True Image Home 2011 Freezes during Backup
I have been using Acronis True Image for years without fault and I recently updated to 2011 on my Windows 7 x64 machine. While 2010 performed partition backups fine, 2011 crashes part way - the computer freezes up and eventually Windows restarts itself. I have tried 5 times now to backup my C: partition and the partial (corrupted) backups that it creates before it crashes are all around 20GB.
I did a file backup of the drive and that worked ok.
I have the latest version installed.
I followed your instructions; first using the CleanUp utility and then installing the latest release. Unfortunately this did not solve the problem.
I note that my only support options are the forum, knowledge base or to pay for support. I think it is pretty terrible that I have been using your product for years and paid for upgrades and now it doesn't work properly I have to pay for supprt to get it fixed.
I have the same problem as Shaun O'Donnell. I have managed to find a work-around which I have verified.
1.) Boot the PC from the Acronis recovery boot-disk CD-ROM and select only to run Acronis and NOT Windows.
2.) Unplug and re-insert you external media connector until your external media/drive is recognized.
In my case the external RAID fire-wire is labeled G:\ drive instead of Z:\ drive label from Windows.
3.) Initiate a backup. You will probably find as I did, that Acronis instead of hanging as it does in Windows,
will issue a pop-up that says it can't successfully read a sector off your hard drive, in which case you
select the button that says "Ignore All" errors and continue.
About 90 minutes later, I have my 250G internal C:\ drive backed up to the external and then I check a
sub-set of critical files to make sure they are the same as I last left them. I can't affirm to the state of
every last single bit/byte of data on the back-up media.
This issue of the failure to read certain sectors, could possibly be that I and other users need to run a
chdsk(check-disk) in Windows to fix/repair any corrupted check-sums over sectors on the disk. I have
to try this and see if Acronis can run from Windows Normal mode without hanging.
And yes, Acronis does indeed hang - since I have made sure that only Aconis and Windows TaskMon.exe
are running. When Acronis hangs, it also hangs Windows since TaskMon.exe indicates that Acronis is
NOT RESPONDING and moreover, it becomes impossible to select any of the tabs on TASKMON.exe or
activate the Start button on any of the Icons on the tray. The only way out, is to do a hard shut-down
on the power key which is damaging to your hard drive over many iterations.
You are right. The thing to do is to run a chkdsk /r on the disk that you want to backup.
Yes - I did run a check disk with option to repair any bad sectors and it got stuck at step 4 of 5 at 4% of the file data.
Before check disk would complete in less than half a day on my 250G internal C:\ HD.
So I call my vendor Dell and they advise to run boot diagnostics and sure enough the hard drive failed the extensive
hardware boot diagnostics.
Luckily for me, my PC is still under warranty with Dell, so I get a new blank hard-drive shipped for free, which I have
to format, but hopefully, now I can test my Acronis restore to a blank hard drive and see if Acronis is better than taking
the hard-drive to Best Buy for a disk image back-up and restore after new hard-drive format and Windows is re-installed
along with re-installing all the Apps from CD-ROM or download off the Internet.
So this is a cautionary tale to all you folks out there who have a combined Windows and Acronis hanging problem to
immediately run check-disk and if it gets stuck, run the full boot diagnostics on your machine to determine if the HD fails.
This eliminates if the problem is a hardware problem with the HD.
Hello all,
Thank you for posting and thank you for your help Pat.
Shaun and Chris, I will follow-up with a private message to each of you with instructions for collecting device tree screenshots. This will allow us to see what third-party driver is causing the freeze.
Please let me know if you have additional questions.
Thank you.
I am also having a problem with the computer freezing when I am backing up files. I am running Windows XP and have the latest update of True Image 2011. I have around 650GB of data to back up, but after Acronis has been running for around 12 hours or more, it still says it will take another 8-10 hours for completion of the backup, but the computer freezes before the backup is anywhere near finalised. I am trying to backup the files from one external hard drive to another, and have checked the discs for errors and none were found. Once, not long after I installed Acronis, it completed the backup successfully. I am using the incremental method to backup the files, and on the occasion when the initial backup was successful, the computer froze during a subsequent incremental backup. I deleted the backed up files and tried to backup everything again from scratch and the computer invariably freezes. Can you suggest what I can do to resolve this problem? At the moment I am backing up the files manually, but I didn't buy the software so I would still have to do it manually.
