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Validation erratic behavior

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Hi everyone.

After I made my own workaround (as the most of us), I would say that I have "tuned" ATIH 2011 backups, nevertheless I still found serious inconsistencies in the validation process.

To make a long tell short, I´ve discovered that under the OS (Win7 ultimate x64) for whatever reason the validation process might fail within any point of a backup file mostly beyond that 50GB. Now if I perform the validation over the same file backup of 50Gb out of the OS (ATIH CD or Recover Manager) the validation process goes well with no corruption file error or any other error message over the same backup file. Then I restore the same file under windows and I have been reported files corrupted, and it gives the option of "try again" which passed and it copied the file with no issues. Once the backup file restoration, I compare the contents of the original folder against the restored in another location using WinMerge ...and, there were no differences.

I read a lot of stuff refering about hardware issues that would affect a good backup and validation performance, but again this is not my case.

It seems by my simple workaround that the validation process warnings under the OS might be erratic. If so the Million Dollars questions may be How Reliable is the Validation process then?. At the end I need a faithful restoration when a data disgrace comes, right?. Please don´t tell me ..."oh well you can keep validating your files from the CD from now on", if so I am using the wrong backup solution software.

I'll appreciate any comment on this in order to confirm or provide a good clarification on this.

Thanks a lot.

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You know, the validation is about the internal integrity of the backup file, not about the fidelity to the data being backed up.
It is therefore possible that the validation doesn't work out its maths because of some hardware weakness or image file corruption, but the actual backup data in the file is not corrupted.

A successful validation provides some additional confidence your archive data is consistent (as in "the integrity of the backup data" have been verified), and could be restored. It is not a guarrantee that the restore will be work and be flawless. Nothing else that an actual restore operation can verify this.
We also have seen cases where the validation fails in Windows, but not on the CD. I didn't see the vice versa yet...
Finally, we have seen cases where the validation fails, but the backup works, or the archive can be mounted and most/all data retrieved.

That said, your validation should pass.

See this thread http://forum.acronis.com/forum/4425

In my case I can confirm that the large backup files seems to be ok this far, even the validation process performed erratic.

Your clarification is highly appreciated Pat. :)