Recovery issue

I would wait until that master file table recovery is complete. Then run chkdsk /r on that drive. Also run a drive checking utility from the drive manufacturer, as those sometimes catch errors missed by chkdsk. It's possible that

Ok, I will wait, but there is no more output in console windows from chkdsk. Don't know how long to wait, before canceling or not.

Can you say something about the numbering of hard disc by true image? Two internal SATA and one external USB hard disc and one SATA CD/DVD drive. Which one is number "1"?

You would have been able to see how the drives were numbered when you were booted from the True Image bootable Recovery Media (Rescue Media). Each disk would have a number associated with it. See attached screenshot as an example.

Thank you, tuttle. I have to wait until recovery of MFT is finished, than I can boot again with bootable Recovery Media and check which is my number "1" drive.

Given that the drive suffered a power failure when it was reading, I'd say there's a good chance that the file was damaged.

reading from hard disc on power failure is mostly not so damaging as writing to hard disk during power failure.

Good moring,

"chkdsk /F" in windows repair console could not recover master file table from disc of the USB hard drive. I tried the command a second time, but the same. I have no fortune.
The third time I used "chkdsk" without parameters and the disc was checked (no problems found). Ok, so I started Acronis bootable recovery media, could identify that "hard disc 1" is the external USB drive, which caused above mentioned read error during recovery. I tried to verfiy the backup image I want to recover, but again read error on sector '459.628.247' on hard disc 1.

I have a full backup, which is currently verified - needs about 6 hours - and 3 incremental backup files. The first of the incrementals is demaged, so I can forgot all other incrementals, which are with future date. I hope verifying succeeds, so I could use the full backup. Date is three days before, so data loss is acceptable. But after all my experiences with backup & recovery - it is the third time I could not recover an image - I would say, it makes less sense to use acronis true image without an uninterruptible power system (UPS) and if there are continual problems with backup media through e.g. power cut or not repercussive backup software, so that you have to power off the system by power switch (bootable media did twice not start and hangs on black screen).

It's unfortunate that you're having so much trouble. But, the problem lies not with Acronis, but with the twist of fate that gave you a power failure as your external HD was in use.

Yes, if an incremental image is unreadable, you won't be able to use any subsequent (later date) incrementals in the same chain. That's one of the reasons why I create mostly full backups, at a cost of greater storage size and longer backup time.

Yes, you're right, a UPS would make the external HD safer. I do all my backups to bus-powered portable USB HDs, so they need no external power. They are small and portable, excellent backup containers. Their only two drawbacks are the higher cost than desktop models and that the largest size is 2 GB.

BTW, I advised chkdsk /r (not chkdsk /f), in order that it would also look for bad sectors. It is a more thorough check, and is advisable in your situation. It may not help you recover an image from that drive, but will tell you if the drive is still safe to use.

Thank you tuttle,

you're right, it lies not with Acronis, power cut was the problem. But why could Acronis True Image not repeat the action to read again the sector xxx.xxx.xxx (see attached screenshot), where the read error occurs and when power for the hard disc was on again? I remeber, that this function (repeating read) works in TI 2010 well on my "very old" notebook computer with a FireWire connected external hard disc with TI images after a short power cut.

Acronis is now still validating the first full backup. All incrementals after this (2 is demanged) are lost, so I have a data loss of 4 weeks for some data (e.g. top level folder C:\users\), folder "downloads", "documents", "outlook data" and "windows live" folder I synchronized yesterday to another external hard drive, which is still healthy. I "just" have to reinstall all programs, which I installed or updated in the last 4 weeks (it are about 10 or 12) to solve some problems (which I now have again to solve after recovery).

Helmut,

You have to use chkdsk with the /R option, not the /F option. The checking is much longer but more thorough.

Pat L.

I will do this, but I'm still waiting since 8 hours for finishing of validation the 600GB backup image on USB disc by true image. /F repairs file system errors, /R checks also data files and free space. So does /R also repair corrupt MFT?

/R verifies the files system (just like /F) but also checks for bad sectors and adjust the file system records accordingly

Ideally you run chkdsk X: /R where X: is each partition on your disk.

