No luck creating backups

I have not been able to make a successful backup with True Image trial. My C: drive is always corrupt and my D: drive, a Raid 0 SATA array, locks up my computer. I tried Norton Ghost and it just makes corrupt images of both drives. I tried Norton’s suggestions on True Image and my computer locks up on both drives. I have an ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe mb with the raid onboard. Can anyone tell me if the full non trial version with the latest build will solve this problem? I know it is a broad question but have people had success with the full product where they had failures with the trial? I don’t care to keep spending money on products that don’t work on my computer.

Through my many days of internet research on this subject is seems ending up with corrupt images is a very common problem. It this whole backup image thing so new that it needs the bugs to be worked out? Is it likely these problems can be worked out with time and patches? Why do so many people have trouble with this? Maybe I am unreasonable but I don’t think people should have to temporarily reconfigure their whole computer just to make a program work. I am new to making backup images so I don’t know the history of this process.

 

Hi Ralph - it is not the imaging process that is new, it all that on-board RAID, and SLI, and Hypertransport, and overclocking, and over-voltaging, USB controllers, and what have you, that is causing the most problems.

If the Trial version does not work for you, the registered version will fail too (assuming that they are the same version/build).

 

I guess it is just going to take time until the software companies can figure out all the nitty gritty details of all this stuff.

 

Hello Ralgh,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

The problem with corrupted images created by Acronis True Image is usually can be solved. I am sure it will be solved in your case as well. Could you please describe how your partitions are organised and where you want to store the image? Also please let me know whether your RAID is hardware (i.e. you have RAID controller and RAID array is set in BIOS) or software (i.e. the array is set in Windows).

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

My C: drive is 80 GB with a single partition. My Raid drive is a single partition of about 140 GB. My F: drive is a 300 GB drive that is purely for backup files. I am trying to put the images on the F: drive. My Raid drive is set up in the BIOS so I guess that makes it hardware. I have abandoned trying to make Ghost 9.0 work because in the process of trouble shooting it screwed up everything else in Systemworks. I just received my full copy of True Image today so I will install that and patch it to the latest build and see what happens. Any suggestions you may have are greatly appreciated.

 

Ok here’s where I’m at. I installed the licensed program from the CD. I registered and upgraded to the 826 Build. Then I made a recovery disk from the 826 Build and booted the computer using that disk. I double checked when I booted from the CD to make sure it was the most recent version. I created a backup image of my C: drive. Then I checked the image and it is corrupt. So where to from here?

 

Have you ran memtest yet? See the following post:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=74510

Usually image corruption issues are a hardware problem, not anything wrong with the software. Especially since you're seeing corruption with Ghost as well, I would be highly suspect of a hardware issue.

Try the RAM first.... The AMD 64's have a built-in memory controller and can be very picky about RAM. Worth a shot anyway. Good luck

 

I ran memtest. First for about 3 hours intermittently doing things with my computer resulting in with no errors. Then I ran it all night like the manual suggests. After over nine hours there were still no errors. Back to the drawing board.

 

You ran memtest86? Or some windows memory checker? Make sure to run the bootable memtest from:

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

Anything that checks memory from within windows won't be reliable. Still, your ram is probably ok. You should look at the rest of your hardware.... At least you should rule out the ram right off the bat since it's been known to cause issues previously with other people.

 

Which one of those should I download?

 

This is a nasty one, but some systems have problems with very large files. Memory errors can cause the problem, but it can also be due to the motherboard chipset or drive errors.

You are already getting the memtest iso image, so that should answer the memory question.

Have you run ErrorChecking on all your hard drives. In Windows XP open My Computer, right click on the C drive, select Properties and then click on the Tools tab. Under ErrorChecking, click Check now and then check both boxes before starting the test. It will tell you it has to run at the next bootup. Reboot and let the test run. Do this for all your drives.

If the corrupt image problem continues, here's one more possibility. Create the image of C on the C drive. Check it there. If it is good, copy it to another drive and check it again on that drive. If it is good, erase the copy on the C drive. If it is corrupt after copying to the second drive, you definitely have a hardware problem.

 

I did all the error checking and junk when I was dealing with Ghost. Of course I have done a lot of things since then so something else may have gotten screwed up. Ever since I did all the things the Symantec people told me to do I have been having problems with other programs. Four of them started giving me error messages and one wouldn't even start. I have since run fixes or reinstalled all of them and they all work fine now.

 

I ran this one and it went through two times showing no errors.

 

So, you memory is good, and we must assume that the CPU is good too. How about your disks, and your disk controllers?

I know you said, that you did check the disks/controllers when you were having problems with Ghost, but humour us and do it again. Specifically, find a large file, e.g. WinXP Service Pack 2, and calculate the MD5-checksum it. Then copy the file to another drive (your IDE and/or SATA drive), and re-calcuate the checksum. Next do it with a HUGE file, e.g. a True Image file.

