True Image Home 2012 Family Pack - Snapshot/e-mail notification issues suddenly started
I have been using this version for several years to back up 2 PC's running Windows 7 (64 bit) on a regular basis. No problems at all until recently when i received this message on 1 on my PC's as just after I started a full backup:
1) Failed to read data from the disk
Failed to read from sector '387,938,129 of hard disk 7. Failed to read the snapshotmanager drive, (0x1000D7). unknown status (0x9). The drive cannot find the sector requested (0xFFF0)
Not knowing what this meant, I clicked ignore all and backup/validation proceeded. However when I checked log at end, there were errors:
2) Error occurred while connecting to the update server followed by 5 instances of failed to send e-mail notification.
Advice would be appreciated. re 1) which disk is hard disk 7 referring to? My main c: drive i am trying to backup or external drive?
The external drive is new as there were issues on the previous external drive and I decided to get a new one.
Re 2) I am totally bemused as i have not set up any email notifications withing Acronis.
Settings on PC with problems are same as previously used (always do full backup) and no problems with other PC which never mentions email notifications!
I am currently running chkdsk (fix and repair) on c drive.....Awaiting results as will take a while.
Latest version of Acronis Home 2012 being run on both machines. I have downloaded latest build from Acronis website and was wondering about running Repair on the problem pc to see if that fixed things....
Any advice/insight gratefully received!
mhaffy, the first issue that you need to address is the most serious one:
Failed to read from sector '387,938,129 of hard disk 7. Failed to read the snapshot manager drive, (0x1000D7). unknown status (0x9). The drive cannot find the sector requested (0xFFF0)
Acronis numbers disk drives starting from 1 which is different from Windows which starts from 0 - so if you go into Windows Disk Management, you should look for the drive that shows as disk 6.
Once you have identified disk 6, you should run CHKDSK /R for that drive to check for bad sectors.
Thanks....I ran DataLifeguard Diagnostics for Windows and that indicated my new WD external drive was 7.....Is that wrong?
Currently trying my other WD external drive (I alternated backups of my PC's on 2 different external drives). That back up has started normally with no snapshot message....Would seem to indicate something wrong with my new WD external drive.
When back up finishes, I will run chkdsk /R on that external drive......Tempted to reformat it and start with blank drive?
Just successfully completed backup on PC I was having issue with by using another external drive. No snapshot messages or email notification issues etc as per original post. Definately issue with external drive that is barely 2 months old!
Currently running chkdsk /r on it. Started about 1 1/2 hours ago and 10% complete on step 4 of 5 (verifying data. I think step 5 tests free space on disk. Will leave running overnight and hope it progresses......It is a 2TB external drive but under 1TB used......Hopefully will not take days!
Glad to hear that the backup went OK with the other drive. Unfortunately with drives you can get early life failures at times or otherwise they can go on working for years! Have had a share of both of these but mostly the latter I am glad to say!
Latest update - backups successfully created for both PC's on an old external drive.
Regarding the "new" external drive issues that led to me starting this thread:
1) The chkdsk /r scan completed overnight:
No problems found with file system, 0 bad sectors.....basically says disk fine. Data Lifguard shows Pass
2) I then tried to do back up on the new disk but using my other pc......Exactly the same Snapshot error message as before apart from it being Disk 6 now, rather than Disk 7 - my other PC has 2 internal drives.
3) I then deleted ALL Acronis backups on the disk and tried again - same Snapshot message.....
4) I then deleted the My backups folder so that Acronis would create a new one and tried again. Acronis duly created a new My backups folder but same Sanpshot error message came up...
Somewhat frustrated now. Is it a case of having to replace the disk and get a new one? Can a disk seemingly "pass" chkdsk /R and still be faulty?
Advice appreciated.....
mhaffy, if you are seeing the same error message each time, i.e. you posted:
Failed to read from sector '387,938,129 of hard disk 7. Failed to read the snapshot manager drive, (0x1000D7). unknown status (0x9). The drive cannot find the sector requested (0xFFF0)
Then this tells its own story about that sector. The VSS (snapshot) service will use unused space on the drive to store snapshot data though normally this is stored on the internal drives inside the computer rather than external?
Try running the free Acronis VSS Doctor tool (link below) to check what it thinks about your VSS configuration and status - do this with the problem drive connected.
