Unable to validate image
Good day to all.
I just purchased a shiny new Windows 8 computer and wish to take an image of the hard drive BEFORE I boot the machine for the first time. This has been my standard practice for many years now.
In addition to taking an image of the new drive, I'm also going to be replacing the original drive with a SSD. So: the image has two purposes: its a backup for the original installation as well as being used to set the new SSD up in the new machine.
I'm using one of my Windows 7 Pro machines to do the image creation. This machine was running TIH 2011 but I purchased and installed TIH 2013 over top of the old 2011 version.
I'm connecting the 2TB drive from the new WIndows 8 computer to my Win 7 Pro machine with a SATA-to-USB adapter. Windows Explorer on my Win 7 machine sees 2 partitions: one is marked Windows, the othe is marked Data. Both partitions are completely readable but I haven't tried to write to either one. The Disk Management snap-in shows that 2TB drive has a total of 5 partitions: a 600MB recovery partition, a 260MB EFI System partition, a 150GB NTFS Windows partition, a 1.7TB NTFS Data partition, and a 15GB Recovery partition.
I've tried creating an image using TIH 2013 with 3 different backup schemes but all fail when validating the image. Let me describe one of those attempts.
Start TIH 2013, select the "Backup and Recovery" tab -> "Disk and partition backup". A window titled "Configure disk backup process" appears, I hit the "Switch to disk mode" area and then select the new 2TB disk that I want to create the image of. For what its worth, that disk is shown as having 5 partitions labeled (in order) Windows RE tools, System, Windows (J:), Data (K:), Recovery.
I then select the "Disk backup options" title at the bottom of the window and select the "Backup scheme" tab. I've tried 3 different options here: the first time was "Version chain scheme" (it was the default) but I've also tried "Single version scheme" and custom -> Full.
I then select the Advanced tab, tell TIH to validate the image after creation and I give a brief description in the comments area. Then I tell TIH to "Back up now".
The backup proceeds and appears to mostly finish, but then an error window pops up. This windows says "Failed to open backup D:\Acronis\Asus_i7_ST2000DM001-9YN164_full_b1_s1_v1.tib. It may be inconsistent or corrupted." Clicking the "More details" button shows me "More information about this error and solutions may be available online in the Acronis Knowledge Base. To access the online resource manually, enter the event code at: http://kb.acronis.com/errorcode/
Event code: Event code: 0x01EF0013+0x000B041D+0x00040011+0x0000FFF0+0x80070002 "
So: it appears that TIH can't read the image for validation purposes. I've tried a couple of things to try and narrow down the possibilities.
My first thought was that maybe, just maybe, my Sata-to-USB adapter was causing problems. The easy way to check for that possibility was to ask TIH 2013 to create a fresh image of my Win 7 Pro OS partition. Lo and behold: I get the same error message. For what its worth, TIH 2011 has successfully created (and validated) multiple images of that same partition.
My 2nd thought was to ask TIH 2013 to mount the image that was taken of the external (new) 2TB drive. I did this by going to "tools and utilities" -> Image mounting -> Mount image. The utility lists the 5 drive letters that are about to be assigned (L through P) and I hit the "proceed" button. A few seconds later, I hear 5 windows "Be-Doop" sounds as each of the partitions are assigned drive letters. A message then pops up saying "Assigning drive letters was successfully completed."
I used my file manager to browse each of the 5 partitions and all look to be OK. Because I'm not even remotely familiar with the new Windows 8 disk setup, there is a lot of stuff that I don't recognize. But certainly the Windows partition looks normal and all of the folders in each of the other partitions has something in them. The Data partition is the most empty - all it has is the hidden "System Volume Information" folder. But all of the other partitions have files and folders that I can browse into and read.
That pretty much tells me that TIH 2013 is probably creating a good image. However, it is not able to read that image.
My final test was to try to restore the image of the new drive to the SSD. That failed with exactly the same error message that I gave above.
How do I proceed?
Many thanks!
dwayne
I am not sure why you take the disk out of the original computer. Are you trying to avoid the initial setup to keep the disk in its prime state?
Yeah - being able to restore the original drive back to its pristine state helps me when I'm dealing with tech support. It just removes any issues that the techs think that I might have caused and instead leaves them with no option but to actually fix the problem(s) that I am trying to get them to fix.
I plan to actually stick the original hard drive into an external USB drive enclosure and use it as a portable drive. Being able to restore it to factory-fresh condition is really important to me.
I used to do this way back in the old days using Ghost and Drive Image. But Acronis True Image just ran circles around both of those old programs and I've stuck with it since version 7.
Anyway, I'll try your advice. I'll download and burn the ISO files (not sure that I grabbed them yet) and try creating an image both with my Win 7 box as well as the new Win 8 box. Things might get a bit interesting when I have to mess with the secure boot crap in the BIOS, though - all of that stuff is new to me.
Thanks for your suggestion. But I'm really hoping that someone can tell me why TIH 2013 won't validate an image created of my Win 7 OS partition. I *know* this works with TIH 2011 - I have the images to prove it .
As it stands right now, I'm not sure that I would be able to restore that image while I have TIH 2013 installed on the machine without using the TIH recovery CD. And that worries me.
dwayne
Dwayne,
Don't be hesitant about using the bootable Recovery CD or flash drive
for backups;
for recoveries;
for new disk creation.
Some users never install the program and use the CD exclusively. Many feel the backup or restore created by the CD is more pristine as it has no involvement from Windows.
When restoring the system partition, the recommended method is to do the restore when booted from the bootable media.
Well, I think that I found the problem.
I spent a couple of hours of quality time with one of the Acronis Chat-support technicians and we discovered some interesting things.
The bottom line is that it *appears* as if the directory where I was storing the image files was in some way corrupted. Not the whole drive - just the directory.
We did a bunch of testing by creating small image files, then trying to validate them. Doing so in my original image file directory resulted in the image file failing validation. However, creating, then validating an image file in any number of different locations seemed to work correctly. We started in the root of C" drive, then the root of E:, then finally in the root of D: (which is where the image files are stored). All worked properly.
Then we created new "Acronis" folders off of the root of C: and E: - created, then validated images in those folders. Worked correctly.
Then copied one of the images that had failed validation to those 4 locations: c:\, C:\Acronis, E:\, E:\Acronis - Lo and behold - the image validated correctly in all 4 locations. Then tried copying that image to the root of D: (D:\) - and it validated correctly.
Next, renamed the original image storage directory (D:\Acronis) to "My Backups" (D:\My Backups) ant tried to validate that same image - it failed. Finally, copied that same image from C:\Acronis to a brand-new directory named Acronis (D:\Acronis) - and it validated correctly.
The last test was to copy all of the remaining images from the old backup directory (now named D:\My Backups) over to the C drive, then to the new backup directory (D:\Acronis). I used drive C to interpose the file copying because I was worried that Windows normally just updates the file location when you move from one directory to another on the same drive. I didn't want any weird corruption being just moved to the new directory. All of those images validated correctly.
So: it looks as if I had some really weird disk problem. The odd thing is that TIH 2011 had NO problems creating and validating my previous backup images in that same directory.
I hope this helps someone else in a similar situation.
Many thanks!
dwayne
Thank you for sharing Dwayne.
It is true that Acronis recommends to move the image to some other location when there are validation issues, but, in your case, the fact that 2011 would validate but not 2013 was calling for some other approach. Good to keep this in mind.