 

Hello Ralgh,

Also makes me wonder whether Asus haven't yet sorted out their problem with large file transfers between SATA disks. Have a read of the previous thread titled <Backups Corrupted>, particularly the embedied link to the <PCbanter forum>.

Regards

 

Ok, I've successfully created and checked a backup image. I make an image of the C: drive on the C: drive. Does this key anyone in on a direction to go on what my problem might be or why it works this way? Also is it possible to just now copy the image file to my backup drive or will that mess it up somehow? Thanks.

Tom

 

Ok, I know the answer to one of my questions. I moved the file to my backup drive and checked again. It says it is corrupt.

 

Hello Ralgh,

Could you please do the following in order to check the image integrity?

- Download the checksum utility from http://www.irnis.net/files/xcsci.exe
- Install and run the application and click on the ellipsis sign to browse and select the image file on C:drive;
- Click the "Run" button in the application and save the MD5 checksum;
- Get the MD5 checksum for the same part of the image on D:drive and compare the figures obtained.

It's possible the problem is related to the hard drive itself.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Well I actually deleted the image already. I have discovered something else though. In my setup I have a C drive for my windows system stuff and that’s about it. I have my D Raid drive for all my programs. And then there is the large F drive for backing up the other drives. I have tried every combination of backing up drives. I have tried C to C, C to D, C to F, and so on with all the drives. What I have found is that every image I made was successfully verified except the ones I made from C to F and D to F. I even made one from F to F and it was successfully verified. So It seems that the only ones I can’t get to work are the only combinations I actually want to make. Any ideas what might be causing this? I also e-mailed this discovery to tech support but have received no response yet.

Tom

 

Ralgh, as far as I am concerned, I will ignore you and your imaging problems until you start listen to the suggestions and procedures given to you. Especially my own:

 

MiniMax. I missed your original post because I got caught up reading the links in Menorcaman’s post. I couldn’t do what Irina suggested when I last posted because originally I didn’t copy the file, I moved it. Then by the time I read the post I had already deleted it but had done the other things I mentioned so I posted that. You couldn’t know that so no sweat.

Here is where I am at. I made a new copy of C to C and then copied it to my F drive just like before. The C copy checks out ok and the F copy is corrupt just like before. So I ran the checksum. Here are the results.

C: D38C0C9716B28F65363CE1E590205320

F: B538E29FF5B735405ABAF5CC71DE4C32

I have no idea what these numbers mean or what to do with them.

 

A checksum is like a fingerprint of the file. When your system copied the file from C to F the file changed, so the F-fingerprint also changed. And those changes make the image corrupt.

Since True Image was not involved in the copying, you need to look elsewhere for the cause of the corrupt imaging: Your ASUS motherboard and/or the RAID controller.

Edit: You might want to start by copying a small file from C to F and compare checksums. If okay, double up on the size of the file, and repeat. Somewhere you will learn the max size of files that can be copied between the disks.

 

Ralgh

With those checksum results, you have the same problem as many others when copying files from one SATA drive to another, using Asus motherboards. TI is not the problem.

I've been going back and forth with Asus for a couple of months now, but they don't really give a damn. They will only shift the blame from my anti-virus, to my drives, to my cables, to the way I part my hair, yadda yadda. You can search on this list and on others, and find many people having the same problem that you and I are having. SiliconImage, the manufacturer of the raid chip says that Asus has played with the chip and SI can not support it. Seagate, the mfg of my drives, says that they can duplicate the problem using Asus boards. Abit had the same problem, since it has the same controller, and Abit put out a bios with a setting that solved the problem. I raised that with Asus and they won't do anything.

The only way I could solve the problem was to install an IDE drive and use that for my TI backups. That works fine from the standpoint of corrupt images at least. Also, I can copy files from either of my SATA drives to the IDE drive and the checksum is good. I am still having a problem exploring the IT image on the IDE drive, but I'm working with Acronis support to fix that.

Grant

 

This board uses the Nforce4 chipset and Google does not indicate any common problem with copying large files on these Asus boards with Sata drives (at least when I search). The Nforce4 chipset has been around long enough for the bugs to get ironed out according to Anandtech. There are huge threads about this board. I was interested in this because I recently built a system around this board for my wife.

 

Well actually the drive I am having a problem with is an IDE drive. I have successfully copied my D SATA Raid drive to my C IDE drive and vice versa. The problem comes when I copy anything to the F drive which is on the second/middle connector on my IDE cable. Of course F drive to F drive works fine. It looks like SATA doesn’t have anything to do with it.

The Acronis e-mail tech support suggests trying a different cable. I have a ton of them so I will try that. I have been moving files of increasing size from the C to the F drive, all successful, but I have only gotten up to about 8MB. I haven’t had much time to mess with it today. I am going to switch the cable and get back to moving files as soon as I have a little time. I only know enough about computers to get myself in trouble but since the backups that go to that drive from another drive are corrupt and the ones that are made from and to that drive are fine, changing the cable seems a reasonable step to take.