Tru Image Home 2009 and Validation Issues?

I bought a second SATA drive for my PC and I installed the drive,etc.

I used Tru Image Home 2009 to backup my pc to the new drive. It worked successfully.

However, no matter how many backups I take, when I run a validate, the validation always errors out saying the backup is corrupt.

Any ideas?

 

Have you sucessfully validated other images before when they were stored elsewhere? If so run chkdsk X: /r on the new drive. Substitute the drive letter of the partition(s) being tested for X.

Run the same chkdsk X: /f on the partition you are making an image of. Substitute the drive letter for X, a reboot will likely be required for C.

If you have enough free space on the drive you are making the image of, you can store the image on the same drive in a different partition, or even in the same partition. TI will warn you that you won't be able to restore the image. Try validating this image.

Other possible cause is bad RAM. Download free Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org . Let it run for at least several passes, overnight is best. There must be 0 errors.

FYI, a validate does not compare the contents of the image with the original source. The validate routine opens the archive file, reads the data and recalculates the 4000 checksums/GB of data. It compares the checksums stored in the archive file when it was created and if any one does not agree perfectly the archive is declared corrupted. You can see that any part of the computer or process that does not permit the file to be accurately read and stored in RAM will cause the problem.

TI does not usually like PCs that are overclocked or if the memory is running with aggressive timings.

 

I can successfully validate other kinds of backups taken from True Image on the new drive such as apps backups, doc backups, etc.

Only the full backups of the C: drive won't pass validation.

 

Maybe something to try if you are making your image from the windows environment, try making an image using the Rescue disk and see if that will Validate also using the Rescue disk.

 

Hello cougartrace,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

Create backup archive to internal drive and check the following:

- If the backup is not corrupt being saved to an internal hard drive please try to compare the MD5 checksum (by means of Express CheckSum Calculator) of the backup archive stored on the internal drive with that of its copy on the external drive;

- If the checksums are different, then the problem is related to the external drive and you can do the following: connect the drive to another USB-port, update the BIOS of the motherboard, replace the USB cable, use a FireWire cable instead of the USB one, apply the drive to the nearest service center, replace the drive;

- If the checksums are identical, please validate the backup on the external drive after copying it from the internal hard drive;

- If the backup is not corrupt, please create a few backups and save them onto the external drive and see whether all of them are corrupt;

- If only some of the backups are corrupt, the problem is related to the memory module

Download the checksum utility using this link

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

well I did a full backup using the recovery disk and it when I validate the archive I still get the corrupt archive error.

The backup is going to an internal hard drive. What can I try next?

 

Did you run memtest86+ and do the chkdsk /r test on the partitions?

 

I've run chkdsk /r with no errors

I've run memtest with 3 passes with zero errors.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

cougartrace, please follow the steps described in the article Troubleshooting Issues with Corrupt Backups.

This will help to find the reason and to resolve the encountered issue.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

umm..

I've already done all those steps as shown above.

I don't have hardware problem, but I'm still getting corrupt backups.

Please advise

 

Have you tried lowering the hard drive writing speed? This option is under Tools >> Options... >> Default backup options >> Backup performance >> HDD writing speed.

Have you tried using a different SATA port on the motherboard?

Have you tried using a different SATA cable (make sure it has no sharp bends)?

How large is the image backup of the C: partition?

Have you tried splitting the image into 2GB-4GB files?

 

Check the Windows Event Viewer for any possible system errors - bit of a longshot but sometimes it helps. When I had my SATA cable problem (TI couldn't validate an image but the PC seemed OK otherwise) there was an event logged about a problem. It even suggested changing the cable.

Let memtest86+ run overnight, not just a few passes. Diagnostic isn't real life so if your machine has multiple sticks and can run on only 1 or 2, consider swapping the sticks out in sequence while trying the validation.

Images created on internal HDs tend to be less of a problem than images created elsewhere.

 

I ran memtest all night. NO ERRORS.

When I look in Event Viewer, it does tell me that the Acronis sofware is not working with my version of windows.

I have Vista 64 bit.

 

There may be an updated version of Snapapi which handles disk I/O etc when an image is being made in Windows. There have been other reports of problems with Vista 64 but I didn't pay much attention to them.

I don't think this explains why making and validating an image with the TI rescue CD fails if it is the current build. The Snapapi is out of the equation, the disk is static and is just a NTFS volume.

A next step that might get you closer to a solution faster could be Acronis Live Chat which seems to be the best support mechanism these days.

 

Hello all,

cougartrace, Please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post, then attach it to your post here.

Which operating system do you have?

What happens when you are trying to create backup of several files\folders?

We are looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky