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jabarnut
Light Years Away
Premium Member
join:2005-01-22
Galaxy M31

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jabarnut

Premium Member

Amazing Acronis Antics

*** WARNING! Another one of my "here he goes again, will this guy ever shut up" posts***

Leave no stone unturned!

I just had an experience with Acronis TI that I thought I would share (and possibly) help somebody down the road.

Some time ago (at my recommendation), a friend of mine bought Acronis TI.
We are both using Version 8, build 937.

Anyway, like me, he has never had a problem and has created and restored many images successfully.

His preferred method has always been to use a separate internal Hard Drive.
(I do that as well, but I explained that I also like to keep spare images on an external USB Hard Drive, away from my Computers in the event of an unforeseen catastrophe).

Well, seeing as he trusts my opinion (unlike my Wife and countless other people) , he decided to save an image to an External USB Drive.

No matter what he did with this Drive, he could create the image successfully, but when he went to check it, it ALWAYS came back as corrupt.

Didn't matter if it was in the Windows environment, or with the Boot CD...always corrupt.
He could even create and successfully verify an Image on his internal drive, copy it to the USB Drive, and the same image would come back corrupt.

Knowing how different hardware configurations can react totally different with this program, I brought a couple of my USB drives over there.
Same problem....created successfully, CORRUPT when trying to verify.

OK, here's the kicker.

I tried everything I could think of.
Then I noticed he was using a USB 2.0 PCI Card. (So do I on a couple of my machines).

I happen to know that certain Chipsets in these Cards can cause problems (ALi for one).
I've also had good luck with NEC Chipsets when it comes to USB PCI Cards.

Well, unfortunately, he had a nice Belkin Card with an NEC Chipset. (Hehe...wouldn't you know it? I have a couple of the exact same cards and they work great).

Hmmm....I wonder if I recommended it to him? (Can't remember)

I thought, "well, that's not the problem".
Still, this was making me mad so I brought over one of mine.
It was the EXACT same model card. (Belkin 5-Port F5U220).

I changed it out anyway and guess what? It worked flawlessly!

Upon closer inspection, my card, (even though it was the exact same model), was a newer "revision". Furthermore, mine was stamped "made in China" and his "made in Taiwan".

His original Card performed flawlessly with everything he used it for EXCEPT Acronis TI.
No error messages in device manager, nothing at all that would indicate anything was wrong with it. (And, in general, there probably wasn't anything wrong with it).

The moral of the story is that it is amazing how (apparently) sensitive this program can be to the slightest hardware changes.
To further verify, I put his card in one of my machines, and encountered the same problem....corrupt images.

I've seen huge threads both here and at the Acronis Forums about Corrupt Images, and it is amazing to think that the problem could be as simple as a Card that checks out perfectly, but in fact, it isn't...pretty hard to pin down.

And in many cases, if everything showed up fine in device manager, and the card worked perfectly with everything, it would never cross your mind at all that the PCI Card could be the problem.

And that my friends, is "the rest of the story".

And if you suffered through this entire post, give yourself a big pat on the back.

howie1
Premium Member
join:2003-04-08
Antarctica

1 recommendation

howie1

Premium Member

I think Acronis intends to have a solution to this in their next "GUI Fix"....
Interesting stuff, though... thanks for sharing!

Fedorov
Premium Member
join:2002-09-11

1 recommendation

Fedorov to jabarnut

Premium Member

to jabarnut
Wow, that is a good one!!!

Send that card to Acronis and let them find out what is coming back through it to TrueImage causing the *corrupt* images!!!

Thanks for the heads-up

Fedorov.

Cudni
La Merma - Vigilado
MVM
join:2003-12-20
Someshire

Cudni to jabarnut

MVM

to jabarnut
Good story actually, thanks. You may also pat yourself on the back for figuring it all out

Cudni

dadkins
Can you do Blu?
MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

1 recommendation

dadkins to jabarnut

MVM

to jabarnut
I guess that us laptop users would be screwed... I can't replace any of my USB ports... all *7 of them!

* 3 on laptop, 4 on docking station.

Thanks jabarnut!

jabarnut
Light Years Away
Premium Member
join:2005-01-22
Galaxy M31

1 recommendation

jabarnut to Fedorov

Premium Member

to Fedorov
said by Fedorov:

Send that card to Acronis and let them find out what is coming back through it to TrueImage causing the *corrupt* images!!!

