Zeroed tibs

The following problem has happened twice now in the last week, and I wonder if anyone else has experienced it?

My full disk/partition backups are kept in folders hda & hdb on a WD 320GB firewire drive, using options 'split into dvd size', 'normal compression', and since the problem showed up I have run verify.. there are typically four 4.194GB tib files in each image.

The problem is that all but the last tib file in each verified image set (4 or 5 sets in total) get zeroed out some days after they are made!

None of the other folders on the same partition are affected...

There are btw 4 files in the root of the drive, fsck0000.rec through fsck0003.rec, which I suspect are connected.. these have no date, are 32KB, and I'm pretty sure they weren't there yesterday.

I'm using TI9 Home build 3567, and discovered this situation just after starting TI9 from XP Home SP2. Meant to check the files before starting TI9, but its easy to forget ;-)

Anyone else seen this?

Edit: Btw, there is nothing related to this in the events logs.

 

Does Linux access the drive the images are on? FSCK is a linux File System ChecK utility.

Edit: Maybe chkdsk did it?

 

Hei seekforever

Yes, its a common firewire drive, sda, split into a vfat partition accessed by multiple Linux distros for the music files, and an almost unused ntfs partition.

I am just surprised by the precision with which selected tib files are removed, on the other hand I have come across some very odd things in my time ;-)

What I probably will do is resize the ntfs partition, use it exclusively for TI9 images, and see what happens.

Mvh

Edit: To cut a long story short, I repartitioned my firewire 320Gb and isolated my tib folders on the first vfat partition. I also have an hda-tib folder on my D drive as a safety measure. By this morning early I had backed up the C drive both to hda-tib and to the firewire, and the D drive just to the firewire. I booted from XP, to Gentoo, to Slax and then to a Wolvix, a LiveCD containing Gparted.. I ran Gparted but just looked at the harddrives. Next time I checked my tib folders they had been zeroed in the same manner as described above. OK, I backed up everything again, and decided to leave Gparted well alone. But then I saw that a new version was released yesterday also as a LiveCD. That I thought would prove things pretty clearly, and it did. I managed eventually to boot it, but it was unable to find any disks. Mmmm! Booted back to Gentoo Linux and the tibs both in the D drive folder, and those on the firewire drive had zeroed in the same manner. It would appear that Gparted treats tib files in a special manner ;-)

For the time being, if you have TI images on vfat partitions on your drives, I would avoid using Gparted, unless you also have your tib files backed up to dvd, or you take the unusual precaution of temporarily dropping the tib extension!

 

Excuse the self reply..

If anyone ( a Linux user preferably) has the time & inclination to help confirm this problem, I believe Gnome Bugzilla would welcome confirmation at this bug address: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=340320

To experience the problem you would need to have tib files on a vfat partition. I would suggest this to someone who normally has backup files on ntfs, and who has a vfat partition they could experiment with.

NB! Don't do this without a backup set of your current images on an ntfs partition... you have been warned!

The best tool at uncovering the problem seems to be the Gparted LiveCD available here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php or as I have just done, add the gparted module to Slax Popcorn available here http://slax.linux-live.org/download.php and you have a complete Xfce distro with file manager, Firefox & sound..

Spin it up, and the symptoms to look for are small warning icons by vfat partitions containing tib files. If you see these you probably have experienced 'zeroed tibs'. Reboot to XP and see if thats so.

If that is the case, pls add a comment to the bug at the topmost URL above.

Thanks

Edit: I would believe Acronis TI Support could be interested in checking this out too. Might save some of those "where did my backup go" rants.

 

Hello Cintra,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Sharing your experience is very much appreciated. I'll inform our Support Team about this issue.

If you have any further experience to share, please feel free to post it on this forum.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

An update with my recent findings.. I am now using TI9 Home build 3633.

As Gparted was updated recently to 0.25, I checked out backup of my disk0 to a vfat partition on a 320GB firewire drive, using my usual split-size of 4.34GB, and it failed exactly as mentioned above.

I should perhaps have reacted earlier to the question of file size, because the last tib in an image was always OK! Anyway, never too late to learn ;-)

I retried with the CD-size split (716.8 MB), which resulted in 14x tib files, ran Gparted-0.25 again, and they were all OK!

Then it was a matter of trying to find the largest split-size which worked - I found that using 3.9GB (4,089,446KB) is OK..
while 4.2GB isn't.

Hopefully this information is of use to someone.

Btw, I am surprised Acronis Support has not been able to confirm the problem.. it might have helped the Gparted developers take some action.

Mvh

 

The maximum file size for FAT32 is 4GB minus 2 bytes

 

Thank you for your response..

It makes me wonder though how Acronis Zone, which I understand is fat32, can function with the dvd-split option, and if it can't, why on earth are there no restrictions when setting splits? And on auto it will merrily make a huge image tib!

I have btw no problem using & restoring from 4.34GB split images backed up to fat32 partitions, only when using Gparted.

Perhaps you can expand a little..?

Mvh

 

Acronis True Image will automatically split image to fit into FS restriction during writing image to Acronis Secure Zone.

 

In addition here is more info on File Allocation Table

 

Thank you for your replies.

It was interesting to hear that split-sizes are adjusted to match fat32 specs when using the Zone.

I'm still surprised that using dvd-splits to fat32 has worked for me for so long with no problems (other than Gparted)...

Anyway, I have adjusted them to 3.9GB now, and use ntfs for my primary backup.

A warning or restriction should perhaps be considered in the options area ref. dvd-splits and vfat partitions.

Thanks all

 

Yes I was studying that page earlier when trying to decide if >4GiB was the problem ;-)