ATI 11 Archive corrupted - Or is it?

There was an issue with some version of TI where the validation would fail if it was immediately done in the same task that created it. I'm sorry I can't be more specific but it might have been TI11 although I gather yours used to work and now it doesn't.

For question 1: The best validation test you can do is with the TI rescue CD. Boot it up and do the validations with it since this is the environment that must be able to read the images properly if a restore of the active partition is required. What matters is how TI views the archives now and it is very, very, very, unlikely that something changed in a bad file that now makes the 4000 checksums/GB correct.

There really isn't any debug tool to point you to exactly what has happened. I'd manually make an archive and after it has completed, manually do the validation and see what it says. This can be done in Windows. I'd also double-check the validation with the CD version.

Thanks for the quick response, Seekforever.

I'm actually using BartPE, since it has much better driver support, IMO, such as for my Adaptec eSATA board where the backups live. Anyway, the files checked out fine in BartPE.

I'd begun to consider Avast! might be the culprit, since the logs showed an update to the Avast! program on the evening of 25 August... However, after shutting down all of the Avast! services, it made no difference, although I note that it still has processes running on the machine.

That said, I'm now edging towards thinking that it's a bug in ATI 11. Here's why.

As things stand, I now have a backup location with 25 archive files, plus the backup locations .cfg file. The latest file is a full archive that I ran manually because, as mentioned originally, ATI wasn't counting "corrupted" archives towards its count of 5 differential archives.

So, I ran a job that should create/verify a differential archive. The file was created but, as usual, the validation failed. However, something caught my eye.

During the file creation, ATI showed:

 Operation 1 of 2 Creating partition image

Obviously 2 of 2 would be the file validation phase - or so I thought. However, once operation 1 had completed, I noticed it showed:

 Operation 1 of 5 Verifying backup archive

Since there was only a full plus one differential archive file to verify, this "1 of 5" made no sense. 

I deleted the differential archive and reran the job, this time using the sysinternals utility handle.exe. This led me to believe that ATI 11 is acting incorrectly when it comes to the validation phase when using an ATI Backup Location.

1. Create Image Phase. This should create a differential archive. Handle.exe shows that ATI places a lock on the full archive file, which it drops, then a lock on the differential archive file. This is plausible.

2. Verification Phase. This should verify the differential archive plus (possibly) the full archive. Handle.exe shows a lock being placed on all 25 archive files and ATI initially estimates that the validation would take 6 hours. After a few minutes and with only a small amount of progress on the progress bar, the validation fails.

Given the short elapsed time before the validation failed and the locks placed on all 25 files (!), I guessed that it probably validated the oldest first. Result: Yes, the oldest file, created way back on 5 July, was somehow corrupted. (The log file showed no error.)  

Rerunning the job, the archive now passes validation, though ATI still locks and validates ALL the (24) files in the backup location. Once the backup phase completed, the program still showed:

  Operation 1 of 4 Verifying backup archive

so it's still pretty screwed up, though working a bit better than before.

Anyone know whether it is actually verifying all 24 files on disk, or the last 4 files,  or what?

Martin

I never used them but I have a lingering feeling that TI's Backup Locations behaved the same way as the Secure Zone. A validate validates everything in the Location. Hopefully somebody who really knows can confirm or tell me I'm wrong!

The 24 files total 114,904,137,728 bytes in size. The verification phase took 34 mins 21 secs. That's over 55 MB/sec to read and checksum the data if all 24 files are validated. Seems a bit quick to me (on a single processor 3.2 GHz machine).

The "Operation 1 of 4" can be explained by the fact that there are 4 full archives on disk - with the rest diff archives. (The corrupt archive was a full archive, hence the previous "Operation 1 of 5".)

Martin

Does seem pretty fast alright but perhaps not impossible.

Here is what the TI11 User Guide says which seems to say depending on how you do it, it does treat the location as a single entitiy:

12.1 Validating backup archives

You can check the integrity of your backup images to be certain that your archives are not

damaged. You may perform such validations on a schedule (see

tasks

1. To launch the

Backup Archive

2. Select the archive to validate. The Acronis Secure Zone and backup locations can be

selected only as a whole because all their contents are viewed by the program as a single

archive. You can validate individual archives in backup locations using Windows Explorer. To

do so, open a backup location as a common folder, then select the archive to validate, rightclick

the archive and select

Archive Validation Wizard

Chapter 9. Scheduling) or by launching the Backup Archive Validation Wizard.Backup Archive Validation Wizard, select Operations -> Validatefrom the main program menu.Validate Backup Archive in the context menu. The Backupwill be launched with this archive selected. Click Next to continue.

