Partition Backup Fails - Problem with ATI or Hard Drive?
Hi,
My partition backup scheme to an external hard drive suddenly started to fail (see attachment).
Is this a problem with the hard drive itself?
I checked the driver for errors and none were found. If try to 'scan and attempt recovery of bad sectors' in Windows the scan fails consistently and the disk is no longer accessible. Then I need to reboot or remove and reconnect the disk.
Would formatting the disk help?
What I find odd is that I have several backup schemes writing to the same external drive and the partition backup is the only one that fails.
- Windows 7, Acronis True Image 2013.
Thanks for any help


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Hello Steve,
I included the attachment this time.
To answer your qusetions...
- Yes the error is on the external drive
- USB 3 connection
- Yes I tried a different connection. I would guess this would not make a difference is my other backup schemes are still working.
- its a WD My Book Essential
- Yes I ran the complete set of diagnostics and not error were reported.
Thanks for your help.
Robert
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Hello Robert, my reading of your error message 'failed to read data from sector 4,619,968 of hard disk 1' would suggest this is an issue of the source disk rather than the target.
If you open Disk Management (right-click on This Pc and select Manage, then click on Disk Management in the Computer Management window that opens), how many drives do you see? On my laptop I only have the one internal drive which shows as Disk 0 - check on your system for what drive shows as Disk 1 as per the error message? Is this your external USB 3 drive or an internal drive?
I would normally expect 'read data' errors to be associated with the source drive being backed up more than the target drive where a 'write error' would be expected (unless the application does some form of write / verify which involves a read to check that the write operation was successfull).
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I see 2 drives. Disk 0, where is my internal harddrive and Disk 1 as my externa USB drive. So the error message seems to be saying that the problem is indeed with the external drive.
I should note that the backup seems to start ok, but then the message happens after a few minutes. So I guess ATI is indeed trying to read from the disk for whatever reason.
R
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Robert, I would suggest setting up a new backup task to a new target folder on the USB drive and seeing how that goes, i.e. whether you still encounter the error on sector read or not. It is possible that the new backup will succeed because it is writing to a different area on the WD My Book drive.
If you still get a read error, then compare the sector number to see if it is the same or a different one?
I would still recommend trying the Hiren's Boot CD tools and running the HDAT2 tool from the DOS tools section to check the drive surface of the My Book drive, this will allow you to do a Read / Write / Verify operation to detect any bad sectors. See the attached document showing how to use HDAT2 to detect bad sectors.
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I delete some stuff and I tried a new backup task and it failed at exactly the same location. I was surprised it was still trying to write to the same section.
I will try the hirens utility and see what happens.
Thanks
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Hi,
I delete some backups and created a new backup scheme to a different folder as you suggested. Same problem at the same section.
I will try the utility you mentioned and see what happens.
Thanks
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Hi Steve,
I did not try the utility. But what I did try is to run the backup scheme with a completely different (and virtually brand new) external hard drive.
I got exactly the same error at exactly the same location.
This seems to say to me that the culprit is more likely ATI.
BTW when I run the backup scheme but write to the internal hard drive there is no problem.
Any thoughts?
Thanks
Robert
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Hi Robert, I have to come back to the initial error message that you gave the screen capture of, which speaks of failed to read sector / failed to read snapshot - this is indicative of a potential failing hard drive and these errors have been reported previously in the forums with the same advice being given.
See https://forum.acronis.com/forum/33840 or
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/43564 or
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/102876
Unfortunately as shown in https://forum.acronis.com/search/apachesolr_search/failed%20to%20read%20snapshot?filters=type%3Aforum - a search of the forums, there are many pages of posts for these type of errors.
The strange part here is that you have tried two different external hard drives and are getting the same error, however, with the reference to 'failed to read snapshot' which I am sorry that I didn't pick up on sooner, this again is pointing to the source drive rather than the target external drive.
The reason for my statement about it being an issue with the source drive is that the snapshot is most likely being written to / read from an area on the source drive by the Windows VSS (Volume Shadow Service) before being written out to the target drive.
It is possible that when you write the same image to your internal drive and no error is given, that doing so is forcing VSS to write its temporary files to a different place thus avoiding the problem sector in the error messages.
Please take a look at the Windows Event Logs and check for any VSS or hardware related errors.
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Thanks...can you remind me how to get to Windows event logs
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Robert, see http://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/6-ways-to-open-event-viewer-in-windows-10.html which offers a range of ways to get to the Event Logs.
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Robert, you may also find this page helpful http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/96938-check-disk-chkdsk-read-event-viewer-log.html
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Hi,
No hardware errors. There are some VSS warning saying 'VSS was denied access to root of Volume...' but the times do not correspond to the backups that failed (several minutes different).
The last entry https://forum.acronis.com/forum/33840 sound a bit like my problem...suddenly stopped working etc. Unfortunately there is nothing about a solution.
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Robert, I have to confess that I am struggling to find another answer to this problem. The only suggestion I can offer is to repeat what I said earlier about using the Hiren's Boot CD and HDAT2 disk check utility as per the document I attached.
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Steve,
I will check it out.
BTW I looked at the error log. It does not generate the same error message as my original attachment. In fact it point to a known problem:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/37280
Unfortunately the solution - install the latest build- does not work for 2013 even though the site claims that it does.
E
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Robert, did you try the repair install of ATIH 2013 as suggested in the KB article if you already have the latest version?
A repair install is simply a re-installation but selecting the option to Repair which will replace all the program files, DLL's etc.
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Robert Boire wrote:I see 2 drives. Disk 0, where is my internal harddrive and Disk 1 as my externa USB drive. So the error message seems to be saying that the problem is indeed with the external drive.
Windows and Acronis do not number disks the same way. Windows starts at 0 and Acronis starts at 1 so typically disk 1 in Acronis is disk 0 in Windows. If there are any hidden partitions on your source disk you will need to temporarily assign a letter to those partitions and run chkdsk on each one.
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Thanks
I ran chkdsk on my internal drive an no errors were found.
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Robert, chkdsk will only check the visible partition you select to run it on, it does not check any of the hidden partitions or unused space on the same drive. You would either need to follow Joey's suggestion of temporarily allocating drive letters to the hidden partitions, or else try the boot CD HDAT2 type of tool which examines the whole drive regardless of all partitioning that is present.
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Hi,
I ran a disk check on both recovery (see attached) after assigning a drive letter and my C drive. No errors in either case. Then I selected 'scan for an attempt recovery of bad sectors' on boot. It hung up on step 4 or 5 and I had to do a hard reboot. Why does it pass the first part of the test (no errors) and then fail on step 4...trying to connect the errors that step 1 says do not exisit?
BTW I ran the scheme again on my internal hard drive and now I get the same error on the internal hard drive as well,,, and then everything hangs up and I need to reboot.
I will try HDAT2 tomorrow.
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