On some disk there are some hidden partitions (check in windows disk management: right click on the computer icon your desktop, choose manage, storage, disk management).
If there is an error in a hidden partition, it will be hard to try to fix it with chdsk, unless you can assign temporarily a drive letter to the hidden partition(s) and the file system is supported. You would have to use a disk checking utility to go after this.

Hallo Pat L,

the demanged partition is on a external USB drive, there are no hidden partitions. chkdsk /R did find bad clusters, caused by power cut yesterday. Output from chkdsk: "Windows replaced bad clusters in file 16 of name \!BACKUP~1\WESTER~2\WDC_WD~2.tib. 10 percent complete". I breaked there to check which file in 8.3 notation is WDC_WD~2.tib. Is is the first incremental backup in chain within a full backup WDC_WD~1.tib and followed by two another incrementals (WDC_WD~3.tib and WDC_WD~4.tib). I will repeat chkdsk /R. After this, can I try to verfiy WDC_WD~2.tib including the full backup WDC_WD~1.tib (about 600GB) or does this make no sense, because the file WDC_WD~2.tib is damaged? It is again a long time to wait!

In moment I did all from windows repais console resp from acronis bootabel rescue media, because I have currently no windows 7 system / os partition, which was deleted by acronis after starting recovery, but this was broken by a power cut, so there is no desktop with computer icon to click with right mouse button to call computer management. In repair console I have to use "diskpart" and there hidden partitions have a assigned drive letter.

But checking the Seagate USB hard disk with a disk checking utility is not easy. Seagate SeaTools are only for internal IDE or SATA drives, because this tool run on DOS disk and there is no NFTS driver and also no USB driver support. The only way to check the external USB drive with SeaTools is to have a running windows, but this I don't have after damaged recovery image. I perhaps can try with my old Windows XP computer (I'm writing from this computer), if there are 3 TB hard disks with advanced format are supported, but I think this is not supported by Windows XP SP3, or is it?

Also I think that a power cut with Acronis bootable media running a backup or recovery is with BusyBox (Linux) a greater problem than with Acronis WinPE based rescue media from PlusPack! With WinPE I never had this problems before during a power cut, but only with BusyBox based True Image from rescue CD. Linux mounts the diver, caches data to read or write and in case of power cut, there is no chance to umount. WinPE uses no cache for writing to USB drive. Correct me please, if I'm not right.

Helmut,

Thank you for clarifying the situation. I would say there is little chance that chkdsk or any disk repair software will repair a damage TIB file to the point where it will good enough for ATI to use for restore, but it is worth trying.

Pat L, thank you.

Should I skip verifying and start at once with recovery try after chkdsk /r has finished? Verify it's taking ages and ages on such large images files. I first need my windows installation again before checking more the external drive with a drive checking utility, which again needs more than 2 days on a 3.000 GB drive.

Helmut,

I wouldn't skip any steps in the process given your case:
- verify your backup disk with chkdsk /r. Let it run all the way.
- then run the validation process given the issues with the backup files. You won't be able to recover if validation fails.

Pat L,

chkdsk /r has finished (after 23 hours) with following message:

---------------------------------------------------
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
496 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
243941139 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Adding 1 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

2861578 MB total disk space.
1954332880 KB in 69 files.
20 KB in 42 indexes.
4 KB in bad sectors.
158540 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
975764552 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
732563999 total allocation units on disk.
243941138 allocation units available on disk.
-----------------------------------------------------

So it has "Adding 1 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File" on my extrnal FreeAgent GoFlex 3TB drive.
I changed my notebook hard disk with empty system partition, which I wants to recover, with another hard disk with working windows 7, from HP recovery DVD installed, and I could successfully mount the backup chain - by selecting the last incremental backup - with true image to a drive letter. So my question is now - before using Seagates SeaTools "long disk check", which also repairs bad clusters, and before verifying backup chain (what should I do first: check or verify. Seagate suggests before a backup of data (backup of backup! Makes this sense? Needs a lot of space I don't have.) - is it possible also to verify successfully, if I could successfully mount the images? I also tested copying some files from mounted image to another disk, which works well.

Helmut F.

