TI 11 Just...stopped!?

Hi folks,

Last night I was doing a backup (TI 11 8101 from the boot CD that Media Builder created... nothing fancy) of my Gateway computer which has just one drive with two partitions (recovery and system). This is a late-model 64 bit system but generally unremarkable. The backup destination is a 250GB external USB drive I've used plenty of times before without incident, and all cables were secure. Backup to be split into 4 GB files.

After the first partition (recovery) was completely backed up, it went on to the second task, which was the main system partition. It got "1 bar" into the process as measured in the progress bar, then I heard the system hard drive go quiet (it is usually a bit noisy). The bar stayed stationary at "7 hrs remaining" which I thought was remarkable. IT hadn't changed by the time I came to look at it this morning. So I aborted and the software asked if I Wanted to cancel and shut down (or restart?). I said OK but the software didn't die. I had to turn off the switch.

That system partition had about 160 GB of data on it, which I have since learned was about half restore points and such. Turning off system restore freed up 80 GB. I'm doing a TI backup now from within Windows, which always makes me nervous. Call me a luddite if you will.

Anyway, it has made it through the first (Recovery) partition and is now almost all the way through imaging the main system partition, but the total progress bar, and the taskbar notification, remain at 0%. Interesting.

Oops just now it finished, successfully. Total progress went from 0 to 100 in a blink of an eye. Good enough.

Any thoughts about what might have died last night?

Marc

 

No idea, could have been anything. I would do a chkdsk X: /r on the "problem" partition just to ensure the HD is OK. Substitute X with the drive letter of the partition. Did you Validate the archive? If you want to do a further hardware confidence check you can run Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org - preferably overnight.

IIRC, somebody else had a problem that went away when he deleted the restore points but I think an error message about unreadable file or similar was given.

If nothing shows up, I wouldn't get overly concerned and put it down to a PC gremlin but just keep an eye on future backups for a while.

TI's progress bars are always a source of concern, confusion or amusement depending on your mood at the time. I don't know why they can't improve them since they have been a joke for many versions and they certainly don't inspire confidence.

 

I'd check the integrity of both your machines hard drive and the backup drive.

If it happens again, see if you can run Windows Explorer, if it hangs or won't start or one of your drives has disappeared, that drive is on it's way out.

You mention it is noisy, could well be either the drive head is sticking or the platter motor is getting iffy.

If the drive(s) are playing up, you may also see it disappear in the BIOS check info as you boot up, assuming you have the full BIOS check rather than the quick one enabled.

Colin

 

Curiouser and curiouser!

It seems that whenever I use the Acronis 11 boot media, I get the failure at about the same part in the process... just a couple Gigabytes into the second partition (which is the system partition). I've tried it on two different external drives, same result. The system hard drive is fine, no errors. And my computer has no memory problems (ran memtest). The error always happens just a couple gigs into backing up the system drive, even after I removed 80 GB of junk (restore points!) from the drive. I get one or two complete 4.something GB files and then one partial one (I split the archive into DVD sized chunks).

When I boot a BARTPE drive, and run TI 10 from that environment, no problem. I don't yet have BARTPE/VISTAPE and TI 11 hooked up.

When I run from my main Vista environment, no problem.

So, it seems the recovery environment doesn't like something about my system. Maybe some issue with the onboard usb controller and the drivers the boot environment uses? Any ideas of diagnostics I could run to track it down? While I do prefer to do backups from OUTSIDE of windows, my real concern is if I need to restore... the hangup I'm getting in creating a backup may occur during my attempts to recover.

HELP.

Marc

 

Let us know what CHKDSK X: /R reports. If you miss the report at the end of the run, in Windows open a Command window and run CHKDSK X:. (note no /R). It will run quickly and give you the report. Check for any bad sectors.

Then retry the backup from the Rescue CD.

If you have any other USB devices attached, you might try disconnecting them when trying the backup. Some USB devices can cause problems for the Linux environment of the Rescue CD.

If it still fails, then the VistaPE and TI 11 plug-in may be your best way to make and restore images outside of Windows.

 

Hi John,

Here's the chkdsk report. Looks like a clean bill of health:

Code:

The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Partition_1.

WARNING!  F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
  153536 file records processed.
File verification completed.
  89 large file records processed.
  0 bad file records processed.
  0 EA records processed.
  76 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
  193838 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
  153536 security descriptors processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  20152 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  36758808 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

 608879564 KB total disk space.
  87749376 KB in 127666 files.
     69276 KB in 20153 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    274768 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 520786144 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 152219891 total allocation units on disk.
 130196536 allocation units available on disk.

I've got a USB mouse and printer. And my monitor is acting as a USB hub, with the mouse plugged into it for cable-length purposes. I suppose I could try changing the cabling layout to minimize number of plugged in things during the process.

Probably my time is better spent setting up VistaPE / TI11.

I start a new job tomorrow so my time to devote to this may be sketchy, but it's bugging me.

Marc

 

Yes, it is certainly a clean bill of health, so something else is the problem.

USB hubs can be a problem, so try disconnecting the monitor hub and plug the mouse in anywhere you can temporarily to test. I'd also unplug the printer. Then, try another backup and let us know what happens.

Best of luck in your new job. That's always an exciting and stressful time, so we'll understand if you don't report back here promptly.

 

Hello Marc_G,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Could you please collect some information to let us investigate the problem thoroughly?

Please create Acronis Report and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. To expedite the resolution we recommend you to use our Live Chat service after that. We will do our best to investigate the problem and provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov