ATI 10 creating nothing but corrupted archives

The corrupt message means TI can't read the archive from the backup drive into RAM and recreate the 4000 checksums/GB of archive flawlessly. So anything that causes bad data to be read into RAM or incorrectly stored in RAM or incorrectly manipulated when doing the checksum is suspect. Unfortunately, it can be a lot of things.

Since you created the archive with the TI Linux-based CD I'd say it probably isn't a Linux driver for your hardware (maybe). Can you validate the archive using Windows, if so it points to a Linux driver issue.

Another cause is bad RAM. Download Memtest86+, free from www. memtest.org and let it run for several passes. If it doesn't immediately detect errors let it run overnight.

I tried validating the TI 10 archive .tib file both with the TI boot CD and also with the regular Windows XP installed copy. Both versions of TI 10 came back with the archive as corrupted.

Also, today (at home, as we speak LOL) I am running yet another TI 10 backup using the regular Windows XP install copy of TI 10, just to see whether I get any different results. That is the copy I used for creating all 3 of the (also corrupted) archives from 2009.

So far my experience is that both the Win XP install copy of TI 10 as well as the TI boot CD copy of TI 10 create backups that appear "successful" but fail to verify once the .tib file(s) are created.

TI, like everything else, writes data to the disk and assumes all is well unless there is a problem with the the disk such as drive not ready - not dumping data on a sector it won't be able to read correctly later. Data is read into RAM in the same manner. There is no checking of the integrity of the data in RAM and many errors may go unnoticed in regular PC use.

TI is reading a large amount of data into RAM and is very carefully checking it - a checksum for every 256K bytes of data. This can certainly uncover hardware problems that may go unnoticed.

Since both the CD and Windows show archive corrupt messages, I'd definitely run the memory diagnostic as a first step.

If it doesn't show anything wrong, I'd create the archive on another internal drive or a different partition on the same drive. If you don't have a different partition, TI will let you create it on the C drive (after saying it isn't a good idea). This will take USB hardware out of the equation if you can validate it.

Thanks for the suggestions, Seekforever.

I have already had nothing but corrupted archives on 2 different external drives, a 3 year old WD drive and now a 1 week old Seagate drive. As I said in the initial post, I ran 2 low level disk scans (which take like 24 hours each on a 1TB drive!) so at least from a surface point of view the new Seagate is working perfectly. But, as your comments indicate there are timing and wait-state functions that could be not 100% and cause a net effect of write errors.

So I will run checks on the RAM and then try to do further diagnostics on both of the external drives.

Worst case I might try finding a 32G USB flash drive and see if I can get an archive to validate using that to store it on. There are fewer things to go wrong (fewer moving parts, LOL) on one of those puppies. I'm just running out of spare change to throw at this problem and at some point, I'm going to get frustrated and give up on Acronis (if I find better reliability rates with other backup software).

Oh, an 11th hour update ...

I created a fresh backup archive today using the installed TI10. My test results are now very interesting (and now inconsistent) as follows:
- When I validate the archive on the installed TI10, it now says it is good!
- When I validate the same archive (that just told me it was good) using the Boot CD copy of TI10, there it says the same old "E00070020 The archive is corrupted" message.

Of course, this is even more insidious!! This is what I did with my 3 archives from 2009: I validated them using the installed TI10. But then, when I actually need to use the same archives (including the brand new archive done March 10 2010), the Boot CD TI10 says Oh No you can't'!! That archive is corrupted, even though the install version just said Yes, it's validated as a perfect usable archive.

Okay so maybe I will still test my memory and do further drive tests... but this behaviour is really starting to get me to my angry place.

How can the very same archive .tib be perfectly fine one minute and then totally corrupted the next minute with (supposedly) the same software? And the Boot CD is one I literally created this morning ... fresh as a daisy.

That's starting to sound a lot less like bad RAM or bad drive behaviour and a lot more like crappy software. And I am using "Acronis® True Image Home® version 10.0 (build 4,942)" which is verified as the latest and final build.

The boot CD is not exactly the same software, it is a Linux version and environment.

This situation is where a lot of people come unstuck when they need to restore and haven't tested the restore process until they need it. Linux drivers tend to be an issue compared to Windows drivers so if it validates in Windows but not with the boot CD then it can be a Linux hardware support issue.

I think you said your build is the latest one for TI10 but if it isn't, get and try the latest - create a new CD.

If that isn't the case, download the free trial of TI10 and create the rescue CD and see if it works. It won't let you create an archive with it but it will restore previously created archives. If it works, then you can decide on whether or not you want to upgrade.

The other way around Linux issues is to create a BARTPE cd with the TI plugin. BARTPE uses Windows drivers.

Solution to Event code: 0x000101F6 Operation with partition was terminated

Details: Operation with partition '0-0' was terminated.
Details:
The archive is corrupted. (0x70020)
Tag = 0xF5F8CBCF76155639

More information can be found at: http://kb.acronis.com/errorcode/
Event code: 0x000101F6

I hope this can get published somewhere to help everyone out there ... including Acronis & maybe even me Hint hint (free software or something perhaps) hint hint ... as so far, in all my searching I haven't come across the following solution.

I must point out however that for "try and decide" in TI Home 2010 Acronis does warn to turn off background defragmentation.

I was having terrible times getting any kind of reliability with validation, or mounting of images. Random failures galore including a restore that went terribly wrong and left a Netbook unbootable (Netbook = NO optical drive so had to create bootable USB Key etc etc I have much less hair now !!!)

Anyhow ... I was backing up using True Image Home 2010 on Windows 7 starter edition 2 GB ram to a Lacie 1 TB USB external Hard Drive. Never even thought of it but had the Lacie supplied "USB Boost" program running in boost mode. (does it automatically when drive is present)

Since turning that off while using True Image No more problems

I will wager that all these "USB Boost" type apps cause similar problems.

Hope this gets looked into and solved. But after many frustrating hours of troubleshooting I now have 100% reliability

Kami,
Vancouver
Canada