Recovery from Chkdsk Problem: Rollback vs. Ghost

Hello,

I have learned quite a bit by passively reading the forum in the past, but now I would like to directly request some advice from the Wilders community. I am sorry that the post below is a bit long, but I thought it would be important to accurately describe the situation.

Please review my situation below and offer your thoughts on an appropriate resolution.

Situation:

I am running Windows XP Media Center Edition on a Dell XPS 410 PC with Rollback Rx Pro 7.2X and Norton Ghost 12 installed.

During a recent boot on March 15 the computer hung on the Windows welcome screen (see attached pic), so I had to perform a hard shutdown, which resulted in chkdsk running at the next startup.

Chkdsk ran with the option to "repair" (block access to) bad sectors by default on startup. It found a number of errors, and constantly looped over attempts to repair one bad sector on the disk, so I performed a second hard shutdown after 3 hours (ugh).

I have never encountered any errors before on the 1 year old disk. I think they resulted merely from chkdsk conflicts with the file system created by Rollback Rx as documented on this site.

I re-booted and used the Home key in the Rollback boot manager to restore a snapshot from the previous day (3/14). The snapshot loaded correctly and the system seems to work fine during the last 2 weeks, but I worry that somehow some data may be corrupted somewhere on the drive.

Resolutions:

I am wondering if there would be an good way to verify the data on the drive, or if I should consider restoring the Ghost image that I also completed on 3/14.

I am thinking about restoring the Ghost image because the quality of the data is most important to me and I have not created significant new files since the 14th, but I fear that restoring the image could also lead to new problems. Although I verified the image, I have no way to be sure that it will restore properly and I have never yet completed a Ghost restoration.

As I understand it, such a restoration would involve the following steps:

(1) Uninstall Rollback Rx

(2) Restoring the Ghost image from within Windows, which would give me the current snapshot b/c it was taken within Windows

(3) Fixing the mbr from the recovery console on the XP cd. This step makes me uneasy for the following reasons:

- I think that Dell customizes the mbr to enable access to their own restoration to factory default settings from hidden system partitions

- Is it necessary even if I uninstall Rollback before the restore?

- I would have to use an XP Pro cd to access the recovery console and fixmbr -- would that be a problem?

(4) Uninstalling and re-installing Rollback on the restored drive.

What would be the best solution?

 

One of the many reasons I stopped using Rollback ....


Does the Ghost image have Rollback installed within it .... if so I'm not sure that it will restore unless you forced a sector by sector backup. I have had variable success restoring images from Paragon .... worked most times .... the last time I tried it failed never to use RB again .... changed over to FD sadly not an option now.


Can you mount the Ghost image and then compare the files using a file compare util? like beyond compare?

 

Thanks for your reply, starfish_001.

The Ghost image was saved to an external usb drive in Windows with Rollback installed.

I did not know that a sector by sector copy might be advisable for restoring the image. I thought that a large sector by sector copy was useful only if one needed to restore a working version of Rollback with all the snapshots intact. The Horizon DataSys support area FAQ section suggests that a restore from a normal Ghost image is ok as long as Rollback is removed and the old snapshots are not required. However, real life experiences are weightier than manufacturer's claims. Any others have similar experiences?

Mounting Ghost recovery point to a virtual drive and comparing it to the restored snapshot on my current hard disc is a good idea. They should be the same, so differences would at least tell me if I should consider risking the Ghost restoration.

I understand that file comparison utilities will check for the presence, size, and crc of files on both drives. The only potential problem I can see is that files would be reported as present, but actually be corrupt. Is there a way to check if the files are uncorrupted?

 

Re: Causes for My Concerns

Just wanted to make one additional comment that might be useful for our discussion and help resolve this issue.

My concerns result from doubts over Horizon DataSystems' assumption that, if a snapshot boots after a chkdsk problem, you are "fine" and all data on that snapshot is properly preserved (see HDS Support Knowledge Base on Chkdsk). Couldn't a Rollback disk map have an anomaly and still boot properly, just as a disc can lose data due to bad sectors and still function for an undetermined time? Wouldn't a chkdsk problem corrupt Rollback disk map information for old snapshots as well as the current one at the time of the problem?

I am not certain that Incremental Sector Redirection (ISR) will act to safeguard old snapshot disk maps when chkdsk runs immediately after startup. Have the necessary drivers for ISR to function loaded in such a situation? I would think not, but I would welcome correction from a more knowledgeable poster.

 

Results Thusfar

Ok, here are my results thusfar for anyone following the thread:

1. The Ghost image and current Rollback snapshot of my hard disc appear to contain the same files according to a TreeComp scan
   
2. Further research suggests that a fixmbr would be required if I uninstall Rollback and then restore the Ghost image.
   
3. The Dell PC definitely contains a custom mbr, which I would rather not lose in the process

 

hard restart sometimes may damage the snapshot of rollback. take care.

 

Ok -- the issue I keep coming back to is would the hard restart damage only the current snapshot or also previous ones? It was only the second time I ever experienced a hang-up on the welcome screen and also the second hard restart in the year I've had the pc.