Update: Sorry not fully awake this morning yet, just realised you have ATIH 2012 which does not use the Microsoft VSS service for snapshots - this is using the Acronis Snapshot process as do all versions up to 2014. Acronis switched to using VSS from 2015 onwards.
Both my external drives are Western Digital 2tb - the older one is the My Book version while the newer one that has just started playing up is Elements version. I have started an extended test on the problem external drive using WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics tool... let's see what that says... it says 16 hours to go!
Very strange that new drive worked fine for 4 backups (2 for each of my pc's) and then snapshot problems started during latest backup attempts on both machines. Only use external drives once a month.... Bizarre.....
After circa 24 hours a full test using Western Digital Data Lifeguard tool resulted in pass, no issues.....
Tried to run Acronis backup and exactly the same snapshot message.....very frustrating!
just started windows built in check for errors tool....
Running out of things to try.... all tests so far say disk is fine, can copy and retrieve other data fine.... just seems that Acronis finds an issue!
Maybe low level format next,and reformat!
reluctant to spend more money on another drive as no guarantee Acronis won't find same issue with that!
Still waiting for Windows Check errors to finish but have another question. Just wondered what exactly the purpose of the Snapshop manager drive (referred to in error message) that is having read problem is. Is the snaphot something that is used for incremental saves? If it is, given that I always choose to do separate Full backups, can snapshot be safely disabled as a way of getting around the issue that I am having?
Just started threat in WD Community forums...fingers crossed!
Snapshots are used to capture data that would otherwise be locked by system processes etc where this is stored in free space to allow the data to be included in the Acronis backup image file.
With later versions of ATIH it is possible to modify the XML task configuration file (.TIB.TIS file in the Scripts folder) to switch the snapshot method, but this is really meant for changing from using the Microsoft VSS snapshot method to using the inbuilt Acronis snapshot function, but the latter is what you have in the 2012 version.
The only other suggestion for testing your WD external drive that I can make is to try using Hiren's Boot CD to boot the computer then run the DOS HDAT2 disk check tool.
See document Hiren's Boot CD HDAT2 for using this tool.
You may also want to consider downloading a trial copy of ATIH 2017 from the main Acronis.com website and trying that to see if this is more of an issue with the older 2012 version, but please understand that installing 2017 requires that you uninstall 2012 first. The trial version is valid for 30 days only.
In reply to Snapshots are used to… by truwrikodrorow…
Thanks for info Steve. Preference is really to fix external disk and continue using ATIH2012. Wary of uninstalling 2012 and trying 2017 as potentially no valid backups then if issues.......Really strange that after years of trouble free use, ATIH starts playing up with new disk......Fingers crossed that check error tool that is currently running or full format of problem drive (which should sort bad sectors?) does the trick.....3 days wasted on this so far...zzzzz
So check errors completed after 9 hours giving external drive a clean bill of health. Not a bad sector in sight! Since the PC has been on continuosly running various checks for a couple of days I shut it down and restarted it and then did following:
1) Ran live updates on Norton, to avoid it trying to do it in background...
2) Connected "problem" external drive
3) Started Acronis......
4) Started back up from getting started (different to normal way I do it)
5) Chose full back up with validation when created, same as usual
6) Chose back up name ignoring brackets - i had started using brackets to indicate whether back up was on new or old external drives....
7) Waited for snapshot message to appear.......
8) No error ,message....backup underway as per normal.....
Will take circa 12 hours to complete so fingers crossed log file shows no errors and successfully created and validated when I get up tomorrow!
Really strange. Still unclear as to what has changed to stop message appearing...Could it be the check errors found something, corrected it and then declared everything fine?
Could it be related to avoiding brackets in file name? Although I am sure brackets worked when backing up to the other, older, external drive...
Could it be that I started back up immediately after starting PC (apart from running Norton live updates) rather than after I had been using it for several hours?
Will provide update tomorrow about whether back up worked.....If it did then next test will be to see if I can do a back up of my other pc successfully!
Been running for a while but now estimates 24 hours to complete...seems excessive compared to normal backup time.....Fingers crossed it doesnt actually take that long....
Pleased,and relieved, when I woke up to find that the backup and validation had successfully completed. I need to see if full backup for my other pic also works on this disk......
I am still scratching my head as to what caused, and "fixed" this issue.