My ATI 11 build 8101 started acting very strangely.  It said latest differential backup was corrupt, and other weird stuff like running very slowly.  It thought a Validate would take 10 hours.

I downloaded and ran its installler, which had three choices - I chose Repair.  Now Validate takes 19 minutes as before and I am happy and relieved.

I strongly recommend a Reinstall/Repair.

 Thanks for the info, Seekforever. I interpreted it differently, since it refers (or seems to refer) to running scheduled validations, not the validation of a just-created file:

"You can check the integrity of your backup images to be certain that your archives are not damaged. You may perform such validations on a schedule (see Chapter 9. Scheduling tasks) or by launching the Backup Archive Validation Wizard."

This refers only to scheduled tasks and using the archive validation wizard. In the context of a scheduled task, it makes sense to validate the whole backup location since it's not possible to know the file name(s) in advance and ATI won't know which archive files you want it to validate (eg you may backup daily and schedule a weekly validation).

Additionally, I had already read:

"5.3.9 Additional settings 
1. Validate backup archive upon operation completion 
The preset is disabled. 
When enabled, the program will check integrity of the just created or supplemented archive 
immediately after backup. When setting up a backup of critical data or a disk/partition 
backup, we strongly recommend you to enable the option to ensure that the backup can be 
used to recover lost data."

so it seemed reasonable (at least to me) that ATI would validate just the file it had just created, since it knows the file name.

The statement (in 12.1 (2)):

"backup locations can be selected only as a whole because all their contents are viewed by the program as a single archive. You can validate individual archives in backup locations using Windows Explorer."

is incorrect/misleading, if it's meant to refer to all validation tasks within a backup locaton:

1. If I right-click on an archive in Windows Explorer and choose Validate Backup Archive, I'm taken to the archive validation wizard. ATI places a lock only on the one file and the job finishes in a few minutes. This is "as advertised."

2. If I launch the Backup Archive Validation Wizard, (select Operations -> Validate Backup Archive from the main program menu), I can also choose an individual archive file from within a backup location and ATI again places a lock only on the one file and the job finishes in a few minutes. This seems to run contrary to the above statement, since it's possible to select an individual file within the backup location without using Windows Explorer.
 

Bottom line: it's a big, muddled mess:

- The documentation is misleading (possibly out of date). ATI should know the name of the archive file, since it's just created it, yet treats the validation phase as if it was unaware of the file name and is being asked to run a scheduled validation on the whole of the backup location (it isn't).

- If the validation fails, you're left with the impression that it's the latest file that's bad, since ATI doesn't bother (a) actually to tell you that it's validated the whole of the backup location and (b) which file failed validation.

- If the validation fails on any file in the backup location, it seems that ATI bugs out and also doesn't bother to try to validate the rest of the files (while not telling you which file was dodgy).

Can't say I'm particularly impressed.

Martin

@cnmoore: Thanks for the advice. I'll hang fire on a reinstall for now but will certainly keep it as an option.

@Martin -- Nothing to lose with Reinstall, as the Repair kept all my tasks and settings.

Thanks for your good explanation - personally I include Validation in every backup task.  But when I  re-validated one after the repair (it had taken 7 hours to create and I was dubious about it), the wizard let me choose which one to validate, as you describe. 

@cnmoore - I ran a reinstall but it made no difference to ATI's behavior. The system is now validating the whole of the backup location (over 100GB) each time it creates a new archive file, which is crazy. Clearly, I'll need to switch off the backup file validation.

I'm a bit disappointed - but not exactly surprised - that nobody from Acronis has made the effort to comment on whether this behavior is expected. It seems that only ATI 2009 queries get the courtesy of a meaningful response, although I must admit to seeing a worrying number of posts with zero replies, which is also a bit disappointing. (And is it just me or, are this new forum's response times just a bit slow?)

If ATI support do ever get to respond, perhaps they could also let us know if this issue has been "fixed" in ATI 2009. 

Martin

Gee, I'm glad it works fine for me ever since I did the repair.

A few thoughts:

You do a full backup followed by differentials.  Have you checked that the full backup is valid?  I don't know, but I think if the full was corrupt and then you did differentials, you might get a confusing message.

I suggest Edit the task involved and make sure it is as you want.

I myself have a full backup task - run once, with verify.  And a separate Differential task based on the full backup, which also includes a verify, and is scheduled for once a day.