Thanks for the heads-up

Fedorov.
LOL! I actually thought of that, but then I'm sure their response would be:
said by Acronis Support :
Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

First of all, please make sure that you use the latest build (2337) of Acronis True Image 9.0 which is available at: »www.acronis.com/homecomp ··· updates/

You can find the full version name and build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window.

To get access to updates you should create an account at:
»www.acronis.com/homecomp ··· ting/my/
then log in and use your serial number to register your software.

Please uninstall any previously installed build by following Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Acronis True Image, prior to installing build 2337.

Note that you should create new Bootable Rescue CD after installing the update.

Snoopy2
Premium Member
join:2001-03-29
Mobile, AL

Snoopy2 to jabarnut

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to jabarnut
Good story! And wasn't the feeling just GREAT when you had it figured out and working? Tell ya what I'd do if it were me: I'd send your original post to Tech Support just to see how they would respond. If you do, let us know.

Keizer
I'M Your Huckleberry
MVM
join:2003-01-20

Keizer to jabarnut

MVM

to jabarnut
This proves my theory. The less things you have in the way between TI, and the destination for storing the image file, the better!

I have never liked USB PCI cards that much. I was going to get one the other day to gain a few more USB ports. Instead, I switched out my arctic cooler graphics card fan, with a Zalman. The arctic cooler was so bulky, it was blocking one of my USB connections on my mobo. Problem solved.

Thanks for the trouble shooting. I agree......ship that PCI card off to Acronis with a copy of your data.

Kanebrake
Island Time
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join:2002-03-12

1 recommendation

Kanebrake to jabarnut

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to jabarnut
I'm glad you shared that story. My wife's computer had just USB 1.1 ports so I ordered a USB 2.0/firewire pci card off Ebay. I use it with a external 80gb wd harddrive with TI 9 latest gui update. It sped things up quite a bit. I had to look on the box to make sure and yup it said made in China. Thanks.

Keizer
I'M Your Huckleberry
MVM
join:2003-01-20

1 recommendation

Keizer

MVM

said by Kanebrake:

I'm glad you shared that story. My wife's computer had just USB 1.1 ports so I ordered a USB 2.0/firewire pci card off Ebay. I use it with a external 80gb wd harddrive with TI 9 latest gui update. It sped things up quite a bit. I had to look on the box to make sure and yup it said made in China. Thanks.
Maybe in Taiwan, they are forgetting to install the TI chip in their USB PCI cards??

bcool
Premium Member
join:2000-08-25

bcool to jabarnut

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to jabarnut
I can count on No hands the number of corrupt images I had to deal with in Norton Ghost since late 1999. Because I never had one - not one! Took a lickin' and kept on tickin' yet now I've been persuaded the TI was the better choice as I transition to NTFS in XP. I'm really getting annoyed at this issue of image corruption. I sincerely hope that Acronis is addressing the problem and that it will be fixed immediately. I've got to be able to trust my backup software.

jabarnut
Light Years Away
Premium Member
join:2005-01-22
Galaxy M31

jabarnut

Premium Member

I'm glad you guys are finding the information helpful.

Hopefully, you won't ever have the problem, but this will be in the back of your mind as a last resort if you ever do.

As far as contacting Acronis, or even sending the card to them, it's something I thought about, but I can just imagine the "canned response".
I think it's unlikely they would do any extensive testing with the Card.

There's an enormous thread at the Acronis (Wilder) Forums called "Who DOES NOT have a problem with corrupt images when backing up to an USB external hard drive?".

LOL

It's been going on for a year now with the last post around 10 days ago.

And if you do a basic search of "corrupt", you get a ton of hits.

Anyway, I love TI and have never had any problems myself. (And most of the well known TI users here don't have any problems either, once you find a reliable build).

Guess this experience will teach me to stop telling my friends to buy it. (Unless they figure out any problems they encounter without calling me).

Seriously though, I still highly recommend it and it remains at the very top of my favorite software list.
jabarnut

jabarnut to Keizer

Premium Member

to Keizer
said by Keizer:

Maybe in Taiwan, they are forgetting to install the TI chip in their USB PCI cards??
LOL!

cableties
Premium Member
join:2005-01-27

cableties to jabarnut

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to jabarnut
I don't want to knock what works, but Acronis did save my butt. Ghost 9.0 would not archive an internal IDE master to a new Slave (Copy Drive function). I tried everything and even spent more than enough time with Symantec support. They were convinced the New drive was defective. I was not.
I found a post here on BBR and a reply suggested Acronis. I down'd the demo and a few hours later, it was done and cloned my old drive to new perfectly. And it now images my drive to an internal.
So I wondered, has anyone tried it with eSata external drive?
Or how about IEEE1394 external drives?
I know about hardware issues. They're consistently inconsistent!