Historically I have used a dedicated external dive for each of my PC's. When one of my external drives started to fail I replaced it with a new WD Elements external disk; the disk that this thread is dedicated too! It was then that I decided that it would be better if I had full backups for each PC on each of the external drives.
I understand that Acronis uses a metadata information database to oversee backups and that you should always delete old backups using Acronis rather than windows explorer. I do normally do this but am wondering whether I mistakenly deleted an old backup incorrectly to create space on the new drive?
Going forward I intend to ensure that when deleting old backups I perform it with the relevant disk connected to the PC on which the backup for deletion was created. Not sure whether this is necessary in Acronis but should hopefully minimise risk of snapshot error returning...
Glad to hear that the backup completed OK.
The key point with using multiple different backup drives is not to mix these for a single backup task, i.e. only ever use one backup task with one specific drive, do not switch drives for that task. This is where problems with the metadata database can arise because each drive has a unique identifier (UUID) that is recorded in the database.
Having a separate backup task for each backup drive is the best policy.
As far as deleting backup files, then if you do this via Explorer, you should always run a Validation afterwards in order to reconcile the information held in the database with the status of files still remaining.
Note: only ever delete either full version chains, or individual differential files. Never delete incremental files from a version chain as this will destroy the chain from that point forward.
Steve, many thanks for ongoing advice on this thread as I have worked through issues. As I always do full backs ups that I start manually (not scheduled to start at particular time etc), presumably my proposed use of two pack up disks for 2 PC's should not be an issue:?
My plan is as follows:
I have 2 PC's, each running a copy of ATIH2012 Family; PCA and PCB.
I have 2 external 2TB WD drives; WDA and WDB
Plan is to have full back ups as follows:
WDA : PCA BUp1 PCB BUp2 PCA BUp3 PCB BUp4
WDB: PCB Bup1 PCA BUp2 PCB Bup3 PCA Bup4
When I come to do Back up version 5 for each PC I propose :
1) Connecting WDA to PCA, deleting PCA Bup1 from WDA via Acronis and then doing PCA BUp5
2) Connecting WDB to PCB, deleting PCB BUp1 from WDB via Acronis and then doing PCB BUp5
I believe that this plan is consistent with you advising not to mix multiple drives for a single back up task but would appreciate your view.
Many thanks again.
Will provide further update when I have tried backing up my 2nd PC on the problem external drive.
Just one further comment about your backup plan - please ensure that you use unique backup names and ideally keep the backups for PCA and PCB in separate folders too, that will avoid some of the issues we see reported here where backups get deleted inadvertently.
Thanks again Steve. I always use, fairly long, unigue names such as MFull BOrig 14 June 2017 pre Windows Updates etc but all saves on both disks go to My backups folder that Acronis creates. So long as I am careful re deleting via Acronis on PC that created the save I should be ok? Presumably what you are recommending in using a folder on both disks called, say, My Backups PCA and My Backups PCB?
I can tell from the back up name which PC the backup was created on and on which external drive.
Keeping backups separated in different folders is more a matter of the KISS principle (Keep It Simple S...!) and can help making simple mistakes due to tiredness (or in my case - a 'senior moment!').
Agreed. Just wary of implications on exisiting valid saves if I start using different folders. If I start saving future backups of PCA to My Backups PCA, say, will the current PCA backups in My Backups still be valid and recoverable if I need them and can PCA still validly delete them when I need to create free space for latest backups? Will Acronis metadata information database carry on recognising saves made by PCA in the 2 different folders?
Apologies for all the follow on questions....
If you go with separate folders, then I would recommend doing so with new backup tasks (cloned from the original settings if preferred). Doing it that way, you can simply leave the current / existing backups as they are so that they would be available for any recovery actions if needed, but retained until such time as your new separate backups have reached the level of maturity to take over.
Methinks I will go down separate folders route since retired for circa 5 years and prone to the occasional "senior moment"........Glad that exisitng backups will still be available.
Presumably if I want to save backups from PCA to a folder called My Backups PCA (instead of current My backups) then it is simply a case of changing the Destination that currently appears D:My backups to D:My backups PCA before naming and starting full backup and Acronis will create the backup folder the first time that I perform a full backup?
