac experience at all. Common hardware issues on the PC that cause verification failure are bad RAM and just because the machine seems OK normally don't assume this isn't the problem. Most PCs do not do any data integrity checking on RAM data so depending on where the bad RAM is you may or may not see a problem. The imaging/restoration process very likely uses all the RAM it can and the data is also being checked so normally unseen RAM errors can show up. On PCs I recommend running Memtest86+ free from www.memtest.org . Ideally the test should run for a long time such as overnight to catch marginal errors. The other problem can be a sector that is bad on the drive storing the archive. A chkdsk X: /r will do a read-check of all the disk surface. Replace the X with the drive letter of the partition being tested.

Even though I have virtually no trouble with my images I always verify them. Unfortunately, if you haven't done a successful restore on this machine you really don't know if the recovery environment works properly on it. Normally, I'd say an archive verification would show it would be pretty likely to work but since I can't get the rescue environment to verify an archive I can't recommend this method.

Your recovery time seems long. Normally the recovery environment should take the same or at most 2-3 times longer than the creation. If using the Linux CD it could indicate a poor driver issue.

 

Do I understand this correctly? You can't get an "integrity" check to work from the rescue enviroment? When I was having a restore problem that's exactly what their Tech Support said to do.

A bit OT but they stated that "somtimes" WinPE writes log files from some Windows services to the HD and leaves them locked and therefore Paragon can't overwrite them. Sounds odd but that's what they said. They suggested deleting partitions first. I haven't had the need to restore my HD since then which was over two months ago. This happened after approx. ten successful restores with the same HDM2011S build too.

 

Yes, that's the situation as I see it and what Tech Support told you to do would make perfect sense? Did it do anything - my verify is over in zero time.

Here is my trouble report I submitted to Paragon:

I want to check my archive integrity using the CD or USB key Linux recovery environment. After booting the CD or USB key, I go to General - Show Archive Info and select an archive in the Select Archive Window and Open it. I get an Image Information window and at the bottom is the Check Integrity button as described in the manual/help file. I click on it and immediately I get a Progress Information window. The Operations List box in this window is blank and the 3 progress bars are completely filled. At the bottom of the main screen it says Requested Operations have been finished. Press Close to continue. Obviously, nothing has happened to check the archive integrity. I tried the Free Paragon Backup and Recovery 2011 CD with the same result in this machine and also in the machine that uses the Free version. It also did the same thing. Am I doing something wrong or is their a flaw in checking archive integrity from within the recovery environment? Thanks for your help. ​

I submitted it about 11 days ago, there were a couple of requests for more info and for the past several days the status is "being worked on". From that I get the impression that it isn't simple or the support person went on holidays!

If you have the time and enthusiasm I'd be interested to see if you have the same problem. Since it is happening with 2 versions on multiple machines there is either a bug or I'm doing something wrong!

Interesting about WinPE writing files that are locked and the suggestion to delete the partition first. Now, I don't know about Paragon but True Image deletes the partition being restored as one of its first tasks which is why the failure of a restore causes you to end up with unallocated space. I would expect Paragon to do something similar but ...

 

I booted the HDM2011S WinPE Recovery Disc. Having never checked an archive from this enviroment, I had to search for it. The Archive tab, everything is greyed out. Explorer>Drive>Archive, right click, no option for checking integrity there.

I finally found it under Wizards>Backup Utilities>Check Integrity to which one can select the drive and archive. I didn't time it but it ran about 15-20 minutes before completing successfully.

I'm using the latest build that was released on 5/7/11 which "isn't" the build under which I had the problem mention above.

 

The WinPE recovery environment is OK it's the Linux recovery environment that doesn't work. Is there both a Linux and WinPE recovery mechanism in HDM2011?

Regardless, I received an update from Paragon Support today and it said they will fix it so it looks like it is a real bug in the Linux-based environment. WinPE is fine.

 

When I was using B&R2010FA, the Linux created recovery disc wouldn't boot up correctly on my system so later with help here, I created my own WinPE disc and I didn't waste my time trying the Linux disc again with HDM2011S.

 

I tried the Linux recovery disc from HDN2011S on a CD-RW as not to waste a disc and it hung just like it did with B&R2010FA.

 

Since you have WinPE you may not care about the Linux problem. I don't know what Paragon's policy is but Acronis after receiving some information about your system would create a specific iso for you to burn and use. Since they were aware of the problem the fix would hopefully get included in the next update (apparently didn't always happen).

I beleive in reporting bugs especially hardware specific ones since it is impossible for any company to test every bit of PC hardware on the market and without feedback there little chance of them being able to even attempt a fix.

 

One needs something that you can boot from, it's the only way to go!

Back when I first tried the Linux disc, a repair disc created from W7 also failed to boot correctly. A search showed this to be a common problem with Dell PCs for years. Since my system was jacked due to the factory installed OS with bad memory stick(s), I was wondering if the Linux disc would work now.

After the Linux disc failed today, I tried again to create a system repair disc from W7 using the same CD-RW and it booted. I have a downloaded ISO for the W7 64-bit Repair/Recovery Disc anyway. I've been fixing system problems for months and think that I'm finally problem free. It's a PITA to reinstall/restore the factory OS and then all my apps.