Skip to main content

Corrupt backups

Thread needs solution

I recently downloaded the trial 2013 version of True image 2013 and I have created a image and am image by sector, each backup completes fine but when I try to verify the backup it says backup is corrupted, does not give me much confidence that I am safe in case of a bad hard drive. (I am backing up to an external Seagate hard drive vis USB)

Any information regarding this or things I need to try?

0 Users found this helpful

I had such a problem too. In one case the controller of the external enclosure had a problem and created errors at big files. Here Acronis helped me to find this out. You can verify this by copying a very big file to the external disk and do a CRC check afterwards. Software like Teracopy does both - copy and check. But you also can copy a verified TI backup to the external disk and verify the copy with TI afterwards.

I had this on some other external disks too where I could not find a controller error. Here I copied a TI file verified on the internal HD to an external one. There the verification did not work anymore. The only fix I could find for this problem was that I verify every copy again to be on the safe side.

But perhaps Acronis has a better idea. Would help me too.

"Corrupted" is, unfortunately, a rather non-specific error message, in spite of its rather specific sounding term. It really just means that ATI can't validate the archive, which can be caused by disk errors or connection errors, rather than any problems with the .tib file itself.

Run chkdsk /r on each partition of that drive.
Also run a drive checking utility from the drive manufacturer, as those sometimes catch errors missed by chkdsk.

Don't connect via a hub, a port in a monitor, a USB extension cord, etc. Connect the external drive directly to a USB port on the rear of the computer case.

John,

I have created a image and am image by sector,

If I am understanding correctly, you use the rarely used option to "Backup Sector by Sector". If true and your disk had bad sectors, the bad sectors would be included within the backup and could cause a failure of validation.

As MVP Tuttle suggested, do take the time to check both the source and target disk for disk errors.

In most normal backups of a Windows System , it is NOT necessary to checkmark/select the sector by sector option. That option is most used when the file system is not Windows. In most normal backups, you can expect the backup size to be about 70% of used space.

If you have some spare time, you may find link #2 below to be of interest.