Back Up Keeps Crashing
Yesterday I installed True Image Home 2010.
I attempted a complete back-up last night to my external HD. The back-up indicated it would take about 17hrs (my HD to back-up is about 202GB full).
I closed down all my programs and let the system run. However, when I woke this morning I found that my computer / program had frozen.
I researched why this might have occurred and found that it might be to do with compression so I changed the compression setting to None, as advised, and tried again.
This time TI indicated the back up would take 2 days. However, when I got home from work I found that my computer / program had again frozen after about 5hrs of the back-up commencing.
I noticed that each of the .tib files backed-up was about 3.99GB in size.
I am using Windows XP SP3.
Any ideas as to why this is happening and how I can rectify?
Thanks.
Thanks for your reply.
My HD is set to Never Turn Off
The first and most important thing is for you to have a successful backup.
Use your TI Rescue CD and create the backup when booted from within the Rescue CD.
You can troubleshoot your problem later after you get a good backup and don't forget to set the validation option to yes.
The type backup which provides the most options in restoring to a backup which includes each and every parttions on the system disk.
If the external drive is a FAT32 file system, the file split size is normal. If you do not want the files split, you will have to convert the external to a NTFS file system.
Thanks GroverH.
I will try the back-up from the disk.
If I convert the external HD to NTFS will this involve formatting everything that is currently on that disk?
Does it make any difference whether the back-up comprises just one file or several files?
Good call on fat32 4GB single file ceiling.
Formatting the drive will wipe everything, BUT, you can convert your FAT32 to NTFS file system using the Microsoft utility that came with XP and later. This will retain all your files whilst converting.
Open up a command prompt and type in "convert drive letter to be converted/ fs:ntfs /v"
So if your external drive is F: then
convert f: /fs:ntfs /v
Note the spaces they are important.
Other problems that could cause a slow imaging session would be, USB drive connecting as USB1 instead of 2 - try attaching the drive to another USB port preferably a rear one, card readers or graphics pads attached. Poor performing RAM. TI is very intensive on RAM usage, and if problems still persist then running Memtest86+ for at least 12 hours will be in order.
Thanks Guys, I`ll try out your suggestions and give an update when done.
An update on my earlier post.
I ran Memtest86+ and this came back with an all clear.
I then ran a back-up from the boot disk and left this to run.
On checking later there was a message indicating that a sector on the HD I was backing up to could not be read. I clicked on "Ignore All" and the back-up continued.
The next morning the back-up showed that it had completed successfully. However, when I checked my back-up HD drive there was only 4 x 3.99GB files. The HD I was backing-up is over 200GB.
So it appears that my HD has not been fully backed up.
This is the most frustrating aspect of computing for me as I continually experience issues with trying to carry out a successful back-up!
Any suggestions?
This sounds as though you are still imaging to a FAT32 disk or for some reason your task is set up to only produce 4GB slices. you should be getting one complete file if using NTFS.
Have you run chkdsk /r on both drives?
My next course of action is to convert to NTFS but I will also chkdsk both drives.
I will update once done - thanks.
Do a search for 5399 and read the posts there. Dave Madsen entered this post and it solved my problem which was extreme slowness of a backup. Here's a portion of Dave's post.
As noted in a prior post above I was also having backups run for hours and hours. I've been running a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate. I found that in my case the default setting W7 had created for my external USB hard drive was "Quick Removal." Changing that to "Better Performance" in Windows' Device Manager led to a dramatic improvement in my backup times. They're still slower than previous TI versions, but are much, much better. If you have an USB external drive, you should check this setting
There's also a post from someone that says that Acronis has some sort of download that helps fix freezes. You might try that too if Dave's post doesn't resolve your problem.
Hope this helps.
Hello all,
Thank you very much for your posts and your valuable assistance!
afcgunn,
I will definitely help you with this.
To add to all the suggestions posted here, I will send you a private message with the SnapApi update, these low-level disk drivers can cause the slowdown. I will also send you instructions for collecting diagnostic information to contact our support team in case nothing works.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Thank you.