ABR10 thinks image is corrupt if protected by EWF
Hello,
Our industrial machines have drive C protected by an enhanced write filter running Windows XPe. Connecting remotely to the agent or running the agent locally, the backup plan fails on "invalid reference file" when run. If I select a "sector by sector" backup, the backup works fine, but our CF cards are very small with no paging file setup, so the PC runs out of memory. If I disable the EWF temporarily, the backup plans works fine without having to select "sector by sector", but the plan has to be run after a restart (EWF requirement). Using this method, I also don't run out of memory and prefer this to work as it did in the Echo series. When I bring the CF card out of the system to a USB media card reader, the backup works fine as well. This is the first time I did more extensive testing with ABR10, so I can't comment on previous builds (13545). I also made multiple images on different disks and ran chkdsk with no errors. The old Echo series has no such issue. Any help is appreciated.
Yes, only the system disk CF1 is protected by EWF. This is in place to protect the Windows drive from our customers making modifications. Unfortunately, I cannot disable this for production machines. The data drive CF2 is open and does not produce the error. In the past, I used the Echo series with no such issues to do the same exact function. Luckily we are still able to buy the old version directly from Acronis to support our customers. The rescue media does work fine for this, but the AMS connected to the local or remote Agent flags the error when the backup plan is run.
I did a little 'testing'.
Merged EWF (as described in wikipedia) into virtual machine with Windows XP SP2 , with a 5 GB disk, and 512 MB RAM,
changed
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{71A27CDD-812A-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}]
"UpperFilters"
from "Ewf" to "VolSnap Ewf" (two strings) (because that one in wiki removes Volsnap that is originally there)
installed agent 12497, enabled EWF (mode = RAM (REG) ), rebooted.
Connected remotely, created backup plan to backup system disk to a network share, with 'run now' schedule.
It completed successfully. (EWF was working, because after reboot the backup plan disappeared)
Then I disabled EWF, created a scheduled backup plan to a network share, enabled EWF and rebooted.
After reboot it run and completed ok.
Then disabled again, rebooted, installed console 12497, rebooted and enabled EWF.
Incremental backup completed successfully too.
So either EWF alone (merged into XP in that way) is not enough to prevent ABR from working, and there is
something else in XP Embedded that together with EWF does it, or the problem is in lack of resources ( little RAM, no swap file, etc ? )
Btw, EWF can operate in three modes - Disk, Ram, Ram Reg. I tried it only in Ram Reg mode.
I'm not sure what EWF type were using, but I beleive its EWF RAM. Our images are created by our parent company in Germany for use in machines in the US. With 1GB RAM memory and no page file, the system runs out of memory doing a sector by sector backup. I'm using build 13545, but when I connect to the remote agent to save this backup on a network share, I get "invalid reference fail" with user permission issues in the log. The credentials work when setting up the network share path, but don't work when run like the software forgot the credential information. I will look into this a little more soon, but with the release of ABR11 around the corner, I probably look into that software at the next test cycle. Thanks for the info.