Not given size choice by TI at archive create

In my first use of TI, I created 6 CDs of my Win 2K primary disk on a USB 2.0 TDK 24/10/40x external burner. All appeared OK until I attempted to verify the CDs. Disk 1 and 6 were identified as corrupt by TI.

On looking at the size with Win Explorer, I noticed that the size was 719,314; in fact, ALL 6 were that size. I thought that size perhaps exceeded the capacity of the CDs (PNY, "700 MB" CDs). So I looked further at the Guide and found that I never was shown the Image Archive Splitting window; to check, I started another create session and the Create Image Wizard progressed from Image Archive Creation, next to the Compression Level window.

I noted the number of forum items noting corrupt files after large files were archived. My next step will be to upgrade to the latest TDK firmware level if the answers here don't resolve my problem.

Questions:

1. Is there some option or logic that intentionally skips the Image Archive Splitting window in some cases?

2. Is the size of 719,314 for a 700 mb CD OK? (perhaps 1024 x 1024 x 700 = 734,003,200 is the real limit of a 700 CD.)

3. Is it "normal" for all CDs to contain exactly the same byte count, including the last one?

4. Could down-level firmware in the USB burner be responsible for the corruption?

The promise of TI to be a reliable backup tool makes me salivate (after four bare-metal restores with MS approaches in a year). But I'm not quite there yet. Please help.

 

In response to my query to TDK, they say there are no firmware upgrades for my 24/10/48x external TDK burner. (This is after giving detailed instructions on firmware upgrades for the unit.)

"Unfortunately, we are not authorized to offer assistance with third party recording programs. You will need to contact the manufacturer of the software you are trying to use with the drive to see if they offer formal support for the drive."

My rhetorical question to TI is: do you provide technical support for this drive?

If repeated attempts still fail to produce restorable CDs, I will try to create them on my wife's XP PC using an internal TDK burner. I will report here what I find.

I still need to know if there is something I need to do differently to receive the size window when creating an archive.

 

Hello Bluegoose,

1. Imaging via external USB can be somewhat "problematic" with certain hardware configurations (see other threads about "corrupt images").

2. You don't get the option to set the image size manually when imaging direct to CD or DVD.

Regards

 

Hello Bluegoose,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

In addition to Menorcaman's reply I would like to answer the remaining:
- 700Mb is 734,003,200 bytes, you are absolutely right;
- it is normal that every CD (except the last one may be) contains the same data size because the image file is splitted in this way;
- yes, down-level firmware is a possible reason for the curupted images problem.

As for the support of your burner, it should work though we cannot provide you with any firmware for it.

Please try to create image files in two steps splitting them into less than 700Mb and storing first to hard disk and then burning to CDs.

If the problem persists please send a description of it to support@acronis.com. Our Support Team will try to help you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Acronis - Many thanks for clearing up a couple misconceptions I had. At this point I can create CD backups with no corruption errors on my external USB 2.0 TDK burner by first writing the image to HD, then using native XP writers to create the CDs. This also eliminates the size issue.

The following maybe should be another thread (such as "targeting a SMALLER HD gives unknown number of CD switches"). My objective now is to be able to test a backup from an existing XP primary disk to another PC's SMALLER disk as a test bed.

What I ran into is that after choosing Resizing, the TI window advised that it would be much slower if I made that choice, that "more than one CD switch may be involved. After more than 15 switches (with no indication of how many more might be needed), I gave up: I didn't know if 16 more or 256,000 more might be needed. Could you please tell me if it is feasible to continue with the switches, that one just has to be patient; or could it be that in some (or all) cases there could be too many switches to make it practical to continue?

The basic question I have is "Is it feasible to create an image of a disk, say, of 28 GB with only 5 GB of data, and restore it into (another PC's) disk with less than 28 GB capacity?" My objective is to test the image creation on a test PC without jeopardizing my (wife's and my) PC to restore. If I can as at least boot the transferred primary partition on the test PC and check out a number of applications, the restore has a chance to work at crunch time, even if not all of the network and other devices are supported on the test machine.

Any thoughts you might have toward this objective would be greatly appreciated. Again, Acronis TI looks like it will provide exactly the functions I need. I just have to gain the experience and confidence of creating images that will work on the smaller test PC.