Acronis TI 2011 creates corrupted backups

Just because you are using an administrator account doesn't automatically mean you have full access to all the files/folders on your system.

I would try a few things:

1) Continue backing up and validating each yearly photo folder until you come across a folder that will not backup/validate. This folder will be the one that is causing problems.

2) Download and install XPlorer2 (http://zabkat.com/). It's not free, but it does have a fully functioning trial. You noticed that copying files using windows causes problems. The problem with Windows is, it stops after the first error, so you have no way to know how many or which files are causing a problem. XPlorer2 resolves this issue with it's "Robust Copy" feature, which keeps a log of copy failures and continues attempting to copy the rest of the files. Copy your entire photo folder using XPlorer2 Robust Copy then review the log to see which files are causing problems. Then you can take steps to resolve the issues with these files (possibly by taking ownership of the files).

3) Change the ownership of all the files and subfolders in your photos folder. Taking ownership this way will take a very long time depending on the number of files and folders that need to be changed. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753659.aspx)

I am not aware of Acronis having issues with storing too many files or the backup being too large. I have several backups that are over 200GB in size and they validate fine. Also, I am not sure how important user rights are for Acronis. I believe Acronis runs using your permissions (Administrator) so if you cannot access a file, then neither can Acronis. Hopefully someone with more intimate knowledge of how Acronis works can clarify this.

Will,

You can move the thread yourself by editing your first post and selecting TIH forum from the drop down box.

Make the validation a separate task, rather than part of the imaging task, this may well solve your problem.

If your photo files are JPG's you won't get much if any more compression.

If the folders and files have deep nesting or long file names this could cause a problem.

Before altering any tasks, run a standalone validation and see what happens.

I assume you can either 'explore' or mount the image OK?

Are these full disk images or files and folders backup?

Hi Guys,

First of all, thanks for the rocket fast answers!
Here are more details Steve.

1) I already did and the thing that drives me crazy is that backing up a single folder always work. All of them (one by one) work. The issue occur when I back them up together!!!!

2) I am using Freecommander, that allowed me finding those files. Today, I am 100% my user has ownership on all the files and full access to them

3) already did

On top of this, I tested something. I tried restoring this corrupted backup.
While restoring, 3 files (only! so around 10MB out of 120GB) could not be restored. I pressed retry a few times, it never helped. SO I pressed ignore for these 3 files and wrote down the names. Then I went to the source (the original files) and checked them. I do have ownership on them, full access, and I can open/read them totally fine.

The question now is: Why is acronis CORRUPTING some files while backing up !!!

Now regarding the suggestion to validate after the backup, I will try but it should fails, since the backup seem corrupted.

New tests, after changing the compression level to nothing a backup succeeded and the validation too.
Then I tried recovering the backup and it failed on a bunch of files.
I tried recovering again and it fails but not on the same files............

I get to the point that I wonder if it is possible to make a backup with acronis at all (I mean a backup that can be 100% done, validated and recovered).

Will,

Just for troubleshooting purposes, could you try making an image using the rescue CD? If this fails then there is some problem (unlikely) with your system such as disk structure, if it works, then at least it is narrowed to TIH and Windows.

Do you have a USB drive that could be used for the test, in case the Firewire connection is th eproblem area?

You haven't stated whether this is a files and folders backup or a partition/disk image?

What format are your pictures in?

What files did TIH fail on when recovering?

Are you able to Explore the tib file?

Hello,

Some news and a resolution here.

First some answers for Colin:
- I did not try the rescue CD
- I did exclude the firefire drive by using the same local drive than the one where the data to backup were (for testing only)
- backups were BOTH partition and folders
- pics are mostly JPG and NEF images, there are also XMP files and photoshop files. Also probably a few TIFs. I noticed corrupted JPG and NEF images
- out of 120GB, the recovery failed for 4-5 images, a few JPG there and NEF there...
- I could explore the tib file yes

Extra tests:
- I even tried recover the backup 2 times in a row and the corrupted pictures were not the same. Making me think (but read below) that the backup is ok but validation and recovery are not.

I kind of game up the issue (at least a few days) and started investigating something I did not suspect to be related.
First I wanted to check the temperatures of my system. I am running with a video board without fan (was too loud :)) for a few years already (so it works! but I don´t do gaming). To check the temps, I used NVIdia monitor.

That led me to using nTune where I realized that my system was overclocked!!!!
The "!!!!" are due to the fact that I usually don´t overclock my systems at all. I guess on that one, I used the auto tune feature in nTune and that overcloked a bit my system a while ago. I never noticed any issue though and the overclocking was very light (FSB @ 216 instead of 200Mhz).

Just in case, I put back all the values to the default (all back to green in the NVIDIA Monitor).
I validated many backups and saw that they were again corrupted.

I deleted all these backups and backed up again. First validation, MAGIC, it validates (was a partition backup).
Other backup, folder one => all green!

I revalidated the backups this morning, after a reboot and the 2 backups are still green.
I just validated again and the first one passes (second in progress).

So I would conclude that:
- if your system is overclocked it may corrupt your backups
- if your system is overclocked it may fail validating your backups

Now the reason does make sense because I think TI should check (or at least propose an option because that may cost time) the backup creation on the fly. If a file is not ok in the backup ***during the backup process*** it should be one again.
That would take longer but ensure a proper backup.

I hope these hints will help the others who, like me, read this forum and found only solutions such as:
- upgrade to new build
- change your ram
- change your PC
- etc...

I would suggest, M. Acronis, :) to add a box called "Did you overclocked your system?" into the nice chart here:
http://www.acronis.com/r/support/en/kb/254/troubleshoot.corrupt.htm

It is quite easy nowadays to set back a pc to 'stable' values and check the backups again.
Please note that the RAM issues does not apply in case. I ran memtest overnight (7 passes) and got no error.
The whole story even allowed me to realize that I was running my DDR400 @300Mhz.

So in the end, my PC probably runs faster, is more stable (I guess I will see overtime about time) and so far, TI seems to like the environment much better.

Regards,
Will

Will,

The fact is that the validation is pretty resource intensive, so it makes sense that if your computer was at the edge, backups or validation could fail randomly with stressed out hardware.
My system is overclocked is runs great with ATI. Memory issues are notorious with overclocked systems in corner cases.