@cnmoore - Maybe it should also work fine for me after running a repair, but ATI support are keeping silent on the issue. I'm guessing that you're not using a Backup Location, which seems to the root cause of my problem.

If you reread my second entry to this topic you should see that, based on a hunch, I managed to identify a file created on 5 July as being corrupted. It was not the differential file that was bad or the full archive related to that diff file. Instead, it was an unrelated file created almost two months ago that was bad. Because ATI was validating all (25) files in the backup location, it (looks like it) validated the oldest one first and failed soon into the process. I naturally thought that the latest file was bad - or perhaps a recently-created file - and would validate all the recent files, including the related full archive, which would pass validation. Hence the original reason for posting.

For what it's worth, I used to have a job scheduled to do a full archive and a separate one to do the differential archives, based on the day of the week. Now, I just have one that is configured to do a full followed by 5 diffs. It seems (almost!) to work, most of the time... fingers crossed.

Martin

My Backup Location is on a USB external hard drive.

I never figured out how to do both the full and the differentials in one task.  Perhaps that is just as werll. :)

I am having same problem, and yes I do find it terrible that NO ACRONIS techs have commented.  Maybe their lack of comment is an indication TI 11 is corrupt?

Given the various scenarios in this thread, what specifically is your problem?

I am running Acronis 11 Build #8101

HP Desktop PC running Vista Home Premium SP2

AMD Athlon 64 x2 Duel Core 6000+

3gb main memory

Backing up to USB 1tb drive partitioned for 275gb G: backup drive. 

Was able to run separate backup with no problems on D: Factory Image successfully

Here is the log I get.  I have deleated archive files and run the process again.  I have downloaded last build again and run Repair.  Still getting errors. 

Any help would be appreciated.  Wolfie

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<log build="169" product="Acronis True Image Home" task="C14B35AC-80E7-48EA-840B-92775468BCF6" uuid="7C37A9AD-9FFF-404F-BDC1-3A3C7426842D" version="1.0">
 <event code="2" id="1" level="2" message="The &quot;Daily Backup&quot; operation started" module="100" time="1253498462" />
 <event code="503" id="2" level="2" message="Analyzing partition 0-0..." module="1" time="1253498470" />
 <event code="503" id="3" level="2" message="Analyzing partition C:..." module="1" time="1253498470" />
 <event code="503" id="4" level="2" message="Analyzing partition D:..." module="1" time="1253498470" />
 <event code="503" id="5" level="2" message="Analyzing partition 0-0..." module="1" time="1253498470" />
 <event code="503" id="6" level="2" message="Analyzing partition F:..." module="1" time="1253498471" />
 <event code="503" id="7" level="2" message="Analyzing partition G:..." module="1" time="1253498471" />
 <event code="503" id="8" level="2" message="Analyzing partition 0-0..." module="1" time="1253498471" />
 <event code="503" id="9" level="2" message="Analyzing partition I:..." module="1" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="11" id="10" level="3" message="Priority changed to High priority" module="100" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="135" id="11" level="2" message="No user command was carried out upon operation start (completion) since no command is set by default." module="100" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="503" id="12" level="2" message="Analyzing partition C:..." module="1" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="17" id="13" level="2" line_tag="0x64A31B1B5AFDA98A" message="" module="4" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="1016" id="14" level="2" message="The base backup archive file DailyBackup.tib for appending incrementally is not found. Backup was started in the full mode." module="1" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="1008" id="15" level="2" message="&lt;bold>Create Differential Backup Archive&lt;/bold>&lt;endl/>&lt;tabpoint value=30>&lt;indent value=4>From:&#9;&lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>HP (C:)&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>To file:&#9;&lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>&quot;G:\DailyBackup.tib&quot;&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>&lt;textcolor value=0x00ff0000>Password protected&lt;/textcolor>&lt;endl/>Compression:&#9;&lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>Normal&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>Exclude:&#9;&lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>Files matching mask&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>Match criterion:&#9;&lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>*.bak, *.tmp, &lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>&lt;/indent>" module="1" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="504" id="16" level="2" message="Pending operation 131 started: &quot;Creating partition image&quot;" module="1" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="506" id="17" level="2" message="Locking partition C:..." module="1" time="1253498472" />
 <event code="504" id="18" level="2" message="Pending operation 128 started: &quot;Saving partition structure&quot;" module="1" time="1253508217" />
 <event code="135" id="19" level="2" message="No user command was carried out upon operation start (completion) since no command is set by default." module="100" time="1253508218" />
 <event code="1026" id="20" level="2" message="&lt;bold>Backup Archive Validation&lt;/bold>&lt;endl/>&lt;tabpoint value=30>&lt;indent value=4>Location:&#9;&lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>&quot;G:\DailyBackup.tib&quot;&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>Archive Type:&#9;&lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>Image&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>Archive created:&#9;&lt;indent value=10>&lt;endl/>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>Sunday, September 20, 2009 10:01:12 PM&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>&lt;/indent>" module="11" time="1253508218" />
 <event code="504" id="21" level="2" message="Pending operation 3 started: &quot;Verifying backup archive&quot;" module="1" time="1253508218" />
 <event code="32" id="22" level="4" message="&#10;The archive is corrupted: None" module="7" time="1253509647" />
 <event code="32" id="23" level="2" message="&#10;The archive is corrupted: None: User replied: oK" module="7" time="1253541402" />
 <event code="502" id="24" level="4" message="Operation with partition &quot;0-0&quot; was terminated.&#10;Details:&#10;&lt;indent>Image corrupted (0x70020)&#10; &#32; &#32;Tag = 0xF5F8CBCF76155638&lt;/indent>" module="1" time="1253541402" />
 <event code="5" id="25" level="4" message="Operation has completed with errors." module="100" time="1253541403" />
</log>