First validate the backup. If it doesn't validate, see if you can mount the backup. If the backup doesn't validate and you can mount it, this will be your plan B.

unfortunately validation of backup chain (full and all incrementals) is invalid, also only full backup is invalid. But I can mount backup image(s) with TI. Recovery would fail in this case, but can I copy the content of mounted image with robocopy /MIR to destination partition without true image? May this work? MBR on destination partition should be valid. Recovery with TI is due to an invalid backup archive not possible.

Before we give up on restoring, run the validation from the recovery CD.

If it still fails, at this point, since your backup is deemed corrupt, and you can mount, mount the image and copy everything you need out of the mounted image and store this safely on some other disk.

After you have extracted your content, you can still try to run chkdsk /R on the backup disk, and then try to validate again. As chkdsk fixes things, it might repair the file system or "corrupt" the archive further. This is why it is better to salvage what you can before attempting to fix with chkdsk /r

Pat L, thank you for your comment.

I did already chkdsk /r once time, before trying to mount. Mount works after chkdsk /r and I could copy urgent needed files out of the image (so the idea to copy the whole partition with windows robocopy).

In moment I check the disk with Seagate SeaTools by a simple longtime test, which does also like chkdsk /r repair bad clusters. Your warning about more "corrupting" the archive by these actions comes a little bit late. But I will not give up, I will try to validate the full backup image with bootable media and also with my substitute windows, which was not "corrupted" by power cut; it is only the second incremental archive, for which chkdsk reports "one bad cluster". One bad cluster may be 512 bytes. Or does this mean, that also the first backup archive could be corrupt?

One thing works not: I use windows 7 on my notebook with TI on a substitute notebook hard disk, pluged-in the empty hard disk over eSATA with a dogging station, which should be the destination of recovery - not the internal disk, but to an external disk I could not recover with TI, only to internal disk partitions. I cannot choose the external disk (pluged ower eSATA) as recovery destination (drive letters were Q:, P:, R: and S:). TI allows only recovery to internal partitions (

Helmut F. wrote:

One bad cluster may be 512 bytes. Or does this mean, that also the first backup archive could be corrupt?

Validation is very sensitive to data integrity. When you create your backup, ATI inserts checksum in the archive (this is why a backup file is bigger than the original data when you use no compression). When you validate, ATI verifies the chksum. So, a very small change in the TIB will most likely make the chksum fail the test.
Validate each file of your backup, starting with your full.

One thing works not: I use windows 7 on my notebook with TI on a substitute notebook hard disk, pluged-in the empty hard disk over eSATA with a dogging station, which should be the destination of recovery - not the internal disk, but to an external disk I could not recover with TI, only to internal disk partitions. I cannot choose the external disk (pluged ower eSATA) as recovery destination (drive letters were Q:, P:, R: and S:). TI allows only recovery to internal partitions (

Always do recoveries of partitions with the recovery CD.

Always do recoveries of partitions with the recovery CD.

This answer saves me some time. I will try to recover from recovery CD after I got a valid archive. If all validation fails I need an alternative to restore all data + operating system files or at least all user data from C:\Users.

Results from SeaTools are the same as from error message from true image: "read error on sector '459.628.247' on hard disc 1" resp "Bad LBA: 459.628.247 Not Repaired". It is only one sector, but this is enough to fail validation. I will let repair by SeaTools.

Now it would be good to have a utility program from Acronis, which recalculates a new checksum over the whole data from mounted image and patches the new checksum to formerly corrupted backup archive file to make it validated again.

One other possible weak spot might be the esata drive, they are known to sometimes have problems with data integrity. If you have a spare USB caddy or the drive also has a USB port try using that, things may spring back into life.

As Pat says, the image can't be badly damaged if TIH in Windows allows it to be mounted. So I'd also vote for copying everything across in this case.

I wonder if an image can be made of a mounted image? I've never tried that.

Colin B wrote:

One other possible weak spot might be the esata drive, they are known to sometimes have problems with data integrity. If you have a spare USB caddy or the drive also has a USB port try using that, things may spring back into life.

Ok, that is a usefull tip. Dogging station has also USB support.

