Unable to write disk "X" sector "Y"

Every time Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 performs an action that requires reboot, during the action in the boot-up screen it gives an error message:

"unable to write disk 'x' sector 'y'" ​

(where 'x' and 'y' are variable). I am using Vista Ultimate.

All the disks have been checked with chkdsk so I believe there is no problems with the disks.

Sometimes ignoring the error has no noticebale effect, but on one occasion it totally destroed ALL my MFT information -disastrous!

How can I get this to work properly?

TIA

 

Are you using Norton GoBack? Or Vista's BitLocker? They may be blocking programs from modifying certain areas on the disk.

 

No I don't use either of those.

In any case I do not understand how they could have an effect because Disk Director does its stuff before the OS is loaded?

B

 

They can if they do something nonstandard to the partition table.

If this isn't the case for you then what happens when you boot the full version of Disk Director from the recovery CD? Does it see all of your disks correctly?

 

Hi Mark

I don't have those programs anyway. But I don't have an Acronis recovery CD either; and I don't know how to get one :-(

Brian

 

You can make your own. Start the Windows version of Disk Director and choose "Bootable Media Builder" from the "Tools" menu. Be sure to create a disk with both "full" and "safe" versions. Note that you can also create a bootable USB flash drive instead of a CD if you prefer.

The reason that I asked is that Disk Director boots into a Linux-based recovery environment from the CD and when you run the Windows version and it needs a reboot. Unless you verify that the recovery environment is working correctly then you won't know whether you can let Windows reboot to finish an operation that affects the Windows partition.

Perhaps what is happening to you is that the Linux environment does not fully support your hardware and thus cannot communicate with your disk(s).

 

Thank you Mark,

What you say is interesting.

I am using a mixture of IDE and SATA disks up to 250G.

Incidentally my disks are created in a Vista envrionment. When I run Norton Partition Magic in XP (which is what I used before Acronis) it cannot recognise the disks created in Vista...

Cheers

B

 

Brian:

Correct but for a different reason. Partition Magic has a tight set of constraints on the structure of a partition table and of partition boot records. These constraints were developed for DOS many years ago. Vista uses new rules for creating a layout in order to support future "large disk" geometries (which don't exist yet). In particular, if you create a partition using Vista it will align partition boundaries at multiples of 2048 bytes. Most older tools will create partitions that align to cylinder boundaries (multiples of 63 bytes).

When Partition Magic sees a new layout created by Vista it throws up its hands and says "error, error, error" and probably won't let you proceed any further.

What I am referring to with Disk Director is something entirely different. I am referring to the ability of the Linux rescue environment to support all of your hardware including IDE, SATA, and RAID disks. While some of us are lucky enough to have full support of our hardware, including yours truly, others may find that their newer hardware does not yet have a proper Linux driver. These cases are the ones that cause Disk Director to fail to properly recognize your disk drive.

Try the boot CD and see what happens...

 

Hey Mark,

You certainly know your disk geometry! Thanks for explaining about Partition Magic. It seems to be one of those arguments against being an early adopter!

Incidentally, for backward compatibility, should I create my partitions in Win XP or will Vista simply overwrite the tables?

Actually I have managed to get round my problem, but I greatly value your comment about the startup disk and have created one. I hope it won't be too soon before I need to shift some partitions around again.

Many thanks once again

Brian

 

Brian,

If you use XP or another program (like Disk Director) to create partitions, Vista will not "rewite" the partition table to change the layout. The "old" format will still be applied and used by Vista.

The new Vista format is created when Vista creates a partition or installs to an empty/new hard disk.

 

Great, thanks!

 

And additionally, if you do create your disk layout with Disk Director or XP Disk Management, then Partition Magic should have no problems working with it. My current Vista PC partitioning was done with Disk Director so it conforms to the older layout standards and Vista is perfectly happy with it. PM works, DD works, and the many Linux partitioning tools work. Until the tools are updated to work with both old and new layout standards, it is a lot easier to have an "old" layout.