Seekforever, I am having exactly the same problem as Martin in first post.  Although, there are no previous archives on the drive.  My setup is Diffirential and one task to do all.  I did have it set to Hi Priority and changed to Normal.  Not sure if some kind of background software is having a collision with TI 11?   

The validation is not a bit-by-bit comparison with the original HD contents. The archives are created with a checksum for every 256K bytes of data which amounts to 4000 checksums/GB. The validation routine reads the archive into RAM and recalculates the checksums. Every one of them must compare perfectly or the archive is declared corrupted which means 1 dropped bit in a large archive is all it takes to produce the corrupted message. Anything that upsets this process can cause the problem, typical villans are bad RAM, bad disk sector, bad controller, bad motherboard, bad disk cable, ... in other words almost anything. I person had a bad CPU. Most validate errors are hardware related at least in the sense that it doesn't function well enough for TI. TI's validation is very stringent compared to most other PC error checking which is almost non-existent and very few applications manipulate as much data as fast as possible as imaging does. You may find that if the problem is marginal that smaller archives will validate and larger ones won't.

Acronis does have an article on Validation errors in their Knowlege Base. http://www.acronis.com/r/support/en/kb/254/troubleshoot.corrupt.htm

Most of the following is in the Acronis flow chart:

PCs should not be overclocked or run with aggressive memory timings when TI is used.

You can also investigate the disk write speed options in backup wizard and see if slower writes help.

Run chkdsk X: /r on the partition storing your archive. This should find any bad sectors in the partition.

Try creating and validating an archive on an internal HD. Internal HDs tend to be the least problematic of storage devices. Ideally, the archive would be stored on a second internal drive but for testing a second partition is fine. If you don't have a second partition on your internal drive then space permitting, you can create it on the same partition as being archived. TI will give a warning message but it will do i

Any Windows issues can be removed by creating and validating the archive using the TI rescue CD. Unfortunately, if you haven't used it before you don't really know if the LInux environment has any issues with your hardware. Nontheless it is worth a try. Try using the Validate command to validate an existing archive and try using the CD to create and validate an archive. Note that the restoration of the active partition, typically C, is always done with the TI Linux recovery envronment whether the restore is started from the CD or from within Windows (the Linux environment is loaded from HD when the PC reboots to start the restore) so it is important that the CD environment work.

Bad RAM can cause validation errors and these errors will often not manifest themselves in regular PC operation depending on the location. To check RAM download from www.memtest.org Memtest86+ and burn the .iso to CD. Boot the PC with the Memtest86+ CD and let it run for at least several passes. Overnight is best. There must be zero errors reported. It is not impossible for a RAM diagnostic program to not pickup bad locations especially if they are marginal since running the diagnostic is not the same as running the PC with concurrent hard-drive activity, heavier video loads etc. Another way of checking RAM if you have multiple sticks and the machine will run on only 1 or 2 is to remove the RAM and then put the minimum number of sticks back in and try TI. Swap the sticks around and see if they all work OK with TI.

You can often copy individual files from an archive that is declared corrupt. I presume the reason is that the validation routine for the whole archive insists that the whole archive is correct but if you are just selecting various files, only the checksums associated with the data for those files need be correct.