Once I have completely moved to all backups being in either My backups PCA or My backups PCB, is it safe to delete the blank My backups folder or will that maybe cause Acronis issues.....
Leave your current backups where they are in D:\My backups as moving them will cause you more work by having to locate the moved file when doing a task Validation.
Create the new My backups PCA / B manually then point the new tasks to these ready created folders and start the new backup chains to these.
Thanks Steve. I will update post next time I do back up.....just in case steps I took and info you provided are of some help to others in future.
Thanks Steve. I will update post next time I do back up.....just in case steps I took and info you provided are of some help to others in future.
Windows updates duly installed so time to see if Acronis issue for PC and new disk that I started this thread about is fixed; having successfully created a back up of my other PC on the new disk a couple of days ago....
I started PC, ran Norton live updates, attached external drive and opened Acronis. After a long wait for it to open the all too familiar failed to read data from disk/snapshot message appeared. Instead of choosing ignore/ignore all I decided to click Cancel...... a few minutes later the same message appeared again..... I clicked Cancel again and fairly soon after that the back up started. As suggested by Steve I set up a separate My backups PCA folder to save all future backups for this PC to and pointed Acronis to this directory when creating backup.
The backup has now finished with a gree tick (backup successfully created) appearing in the list of all backups. The log shows backup was successfully created and successfully validated. The log does however include error messages relating to the two failed to read issues prior to the backup starting and error occurred when connecting to the update server followed by 12 failed to get response from server messages.
i am convinced that there are no issues with the new external drive. Hopefully given the successfully created/validated messages mean that this backup would restore properly, if required, despite the various familiar error messages......
Given error messages yet successfully completed info in log of recent backup, i decided to try and recover some info. I chose to recover a folder containing 50 photos. Using the recover folders and files option I chose the relevant folder and clicked recover to original location.
After waiting for a while the familiar failed to read data from disk/snapshot message appeared. I chose cancel and after a while the same message appeared for a second time. I chose cancel again and then recovery started and completed successfully with the selected folder and photos all being duly recovered.
I am beginning to wonder if the message related to snapshots of earlier backups that I deleted via the PC that did not create them - possibly confusing the acronis metadata information database?
Hopefully a full back up would work, despite messages, given that I can recover folder/files. Just wish that there was a way of knowing, without actually having to try, or of getting rid of the error messages!
mhaffy, the only sure way to fully eliminate the Acronis metadata database is to try the recovery using the Acronis bootable Rescue Media, so that this is done fully outside of Windows and therefore the database is not used, nor are any snapshot methods etc. This is the method you would need to perform a full bare-metal recovery, so always good to give it a test run, even if only on your small folder with 50 photos.
Thanks Steve. Given that small folder with 50 photos recovers successfully using Acronis on pc, presumably no reason why Rescue media should not work.
Agreed, but would show that you don't get any error messages if these originate from the metadata database.
I will try when my wife's pc is available and report back.
The plot thickens.......
I used a bootable disk (latest build of Acronis 2012 Home) to try and recover the small folder with 50 photos. Worked fine with no error messages.
The only thing that confused me was the name of the backup file that I used : OS_(C). When running Acronis normally on PC I use custom names and the one appearing when I do this on PC is BFull BOrig 16June2016Post Windows.
Looked at relevant 16/6 log of this backup and saw that it had successfully created OS_(C). I set up new folder for this backup. On external drive the file is OS_(C).tib......Very strange that it didnt create/save file with the full name that I thought I had assigned and that appears in list....
I have 6 backups at present - 4 on old external disk and 2 on the disk causing problems. All have long names like BFull BOrig 16June2016Post Windows. When using F12 and bootable disk to start Acronis, there were indeed 6 potential backups to choose from with the 4 on the old disk appearing even though not connected. All full long names as expected apart from the OS_(C).
Whilst it would appear that backup 16/6 ok despite log errors re snapshot, I am now confused as to why file was created as OS_(C) despite appearing with its full name when I run Acronis from PC normally? Strange that I have only tried 1 backup to a new directory (not the normal My backups) and that this is the one giving this new issue.
Also, having checked 16/6 log again, there are new 18/6 log entries entries presumably relating to recovery test with todays date and time I was running bootable disk recovery - 4 instances of Updating backup database:Inseting new backup version with ID0 into backup with ID 14787726 etc
I would normally expect to see the same backup file names regardless of whether looking in Windows or when booted from the Rescue media, though I have to confess it is a long time since I have used ATIH 2012 - the nearest I have at present is 2014 running on an old XP system, whereas all others are running with 2017.