As Pat says, the image can't be badly damaged if TIH in Windows allows it to be mounted. So I'd also vote for copying everything across in this case.

copying with robocopy is comfortable.

I wonder if an image can be made of a mounted image? I've never tried that.

I also did never try this, but I thought robocopy could mirror a whole partition by "robocopy source-drive:\. destination-drive:\. /MIR", but not a windows 7 partition, because robocopy can not copy / handle junctions points and symbolic links of windows 7 filesystem. So this methode must be adapted: with option /XJ the Junction Points can be excluded from robocopy; after robocopy has completed, it has been to create all junction points and symbolic links on the destination partition. A lot of work with many junctions points.

I now give four days and long nights with less sleep in trying to recover a backup image, but nothing works like expected. I'm very disappointed. Why is true image not able to ignore during recovery a bad cluster and continues recovery with the rest? If there is in the end a little mistake in user data, I can try to recover this data by other way or from other storage locations. If it is a system file, I can try to repair windows with repair console or sfc /scannow and a single corrupt program I can reinstall. But so there is less chance!

Helmut,

I think there is something strange with your problem as you are able to mount the image, normally if there is a bad cluster the image will be marked as bad and you wouldn't be able to mount it at all using Windows or True Image.

I'm unclear on what happens if you try to restore the image.

Could you post a screen snip of your True Image archive and highlight which incremental image allows you to mount the archive?

Who would mark the image as bad? chkdsk /r adds 1 bad cluster to the Bad Clusters File, that's all what happens, but true image doesn't mark anything, it only says on validate "image is unvalid". chkdsk named the file, which storage position has the bad cluster: it is the second image file "WD_xxxxxxxxxxxx_inc_b1_s2_v1.tib" (incremental 1), which recovery was interupted by power cut.

I created the backup with true image 2013!! I mounted the image with a substitute windows on a spare drive with installed true image 2012!!, because the original windows 7 is deleted by true image on starting recovery, which was canceled four hours later by a power cut of the USB drive - notebook did go on by battery / akku.

I have a backup chain with four files: a full backup and three incremental, all created under windows with TI 2013. I wanted to recover the second file - dated 30-09-2012 - with acronis linuxbased bootable media from TI 2013, but this failes; also under sustitute windows with TI 2012 recovery fails. Validation on second file fails in every case (on windows and on bootable media). Recovery of second image fails due to "read error at sector " (see thread above). It is the same sector, which chkdsk /r later found as bad and marked as bad cluster (see also thread above).
Validation of full backup is currently running using the Acronis WinPE CD with TI 2012 from PlusPack. Mounting of last image, second image and first image is possible with TI 2012 running on substitute windows 7.

Copying all content of the mounted image - the whole system partition "OS" - to the destination disk seems to be possible, but without junction points and symbolic links of windows 7; but I breaked this, because at this time I didn't know something about how to exclude junction points and robocopy copies in endless loop the folders from junction points by resolving the junction point. Now I know, I had to add option /XJ, but I first try to recover the full backup dated 27-09-2012.

I would like to make a brief, but the situation is complicated.

Validation of full backup - first backup image in chain - was sucessful. I try to recover this one. The other three following incremental backup archive files I could not validate and recover.

In the meantime I checked another Seagate USB hard disk with SeaTools. It detects 58 bad clusters and repairs them. But now most of my stored backup images are unvalid. I think according to the extravagant - validating all image, which needs many hours, creating new backups (for your installations), it makes less sense to work with true image and collect backups, waste storage and so on, the time to reinstall i.e. Windows XP is just the same or less. So the slogans of Acronis, "Noch nie war eine komplette Systemwiederherstellung so schnell und einfach" on german web page and "to keep your business up-and-running at all times" on U.S web page, is not the reality.

Helmut F. wrote:

it makes less sense to work with true image and collect backups, waste storage and so on, the time to reinstall i.e. Windows XP is just the same or less.

So the slogan of Acronis, "a hard disk could be recovered in quick time", is not the reality.

It has worked for me, and for many others, many times. After a complete hard drive failure, I just removed the dead drive, inserted a fresh drive, restored a True Image backup from external drive, and in minutes the system was restored. That's much faster than reinstalling Windows, reinstalling apps, copying back user data, etc.

