Operations on disks with read errors: TIH and DD block me at every turn :-(
On the whole I have found the Acronis products very reliable provided the source disks are not too far degraded.
The scenario I am struggling with at the moment is that I have 40GB drive that is failing and, although it will boot into Windows, True Image Home 2011 will not (at first glance) backup or clone because of a read error. The fact that I can get into Windows implies that the corruption is not critical to the OS. To be fair I can get the backup process can complete if I choose to ignore read errors, but the resulting backup is not restorable. An attempt to restore (even to a different disk) results in "Operation has failed" with the log indicating that the backup had apparently recorded the read error and cannot seem to get past it. I should point out that the backup verifies fine, so there is presumably no corruption there.
Disk Director 11 is just as uncompromising: the Basic Disk Clone process fails and suggests running CHKDSK with no attempt to ask me if I want to continue regardless.
This subject is covered in at least one other thread where it is suggested that this operation is by design. I can't help thinking that the sort of user that regularly uses TIH or DD has the experience to make the decision to restore regardless, if they are given the opportunity.
Is there really no workaround that will let me restore irrespective of errors recorded in the backup? Is TIH 2012 any different? Apologies if I've missed a setting somewhere or a forum post that would help, if so please point me in the right direction
Hi Colin
What might be best is to backup your current system then restore a previous backup where the HDD did not have any issues, you should then be able to restore some/most of your files from the latest backup to try and recover what you can.
The issue you will face is if your current HDD is failing or has file system errors even if you get Acronis to backup that data if it’s damaged or HDD has issues there is unfortunately no way for Acronis to fix this error as it’s related to either a file system error (of which Check disk might be able to help out) or hardware errors in which case it’s best to backup as much as you can right away and get that HDD replaced.
I don’t know the home products that well but I know with the Acronis business range of products they have an option called sector by sector backup (http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ABR11/index.html#13949.html), meaning Acronis will try to back up the entire HDD and ignores the file system. For example if you have an 100GB HDD and do a sector by sector backup it will backup and create a full 100GB archive equivalent even if you might only have 20GB of data Acronis will not attempt to read the file level of the backup at times this method although longer to backup it can allow you to get a backup if the issue is related to a file system issue and then you can work on that backup archive and try to get the required files extracted.
If the read errors are that bad, i suggest putting a 2nd HDD in your system and COPY your data files, etc to a new temp disk.
What is it with everyone's resistance to just copying the files to a different disk. Windows explorer or the command line XCOPY function fine and you can hit the "R" key time as many times as you want on any files or you can ignore the errors and the rest of your files will copy. Once you have that done, you can start fresh on a new drive.
You can restore an older backup made from before you started encountering errors to a THIRD disk (your new primary drive), and then copy your user files back.
While a backup / restore process can be more automated and the resultant backups are smaller than the size of the files individually copied, you are forced into the B&R system (program) used and any of it's limitations, including limiting your ability to restore to a dissimilar machine.
Copying to a dedicated disk gives you the ultimate in flexibility, and a good file synching program can automate most of the pain in the a$$ of figuring out which files need to be added to or refreshed to the 'backup disk.
Hard drives are very inexpensive compared to even a few years ago to not have a spare or 2 on hand is is shortsighted.
And, while Grover may know better than me, I do not believe cloning is inherently more dangerous than backing up and then restoring - and B&R takes TWICE the time ad cloning since you are reading and writing twice. I am going to test this out next week, when i will power down a Thinkpad while it is cloning. While I'm sure the target disk will require cleaning and re-initialization, the source disk should be fine s it is only being read. We'll see. I'll post my results.
Unfortunately there are no previous backups, this was a one off situation where someone's disk was obviously dying and cloning directly or via a backup and restore wasn't working.
In the end I ran scandisk 4 or 5 times, after which Acronis did actually backup without errors. To be fair TIH2011 did actually suggest that, but it was the fact that I did it over and over again before retrying a backup that probably worked.
Glad it worked out. That's why i have multiple separate disks with clones or copies of data files.