The Linux kernel version used for the default Rescue Media can affect how some filesystems are shown but again, I wouldn't expect this to show file names differently unless it simply cannot cope with long file names of a excess length?
According to KB 1537: Acronis Bootable Media - the ATIH 2012 Rescue Media used Linux kernel 2.6 as did ATI 11.0 through to 2013, so would expect this would be a known issue if it couldn't handle long file names!
It does indeed seem strange to see different backup names. The file names shown when using bootable disk are the names of the tib files as they appear on the external drives. This seems logical.
My confusion lies with why the 16/6 backup was saved to the external drive at OS_(C) when I named it BFull BOrig 16June2016Post Windows in Backup name - this being the name shown on the Acronis list via PC. I can only think that it is related to me having to browse and indicate that I wanted this backup saved to a new folder My backups BFull rather than the usual My backups.....Bizarre.
Maybe all will become clearer over time when I do subsequent backups and delete older ones.....
Since last months issues snapshot/email notifications when doing backup to external drive I have an issue on the sole 1TB internal drive on one of my PC's. following a freeze that necessitated power shutdown and reboot chkdsk /r indicated 4kb in bad sectors. Furthermore, restore points are no longer available (plenty of space) and disappear after successful creation due to voldnap error - shadow copy of vol (c) aborted because of IO failure on vol c event ID 14. Acronis true drive monitor showed disk health now only 99% (previously 100%) and 1 current pending sector count - degradation. The disk is Western digital so I downloaded WD diagnostic school tool and ran quick test which showed pass. Extended test however found back sectors which it could not repair and reported Fail.
I was wondering if I could install a new 1TB internal drive in the spare slot on my pc and use Acronis True Image Home 2012 to recover full back up made of potentially failing disk to the new one?
If your original 1TB WD HDD has got bad sectors, then doing a full disk backup of the drive is going to hit those same bad sectors and if it does, will switch to using sector-by-sector mode for the backup, so the backup size will be roughly the same size as the drive.
It may be better to try doing a files & folders backup of the HDD if this is only used for data (not the OS or installed programs) as this will give you an idea of the extend of the impact of the bad sectors.
If the HDD is the OS / Programs drive, then do you have a full disk & partitions backup made before the bad sector issue became apparent? If you do, then you could restore / recover that backup to a new drive, then try to recover any individual files / folders from the failing drive (provided these are not for system folders or programs).
Thanks for getting back Steve. All my programs and data are on c drive hard disk that I do full monthly backups of. PC is nearl 6 years old now and my wife's pc >10 years old. Given Acronis issues last month and now bad sectors issue on "younger" pc I am seriously considering buying 2 new windows 10 pc's so that I can copy info across before major failures. I will also get up to date version of Acronis; presumably Acronis true image 2017 is the one? Don't seem to do family version so 2 licences presumably. Have they also done away with plus versions now?
mhaffy, I have computers of similar ages that are still in regular use, albeit they tend to 'creak' a bit these days but while the disk drives continue to spin... Replacing failing drives is always an option, though if your older hardware doesn't support SATA drives, then getting hold of the PATA / IDE drives is becoming more of a challenge plus more expensive for larger sizes.
You may want to give the Beta for the next version a spin to see what the differences are from your old 2012 version - this can be a bit of a culture shock with the redesigned GUI and removal of some features, but the new beta is looking very good and may be worth waiting for.
If you do buy the new Windows 10 computers then you would definitely need one of the new versions of ATIH as only 2015 or later is supported for use installed on Win 10.
On the licensing front, you should be able to buy 1, 3 or 5 licenses with discounts over buying the same as individual copies.
My pc's hard disk definitely seems to be creaking! Both pc's have given good, fairly heavy use, service including gaming so time seems right to bite bullet and move to new pc. Thanks for advice re Acronis. Probably best for me to get standalone copy of latest version and take the plunge of coping with the numerous changes since 2012. So long as I can do full, reliable backups on a regular basis fairly easily (avoiding senior moments) that will be fine.
I posted the issue in WD forums and their view is disk showing signs of failing.....