Boricua
Premium Member
join:2002-01-26
Sacramuerto

Boricua to jabarnut

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I, too, went through the corruption-disk problem. I imaged my hard drive, for when it goes kaput, burned the image on a DVD (too large for a CD-R). I tested it and gave me an error message about the disk being corrupted. I researched, and has been mentioned on the Acronis forum how people were having similar problems. Oh, I have the Acronis TI 9.0 don't know what build.

Anyways, I started thinking "What if I defragged and see what happens at the end". Lo and behold, after defragging my computer, then creating the image it totally worked. I tested on another hard drive and everything worked, including the wireless PCI adapter.

I don't know if it'll work for anybody, but what I did is defragged my computer in safe mode, making sure I cleaned the temp files and history files (using »www.softes.org/downloads.htm ). Restarted and booted into regular mode and created the image.

salzan
Experienced Optimist
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join:2004-01-08
WA State

1 recommendation

salzan to jabarnut

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to jabarnut
Just curious but is the image actually corrupt or just being reported as corrupt?

If you were to copy it back to an internal drive, would it still be corrupt?

jabarnut
Light Years Away
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join:2005-01-22
Galaxy M31

2 edits

jabarnut

Premium Member

Yes...it was actually corrupt. (And if it somehow wasn't, there was no way I was able to use it).

I did in fact copy it back to the original Drive, and it was still corrupt.
In fact, I did a LOT of experimenting. Figured my post was long enough.

I even went as far as trying to use the corrupt image for a recovery anyway (without verification), but never got too far.

I know what you mean though. I had an image that reported corrupt one time (and only one time) on a USB Drive, and later was able to use it and have it verify as being ok.

All very strange. Can't imagine the difference between two seemingly good cards, but a difference there was.

With my card in his Computer, we performed a complete image creation, verification, and full restore without a hitch....all through the same USB Drive (his), from start to finish.

(Edit) Typo

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
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join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
Netgear WNDR3700v2
Zoom 5341J

1 edit

KrK to jabarnut

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to jabarnut
said by jabarnut:

There's an enormous thread at the Acronis (Wilder) Forums called "Who DOES NOT have a problem with corrupt images when backing up to an USB external hard drive?".
Hmmm. The more I read this, I think "Motherboard chipset/USB 2.0 Driver problem" in Windows?

I seem to remember an "updated" driver to "fix" USB 2.0 support on my KT4V motherboard.... or maybe not.

I just stumbled across this, may be interesting reading:

»www.pcug.org.au/~boesen/ ··· USB2.htm

It seems to suggest the USB Cable may be the culprit!

Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium Member
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX

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to jabarnut
Funny thing this topic is coming up. Here's another TI
horror story, courtesy of the owner of Spyware Info,
Mike Healan, posted to his latest newsletter:

»www.spywareinfo.com/news ··· arddrive

It starts with a dying hard drive that even GRC's SpinRite 6
cannot rescue, and ends up with True Image balking at
restoring an image to a freshly formatted hard drive - it
kept saying the drive was read only.

He once recommended TI, but now uses another program called
Image For Windows (link in the above news item).

Personally, I have never had any trouble with True Image.
But then I'm still using version 7.0 build 638, which
according to comments made in prior topics in this forum,
seems to work better than later versions. It is slow to
detect my USB and Firewire drives, so I turn them off when
imaging from the rescue CD or restoring from it. (I keep
my images stored on a second IDE HD or lately on a SATA
HD).

howie1
Premium Member
join:2003-04-08
Antarctica

2 edits

howie1

Premium Member

said by Doctor Four:

I'm still using version 7.0 build 638, which
according to comments made in prior topics in this forum,
seems to work better than later versions.
I'll put in a good word for True Image 8 (build 937). I think it's the best ever and although some version 7 builds were great too, version 8 always imaged faster than 7 for me.

[EDIT] It seems jabarnut See Profile experienced this issue with the very version I mentioned.... He must have done something wrong! LOL

jabarnut
Light Years Away
Premium Member
join:2005-01-22
Galaxy M31

jabarnut

Premium Member

said by howie1:

[EDIT] It seems jabarnut See Profile experienced this issue with the very version I mentioned.... He must have done something wrong! LOL
Heheh...actually no, my buddy did something wrong.
He bought a very strange PCI Card.

