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Unreadable sectors reported on image backup

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Hello... I'm new to the forum.

I've been using True Image for a number of years and recently upgraded to 2017.  I've run image backups on my laptop prior to yesterday, but on yesterday's backup. True Image started reporting unreadable sectors.  I stopped the backup and ran chkdsk (I'm on a 64bit Windows 10 machine), the results of which came up clean.  I started the image again, and it passed the spots it had balked at on the first runs, and I thought I had the problem licked, but near the end of the backup, there were 5 more reports of bad sectors.

I ran chkdsk again, but it still came up clean.  Is True Image being ultra-sensitive, or is my drive going flakey?

Thanks!

Tom

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Tom, welcome to these user forums.

I would tend to believe that Acronis is encountering bad / unreadable sectors if this is what it is reporting but make sure that you are checking the correct disk drive for these errors.  Acronis uses a different drive numbering system than is used by Windows.  Windows starts numbering from drive 0 (for the first drive) whereas Acronis starts from drive 1 for the same drive.

It is also possible that unreadable sectors are on a different partition on the drive too if these are reported for the VSS snapshot function used by the backup task, so it may be advisable to check with your drive manufacturer's site for any whole disk check tools.

Ditto to Steve - chkdsk essentially just checks the OS parition.  In order to run it agains the bootloader partition (system) or recovery or one of the others, you'd have to mount those with drive letters from Windows recovery environment (boot to Windows installer or repair disk and use advanced options - command prompt and diskpart).  Assign those drive letters and then run chkdsk agains those too.  It's a bit of a pain, but chkdsk is limited here.  

Also, running chkdsk by itself is not enough - need to run it with the chkdsk /F switch at a minimum to fix errors.  Ideally, checkdisk /R would be best, but will take longer.  

chkdsk /?
Checks a disk and displays a status report.

CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]] [/B] [/scan] [/spotfix]

  volume              Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
                      mount point, or volume name.
  filename            FAT/FAT32 only: Specifies the files to check for
                      fragmentation.
  /F                  Fixes errors on the disk.
  /V                  On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every
                      file on the disk.
                      On NTFS: Displays cleanup messages if any.
  /R                  Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information
                      (implies /F, when /scan not specified).

  /L:size             NTFS only:  Changes the log file size to the specified
                      number of kilobytes.  If size is not specified, displays
                      current size.
  /X                  Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
                      All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid
                      (implies /F).
  /I                  NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index
                      entries.
  /C                  NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder
                      structure.
  /B                  NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume
                      (implies /R)
  /scan               NTFS only: Runs a online scan on the volume
  /forceofflinefix    NTFS only: (Must be used with "/scan")
                      Bypass all online repair; all defects found
                      are queued for offline repair (i.e. "chkdsk /spotfix").
  /perf               NTFS only: (Must be used with "/scan")
                      Uses more system resources to complete a scan as fast as
                      possible. This may have a negative performance impact on
                      other tasks running on the system.
  /spotfix            NTFS only: Runs spot fixing on the volume
  /sdcleanup          NTFS only: Garbage collect unneeded security descriptor
                      data (implies /F).
  /offlinescanandfix  Runs an offline scan and fix on the volume.
  /freeorphanedchains FAT/FAT32/exFAT only: Frees any orphaned cluster chains
                      instead of recovering their contents.
  /markclean          FAT/FAT32/exFAT only: Marks the volume clean if no
                      corruption was detected, even if /F was not specified.

The /I or /C switch reduces the amount of time required to run Chkdsk by
skipping certain checks of the volume.

Thanks for the input.  I've run chkdsk with /f and /r and /i, and all so far report no problems.  Acronis is still reporting bad spots.

Hello Tom,

When Acronis True Image starts giving errors about reading or writing to disks, including "unreadable" sectors, in addition to chkdsk you could look into Windows System event log to see if the Windows operating system itself detects a problem or not:

1) open Windows Start menu, type eventvwr.msc and press Enter on the keyboard

2) expand Windows Logs section and click on System

3) click Filter Current Log on the right bar, open Event sources drop-down list and mark "disk", "Disk", "Ntfs" and other items, whose names start with "Disk". Click OK. Click through the list of events in the central upper part of the event viewer, see if there are any errors.

All modern disks have built-in self-reporting capabilities known as S.M.A.R.T. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. There are many tools to read the S.M.A.R.T. status of disks. Personally I find free Crystal Disk Info one of the most easy to use: http://crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfo

Also I would suggest you to run the diagnostic tools from the manufacturer(s) of your disk(s). For Samsung SSD - download and run Samsung Magician software from http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools.html, for Western Digital disks - Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows from http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx, for Seagate disks - SeaTools for Windows from http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

Other disk manufacturers also have their diagnostic utilities.

Usually there are two check methods available: quick/fast and full/complete. If the quick check does not reveal the problem, you can leave the computer running the full disk check. Note how this is different from running Windows chkdsk tool: chkdsk checks disk volumes/partitions which represent only part of what the disk is, while diagnostic tools from disk manufacturers allow to scan the entire surface of the disks and have better built-in checks.

Finally if no problems are found with during the diagnostic, try booting your computer from Acronis Bootable Media and attempt creating a disk image from Acronis True Image running from the media. This excludes possible issues with Windows environment and drivers as the media works in an isolated Linux-based environment. If the backup from bootable media succeeds, then the problem must be with disk drivers in Windows, or conflicts with other programs - try updating the drivers, Windows itself and reinstalling Acronis software.

Regards,

Slava

Problem solved...

Thanks to all for your suggestions.  I kept getting errors, no matter how I tried the backups (from the hard drive or from the rescue media).

I had even tried SpinRite, which I had used many times before to fix disk issues, but it's not very compatible with Windows 10, and even though I was booting from a Windows 98 USB drive, the program kept crashing about half-way through the drive scan, and their support couldn't figure out why.

As a last shot, I bought a copy of Norton Utilities and ran Disk Doctor, which apparently straightened out what CHKDSK couldn't.  Today, I've run both an image and a file/folder backup without issue.

Back in business!!

Tom

Tom, glad to hear all is running again but recommend you keep a close eye on that drive to ensure it isn't going to come back and bite you in the future.

Advice taken.

Thanks Steve!