Corrupt Image after burning to a DVD or to External HDD
I have backed up 27 workstations using the DVD Burn option method, on verficiation of the image at the time, the images were perfectly fine, however, when I go to restore the images back onto the workstation, an error message appears saying the image is corrupt. I know the image is not corrupt (extremely unlikely on 27 seperate workstations). It is vitally important these images that were backed up, are intact and showing no signs of corruption. This is why I verfied each workstation's backup media at the time to ensure all is OK. When I use a different method of backing up the partition I get the same results on different workstations. I am using Acronis True Image Home Edition version 9. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Luke Tighe
I'm not sure of your exact procedure but I might guess that you made the backups and the validation while running Windows. However, if you are restoring the active partition, typically C, in the restore sequence, TI will gather the information and then boot into its rescue environment which is Linux. In other words, even if you start the restore in Windows, the actual restore will be done in Linux because Windows can't be running when the active partition is restored.
Linux driver issues are frequently the reason that a restore goes wrong even if the Windows Validation says the archive is OK.
You can test this by booting up the TI rescue CD and then using it to do a validate. If it fails where a Windows validate succeeds then it is the Linux environment. If so, you can try the trial rescue CD from the current version which may have better driver support for your systems. The other option is to use the TI BartPE plugin and make a BartPE recovery CD which is a Windows environment.
Thank you for the quick response,
I will try and use different versions and get back to you with the results, the proceedure for backing up the HDD's was to boot from the Acronis TI 9 disk, creating a backup, choosing the DVD Drive, naming the image, and verifying the image from there. I didnt use Windows at all during the backup as I feared this would lead to problems. But my problem still remains that I have 28 sets of disks for workstations that are no longer in the country and when trying to restore the image, the image is corrupt. Should I really be going to this extent to successfully verify an image on DVD's and have confidence the image will restore?
Regards
Luke Tighe
The straight answer to your question is that until you have done at a test restore to your hardware you don't really know if you have a workable backup scheme.
When TI creates an archive it writes 4000 checksums/GB into the archive. Everyone of these checksums is recalculated and compared when the archive is validated or restored. A failure of any one of them will cause the archive to be declared corrupt and in the case of a restore, the restore will be abandoned. Unfortunately, one of the first things TI does before restoring a partition is to delete the partion so a failed restore usually means you are left with unallocated space instead of what was on the partition before the restore started.
There are very few issues ever reported because an image was made "in Windows" but some people do prefer booting the CD and making the image of a static HD.
IMO, DVD backups tend to have more problems than an external USB HD backup. Also, if the backup goes much past a couple of DVDs you will drive yourself nuts swapping DVDs on a restore. TI does not read all of one DVD, then the next, then the next... it jumps back and forth over the entire set.
Since you did the backup with the CD and the validated with the CD version you did in effect test a significant part of the restore mechanism. Since this is the version used to do a restore, rather than the Windows version as I mentioned above.
By all means try a later version and remember the best test is to do a restore to a spare (in case it fails) HD.
The archive corrupt message really means: TI can't read the archive into RAM and recreate all of the checksums. So anything that can cause a read and calculation failure is suspect. It can be the media, bad cable, bad RAM (unlikely if it happens on all machines), poor device driver, etc; in other words almost anything. One fellow found a bad CPU problem.
Note that the least problematic storage media for an archive is an internal HD, followed by an external HD. Try making an archive to another internal drive or partition. If the machines only have one partition, TI will let you make the archive to that partition after giving you a warning message. The image will be useless for restore since it would get deleted when the partition is deleted but it will serve as a test.