Restoring Image - Bad Sectors an Issue?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by The4Bs, Apr 29, 2007.

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  1. The4Bs

    The4Bs Registered Member

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    I've been a ATI 10 (build 4871) user for one whole week now. I've learned lots from this forum and the program is certainly easy to use. However I still need a few things cleared up - particularly with restoring - and I'm hoping someone can help me out. Forgive me if this post is long but I'm including a few reports from CHKDSK to help explain my situation.

    While running our first full system image backup on our Dell laptop (to an external hdd) I got an error message that said it couldn't read a particular sector. After a few "retry" clicks I opted for "ignore". The backup and subsequent validation completed without incident. It would seem that just by running ATI 10 I have been enlightened to a potential problematic internal hdd (hurray for ATI 10!) and I've got an image in the nick of time. Everything runs fine with the computer but it seems I need to watch for potential trouble going forward.

    I ran "CHKDSK c: /R" and it reported this:

    Checking file system on C:
    The type of the file system is NTFS.
    Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
    Cleaning up 1422 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
    Cleaning up 1422 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
    Cleaning up 1422 unused security descriptors.
    CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
    Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0xeabc73000 for 0xa000 bytes.
    Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0xeabc7c000 for 0x1000 bytes.
    Windows replaced bad clusters in file 124964
    of name \PROGRA~1\EASPOR~1\NHL07\fe\nhl\EASO\COMMON~2\cards\31.jpg.
    File data verification completed.
    CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
    Free space verification is complete.
    Adding 1 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
    Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
    Windows has made corrections to the file system.

    93008317 KB total disk space.
    29980188 KB in 98444 files.
    35268 KB in 8449 indexes.
    4 KB in bad sectors.
    201229 KB in use by the system.
    65536 KB occupied by the log file.
    62791628 KB available on disk.

    The file at issue is not a big deal and, if I understand correctly, it has been fixed and the bad cluster has been "removed" from the system. I am able to view that jpg file just fine. I re-ran the ATI backup and varification and all went well. No error messages.

    I ran CHKDSK again and got this report:

    Checking file system on C:
    The type of the file system is NTFS.
    Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
    Cleaning up 6 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
    Cleaning up 6 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
    Cleaning up 6 unused security descriptors.
    CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
    File data verification completed.
    CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
    Free space verification is complete.

    93008317 KB total disk space.
    29961528 KB in 98338 files.
    35212 KB in 8451 indexes.
    4 KB in bad sectors.
    201229 KB in use by the system.
    65536 KB occupied by the log file.
    62810344 KB available on disk.

    So, with that preamble, on to my questions:

    1. Do I have a good backup now? I did validate it at the time of backup, I have booted from the retail CD, I can see the backup on my external hdd, and have stepped part way through the restore process so I believe things are good. But my main concern right now is the presence of these bad sectors. It would appear that these bad sectors are always going to show up in CHKDSK. Correct? But they have been removed from my system and backup. Correct?

    2. From this post, https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=898553&postcount=7, I gather that if and when I restore my image to a new hdd these bad sectors will not come with it and all will be well. Correct?

    3. From this post, https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=134450, I understand that if I restore to a larger drive and resize the partitions, these bad sectors will not be an issue. Correct? I've read other posts about bad sectors being carried over and not carried over and I quickly got lost.

    4. On a slightly different note, our Dell shipped with a restore system that is activated by pressing Ctrl-Fll at boot up. This will wipe out the c: drive and copy an image (presumably from the 4GB partition on the hdd I also backed up) over to get it like it was out of the box. If I activate the Acronis Secure Zone will it mess with the functionality of this Dell feature? The reason I ask is, in this post, https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=900248&postcount=20, one option for resizing is to activate the secure zone and then delete it again right away and allocate the space to the c: drive. Does this change the MBR? And therefore, negate the Dell restore feature? I don't particularly want the Dell restore anymore since I've got the image I really want from ATI 10. I just want to make sure my computer will still boot up properly. I don't understand the whole MBR thing well enough to sort this out on my own and I'm concerned they won't "play nice" and I'll end up with a computer that won't boot. Advice? Is it safe to activate the secure zone and the F11 functionality with the Dell restore thing there?