And I agree, Version 8 build 937 is the one I've been using and it works great. (And always has on three Computers).

This strange event is a first for me...hence the long post.

Keizer
I'M Your Huckleberry
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join:2003-01-20

Keizer to jabarnut

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TI 8 build 937 here as well. Have used it on all my desktops, one configured as RAID 0. Also have used it on two seperate laptops. No problems at all.

Keizer

WFO
Premium Member
join:2001-08-27
San Ramon, CA

WFO to jabarnut

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to jabarnut
When I was using TI 8, I discovered it didn't like one of my Maxtor firewire drives. It would always error out say my media may be corrupt. This even after a fresh format. It isn't always Acronis' fault. It liked all my other drives just fine.

gephc
Premium Member
join:2003-05-31
Minooka, IL

gephc to cableties

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to cableties
said by cableties:

So I wondered, has anyone tried it with eSata external drive?
Or how about IEEE1394 external drives?
I've been using TI7 with my new Firewire drive from IOGear for about a month. I've made several images, both full and incrementals, and they've verified OK. I can also mount the images and browse them, but I've not tried a full restore.

There have been a few times when TI didn't recognize the drive, but restarting the program and/or power-cycling the drive fixed that. (Could be a drive issue.) Every scheduled backup has gone smoothly though.
feverfive
join:2005-06-16
Iowa

feverfive to jabarnut

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I also use TI 8, build 937...it's not the fastest (takes over an hour to verify & restore a 8GB (uncompressed) image. Plus, using the restore CD, it can't access my external hard drive via firewire, but can when connected via USB2...All I know is that it has saved my backside more than once from bad installs, bad uninstalls & unknown stupid mistakes by me...
itsfrank
join:2001-12-28
Tacoma, WA

itsfrank to jabarnut

Member

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I use Arconis TI at the office on 17 systems with no problems. I was having a problem at home with corrupt images and found Acronis support points at bad memory being the problem. It was suggested that we run Memtest86+ to check memory integrity so I did and the result was a fail showing corruption on certain tests. I have so many systems so I swapped the memory around until I got through all the tests with no errors reported. Acronis then always verified every image with no problem. I later decided to go with LiveState 3.0 because it lets you create multiple images. That's good because Acronis deletes your last image as soon as it begins to create a new one.
Shootist
Premium Member
join:2003-02-10
Decatur, GA

Shootist

Premium Member

said by itsfrank:

I later decided to go with LiveState 3.0 because it lets you create multiple images. That's good because Acronis deletes your last image as soon as it begins to create a new one.
Don't know what version of TI you were using BUT the 2 versions I use, 8 and 9, DO NOT delete any older image before creating a new one. Could be you are NOT giving the new image a NEW NAME!!!! Or saving it to a different folder with that same name. Then of course it would overwrite the original/older image leaving you with just one image.

As to the OP post I really don't see where this is a Acronis TI problem as it works fine with your card in his PC. It IS a problem with the card NOT TI.

jabarnut
Light Years Away
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join:2005-01-22
Galaxy M31

jabarnut

Premium Member

said by Shootist:

As to the OP post I really don't see where this is a Acronis TI problem as it works fine with your card in his PC. It IS a problem with the card NOT TI.
I guess you didn't read my rather long post too carefully.

That was exactly my point!
I was able to pin the problem down to a bad card through an amazing stroke of luck. (And trial and error)

There IS a problem with the old card, I just don't know what it is.
It's just amazing to me that a subtle difference in Cards caused that problem.
I was passing this information on so people would know not to overlook ANYTHING....even if it's a bad card that appears to be good.

As far as your first response to itsfrank See Profile about Acronis deleting your last Image...you are correct. I don't understand that either.
You can make hundreds of images if you want to, as long as you have the space somewhere.
Shootist
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join:2003-02-10
Decatur, GA

1 recommendation

Shootist

Premium Member

Well I did browse through it but the title of the thread is a little misleading,

Amazing Acronis Antics

seems to point to a problem with TI.

jabarnut
Light Years Away
Premium Member
join:2005-01-22
Galaxy M31

3 edits

1 recommendation

jabarnut

Premium Member

Hehe. Yeah, sometimes I can't help my silly titles, but believe me, I know the problem is that specific card.

The "antics" were my involvement....you would have to be there.

You need to do more than "browse" through the post before making a specific comment about it.

No harm done.

(Edit) I suppose I should add that I don't really blame you for browsing through it....the damn thing is too long.