Greetings Stephanie,
I too have Windows XP but Acronis True Image Home 2010.
Have you tried the following:
1.) Insert the Acronis recovery boot CD-ROM loading only Acronis and NOT Windows XP. Next attempt your back-up as you normally would do
it. If you are like me, instead of getting the computer to hang at some point, a pop-up will appear saying that Acronis could NOT read
without error from some sector on your C:\ drive source. In which case you tell Acronis to "Ignore All Errors" and the Acronis back-up will
continue to completion.
I found out subsequently that the reason why this works is that Windows XP will NOT allow any App including Acronis to access the hard-drive via BIOS(Basic Input Output System) firmware directly which will indicate via "jnc" bit in the processor if there was an error reading a sector. When Windows XP reads a disk sector and finds an error it just hangs.
2.) Upon finding that I could back-up to completion with checksum errors on the C:\drive internal source, I called my PC vendor DELL and they
advised to run full boot diagnostics on my PC and when it tested the hard-drive the boot diagnostics came back with an error code.
In my case, this involved holding the F8 key depressed after restart to by-pass loading Windows XP directly.
Since my PC was still under warranty, I received a replacement hard-drive express shipped to my front door the next day.
3.) Upon replacing the new C:\ hard drive in my PC, I could recover my latest external RAID disk backup image to the replacement hard
drive via the Acronis recovery boot CD-ROM by performing a restore from my last successful external back-up.
This is the great thing about Acronis since you don't have to reinstall Windows, and all your App's and reconfigure your registry and
your FAT table and possibly loose your data in the process, since these are all on the last successful disk image backup.
I was then able to perform Acronis backups with Windows XP successfully as I had done previously with the new replacement hard-drive
from DELL.
Hope this helps,
Chris
I'm a writer not a computer geek and had hoped there would be a relatively simple solution to my problem. I am trying to backup files from one external drive to another. Would you suggestion still work in this case?
Hi Stephanie,
I can NOT speak to the case of exactly what is happening on your PC. All I can tell you is what I found from my
experience with Acronis hanging on an backup, and this was namely that the internal PC C:\ hard-drive was failing
due to deteriorating media on the sectors.
The two questions you need to answer are:
1.) Do you have the Acronis recovery boot- CD-ROM???
If you can't find it, you can make one, with a blank writable 4.7G DVD disk in your CD-ROM drive and clicking on
"Tool & Utilities" in Acronis and then selecting "Create Bootable Rescue Media". If you can boot only Acronis
from the Rescue DVD that you made, then you can determine if by-passing Windows XP allows you to complete
the back-up. In addition, if you get a pop-up that says "error reading media", this is almost certainly because
your C:\ drive is failing. This rescue media(you just made) will be indispensable should you have to restore a
back-up image from your external hard-drive on to a new internal hard-drive should it turn out that your internal
C:\ drive is indeed failing and needs replacement.
2.) Have you contacted your PC vendor to determine how to run internal firmware boot diagnostics before loading
Windows XP in order rule out the possibility that some sectors on your hard drive are possibly failing???
I'm guessing that if you have a DELL PC, you just hold the F8 key depressed after a re-start and let it run all the
boot diagnostics. It will give you a non-zero error code for any subsystem that fails including the hard-drive.
Your PC vendor tech support should be able to talk you through all this on the phone, if what I've written here
is NOT clear.
If you can answers these two questions for me, I can give you advise on what to do next.
I know it is frustrating, and it is never fun when your C:\ drive begins the dying process, which is all the more crucial
that you attempt to answers these two questions as soon as possible should the hypothesis be true that your
internal C:\ drive is failing.
Chris