    Thank you in advance for your patience and apologies for the long post. But I'd rather have a plan in place in case this hard drive goes south in a hurry. Better now than then I guess.

    The4Bs
     
  2. Demonolic

    Demonolic Registered Member

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    Hello The4Bs. I'm not the proper authority to help you with your problem, but what I can tell you is that, unless otherwise specified, you should always work with the latest build of ATI 10 Home. Which, at the time of this writing, is ver. 4942. Instead of updating, per Acronis support, you should uninstall your older version and then install the newest build. The best way to do this is to register your ATI 10 Home with Acronis and then download ver. 4942. Uninstall ver. 4871 then install ver. 4942. Input the s/n for 4871 and then you'll be up-to-date. Who knows, it may even solve your problem. Sorry, but that's all I'm qualified to do. If even THAT much!:D :eek:
     
  3. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Location:
    NSW, Australia
    The4Bs,

    Short answer. Keep an eye on the number of bad sectors. If the 4 KB increases you are in line for another HD. If it remains at 4 KB you are probably OK.

    Have you run the Dell HD diagnostics?
     
  4. The4Bs

    The4Bs Registered Member

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    Apr 29, 2007
    Posts:
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    No I haven't. I started the process, hoping to be able to test just the hard drive, but it immediately launched into the full scan. I ran this once when the computer was new (all was fine) and I recall it taking 2 or 3 hours. One needs to babysit the thing too since it asks for input periodically. I haven't had that much time to babysit the thing so I opted for the unattended CHKDSK option.

    Will it do anything different than what CHKDSK did?

    edit: to fix typo.
     
  5. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Location:
    NSW, Australia
    With my Dell there is HD diagnostics from the F12 menu and more inside the Dell Diagnostics. The former only takes 5 minutes. It tests quite different parameters than chkdsk.
     
  6. The4Bs

    The4Bs Registered Member

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    Under my system (Inspiron 6400, Win XP Home, 1 GB RAM, ATI 1400 video card with 256 MB RAM, 100 GB SATA hdd) I only have the option for "diagnostics" when I press F12. Once it's in, it just goes. Pressing "Esc", hoping for some kind of menu of options, shuts it down and the system reboots.

    I think I'll leave the hdd for now and just keep an eye on things. If ATI 10 hadn't told me there was a problem, I wouldn't have known. Everything just works. But of course, now I'm suspicious things may get worse, which led to my original questions about restoring to a new hdd. It's quite possible that a new hdd is in my near future.

    Thanks for your help.
     
  7. Howard Kaikow

    Howard Kaikow Registered Member

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    Apr 10, 2005
    Posts:
    2,802
    Go to the web site of the manufacturer of the disk drive.
    Download, and use, their diagnostics.
     
  8. garykyle

    garykyle Registered Member

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    Aug 16, 2006
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    I'm not so sure about this. I believe ATI is in fact being overly cautious or simply getting it wrong. As a company, we use HP PCs and ATI consistently reports disk errors on new PCs. In fact, it has reported errors on every PC I have used it on recently, so I am starting to lose faith in ATI.

    The PCs are all pretty much from new, and it has reported disk errors on a Proliant server, a laptop and a SFF workstation within the last week - that's every PC I tried to back up last week. Seems like too much of a coincedence to me.
     
  9. DwnNdrty

    DwnNdrty Registered Member

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    Florida - USA
    To answer your #4, you can create the Secure Zone but do not activate the Startup Recovery Manager which the program defaults to doing. So you have to uncheck the box against "Activate SRM".
     
  10. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    Likely thing is that ATI doesn't make as many retries (when it comes across a sector it can't read) as some other programs do, so errors will show up earlier and more often. The disk read errors are always there. It's just of question of how the programmer decided to handle them, balancing convenience (ignoring aberrant missreads or slight read probs) and security.

    sh

     
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