Drive Reformat
I apologize if this gets long, but it's kind of convoluted. I am using Acronis True Image Home 2009 with Chain2Gen to make backups of two partitions(C: and D:) on my primary drive on alternating days. Everything has worked well for months but last month, I began to have failures on both backups. I didn't notice it for a while, so the last backup that I have confidence in is May 13. Since this is my C: Drive, I don't think it will be a large problem if I go back to this date for a restore.
The problems are that Acronis is reporting bad sectors when it does the backups. This shows up on both partitions, but the sector numbers are not consistent from backup to backup, even on the same partition. I ran Chkdsk/f on both drives and it said it found and fixed bad sectors, but the problem persists. I booted into Recovery Console and was unable to run Chkdsk/r or /f on C:, but was able to run on D:. It showed repairs, but still Acronis reports the problem. I then ran Western Digital's recovery scan which found bad sectors and when I chose to repair, wiped out my sound drivers. (Which I haven't been able to get reinstalled, but that's another problem) Still Acronis will not run without reporting bad sectors. I did a backup last night, telling it to ignore all errors, but I wonder how trustworthy that is.
Here are my questions:
Should I do a reformat of the disk and then restore my May 13 backup? Is this just like restoring to a disk that has already been running? In case of a problem, is there any way to be sure that my June 26 backup will restore?
Thanks for your help.
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Thanks for the reply, Colin. I am not clear on the mounting the image step. Do you mean actually doing a restore to some place other than the boot drive? I am able to explore the backup where I told Acronis to ignore the bad sectors and the validation operation says that it completed successfully. Am I safe to assume that all is well with that backup and I am good to go on a reformat and restore?
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I think so Robert, if it validates OK then it ought to be OK.
Mounting an image treats the image as a virtual drive and gives it a temporary drive letter - in 2009 the mounting option is via the drop down menu or on the panel that does drive cleansing and such like, but as you've validated it and explored it, mounting will now be an academic exercise.
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I would also consider getting a replacement disk and restore your image to the new disk. Afterwards, you could reformat the old drive and run CHKDSK X: /R (where x is the drive letter being checked). The fact that you could not resolve the errors make me not want to trust the old disk. Sometimes it takes multiple passes of chkdsk to get it all clear but the disk still could b suspect. Nice to see you using C2G. I do too.
Should you do a restore of an old backup, I would immediately do another CHKDSK on the drive being restored--even if the drive is a new disk. You could have residue from the old errors carried onto the new disk--not as actual errors but as sectors marked as bad when the space is really not bad.
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