You had an unfortunate situation caused by a power failure than damaged your external hard drive. That is not a normal situation, and is not a failure of Acronis True Image.

Also, as many of us say, full disk backups are more reliable than a chain of incrementals. Don't let your incremental chain become too long, or you run greater risk of not being able to restore or having to restore an older backup than you wanted.

I purchased True Image the first time in year 2007. Since this I need to recover Windows fourth times, the first time in 2009 with Windows 2000, the second time in 2011 only works after creating a WinPE CD with TI 2011. The third time with True Image 2012 - recovering of Windows 7 64 Bit - it does not work, because TI could not read a valid backup archiv in chain of 6 incrementals. So I decide to install manually. And this time you know, it is not a problem of True Image - you are right - but nevertheless a lot of work. The chain in this case includes four elements. On older is also available with 6 elements. I have not so much hard disk space to make every week a full backup and changes are mostly only in e-mail and homebanking data or some letters and excel sheets. My experience with backup & restore, more restore, backup works always, validation make sometime problems, is not so happy as other people may have.

hurrah, true image did it's job well. I have back a running windows 7 from backup image 4 weeks old. Just some problems again, which I already solved during the last 4 weeks, but this to solve again (i.e. uninstall of TI 2013 with ATI cleanup tool and then reinstall due to not mounting images) is not so much work. I also will like to banish Norton Internet Security from my computer, it just makes a lot of trouble (it behaves like malware and pollutes the windows installation.

The backup hard disk needs again to be repaired the bad clusters, but I save now new backup images on a new hard disk, powered over notebook and not with external power supply, so a short timed power cut will never distroy my backup disk and there stored images.

Helmut,

A good practice is to copy, from time to time, a trusted set of backup files on some other disk that you take offsite (if you can) or offline (at a minimum). Since we have seen copying in some case create corrupt copies, validate them, or make copies often enough.

Pat L,

thank you, I myself had this idea: I purchased on new hard disk for backup and have now two disks, one for backup, the other for backup of backup (it's a little bit crazy to need so much storage). The second advantage with the new disk is, that this one could be plugged to the notebook computer without external power supply, so in a further case of power cut, the battery of notebook computer supplies also the backup disk and backup with true imaeg will no be interrupted. I hope so.

Helmut:

I use two external HDs for Acronis backups. I use them in rotation: I do my backups to drive Q for a week or so, then put it away (ideally off-site) and do backups to drive R. After a week, swap them again. This seems better than backing up one backup drive to another.

tuttle,

thank you, that is a very good tip; I can practice this in future. So far my external drive was only used during backups, validation and recovery with true image, not for other things and if acronis tasks were no executed, the drive was always off-site, but this prevents me not from a power cut during backup, validation or recovery.

I also use "portable" external HDs that are bus-powered, so no AC adapter needed. I didn't choose them because of any power failure concerns, though you've certainly made the case why that should be a consideration. I chose them because they're just so much more convenient than desktop drives. They're light, compact and I never need to find an AC outlet for them.

tuttle,
it is strange! I now have windows 7 restored from a four weeks old full backup image. I used true image 2013 by acronis (on windows) and although the second incremental backup file "WDC_WD10TPVT-00U4RT1_inc_b1_s2_v1.tib" was corrupted by an Bad LBA of hard disk and although it could not be validated without error, I can recover files from the last backup "WDC_WD10TPVT-00U4RT1_inc_b1_s4_v1.tib" in backup chain, which I made on thursday last week before trying to recover an older image next day. The 4 weeks old first full backup WDC_WD10TPVT-00U4RT1_full_b1_s1_v1.tib could be successfully validated, the other following backups in chain not. I can also browse through last backup with acronis backup explorer. Mounting the last image works also, although second, third and fourth incrementals are unvalid marked by true image validation process. It's like a wonder.

Could it be, that the linux based (BusyBox) bootable true image has problems by validating my backup images on my hardware? The windows based - with WinPE - bootable true image could verify particularly - I only tried the first full backup image with WinPE - without problems. I would test this again, if there would be more time.