Trouble backing up to optical media

I'll bet on the fact that you are attempting to use Blu-ray media.  I do not use any such removable media so I could be wrong here.

Yes, "BD" (in "M-Disc BD-R SL media") means Blu-ray Disc.  All my attempts with BD-R media failed (whether in the bootable version or the Windows version of ATI).  Does ATI2021 not support Blu-ray media?

However, I also had a failure with conventional DVD+R media, when I attempted it in the bootable version of ATI (from the rescue media).  Does the bootable version not support any removable optical media? Or is it that disk/partition images cannot be written to optical media?  My only success was using the Windows version of ATI2021 to do a File/Folder backup onto DVD+R.

The manual states BD-R media are supported (https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2021/index.html#…), although removable media only allow for the .tib format (https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2021/index.html#…).  Does this mean that disk/partition backups onto removable optical media use a pre-2020 scheme to store the disk images in .tib format, or does it imply that ATI2021 can only do folder/file backups if the destination is removable optical media?  

It is unclear in the manual if the information applies to the full Windows 10 version of ATI, so I'm unsure of the cause of the issues I encountered when running ATI from the rescue media.

Backups to Optical media or the ASZ do not use .TIBX files regardless of the type of backup.

I do not have a BD media device so have never attempted to backup to such media, especially after experiences in just using DVD media in much earlier versions of ATI.

Personally the price of HDD storage is such that it is an easy choice to stay with that storage medium.

If there are any restrictions with OEM versions of ATI, then these should be declared in the User Manual for that version, but I have not heard of any mention of such Optical media restrictions!

How is your BD writer connected?  Is it possible that it is being suspended by your Power options or that any delays in ATI accumulating data to write are causing the writer to timeout / go to sleep?

Steve,

In offline storage, SSD drives can begin to lose data after a year (https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention), and magnetic hard drives after a few years (https://superuser.com/questions/284427/how-much-time-until-an-unused-ha…).  Thus, I want to use M-disc media for archival storage.

When you say .tibx format is not used, does that mean that disk/partition backups are not possible, or does it mean that disk/partition backups revert to the .tib format when using optical media (or ASZ)?

The BD writer is connected via USB 3.0 (directly to the laptop, not through an external hub).  The errors happen so quickly I doubt that it is a timeout issue.  The power options for the laptop itself are set to never sleep.

Is there a specific section of the MVP Assistant logs that we can look to for clues as to why backing up to BD-R failed?

J K wrote:

When you say .tibx format is not used, does that mean that disk/partition backups are not possible, or does it mean that disk/partition backups revert to the .tib format when using optical media (or ASZ)?

The BD writer is connected via USB 3.0 (directly to the laptop, not through an external hub).  The errors happen so quickly I doubt that it is a timeout issue.  The power options for the laptop itself are set to never sleep.

Is there a specific section of the MVP Assistant logs that we can look to for clues as to why backing up to BD-R failed?

You can still create any kind of backup but with the BD media, they will always be .tib files.

In your power options, check the USB selective suspend settings to see if these are enabled or not?  On my HP laptop, these are shown in the Advanced settings for Power Options.

For the MVP Assistant logs, given that .tib files are being created, then the Demon logs for the backup task attempt should contain any relevant information for the failure.

The USB Selective Suspend had been set to enable, I assume I should change it to disable?

The Demon log (attached) shows Error 0x40003.

Thanks for the demon log file.  Got to be worth testing the USB Selective Suspend setting as disable though not sure if it needs a reboot to be effective or not?

The log only really confirms what you have reported already, with the issue when writing to the BD media after responding to the prompt to insert the optical media.

20/01/2021 12:06:33:602 AM -05:00 1208 I00640003: Please insert the first media
Please insert a disc, and then click OK when ready; or click Cancel to stop the operation.
You can use an empty disc or a disc with backup archive, which was previously created by Acronis True Image, if there is enough free space left on the disc.: OK/Cancel/:
User response: OK
20/01/2021 12:06:41:508 AM -05:00 1208 I00640000: Writing full version to file: RedactedName_full_b1_s1_v1.tib
20/01/2021 12:06:43:858 AM -05:00 1208 E00040003: Error 0x40003: Error occurred while writing the file.
| error 0x40003: Error occurred while writing the file.
| function: backupmedia::CDRArchiveWriter::Flush
20/01/2021 12:06:43:859 AM -05:00 1208 I00040003: Error occurred while writing the file.
To specify another location, click Browse.: Retry///Cancel//
20/01/2021 12:07:07:405 AM -05:00 1208 I00040003: Error occurred while writing the file.
To specify another location, click Browse.: Retry///Cancel//:
User response: Cancel
20/01/2021 12:07:10:976 AM -05:00 3488 W013C0001: Terminated by user.

I have not tested backing up to optical media for some years; I have 2 PCs with internal burners and 2 USB burners (one USB 2 the other USB 3). Will put it on my to be done list to check this out. 

Ian

Update 22-01-21: Had no trouble doing a disks and partitions backup to a SATA LG Drive - backup of a Samsung SSD.

IanL-S :  Thanks for testing.  Was your test using DVD or BD media?  If you have the time/inclination, could you also test this (backing up to optical media) using the bootable ATI version on WinPE rescue media?  

J K, do your backups to regular external or internal disk drives complete successfully?

If so, there is the option of changing your backup task to backup to such a disk drive but in the Options > Advanced settings, Backup splitting and select one of the preset Blue Ray sizes.

Once the backup has been created, then try copying the backup files to your BD media.

Note: you should turn off Acronis Active Protection to allow the copy.  If you are making a disk backup then it will create .tibx files as the destination is a disk drive.

Steve,

My backups to to regular hard drives work fine.

Yes, I may have to resort to something like that (splitting the archive and manually burning to optical media), but it would have been nice if it "just worked".  

Am I correct that if I do create a disk/partition backup to hard disk (which forces the .tibx format), and then copy the .tibx to optical media, I will not be able use ATI to restore directly from the optical media (i.e., I will first need to copy everything back to hard disk before restoring)?  I read elsewhere that ATI gets confused if it finds .tibx files on optical media.

If so, is there a special procedure for restoring from such split backups?  Do I just open the first volume in the set, and ensure the other volumes are present in the same directory?  Is it possible to restore from split backups while in the bootable rescue environment (e.g., WinPE version of ATI)?

Also, could you clarify whether the standard split sizes shown in the dropdown menu are in units of gibibytes (1 GB = 10243 bytes) or gigabytes (1 GB = 109 bytes)?

I agree that burning direct to optical media should work without needing to resort to using disk backups first then copying!  You would need to raise this with Acronis in a support case.

I have not done any testing with optical media and I only have DVD media which would limit any testing and be very slow as my DVD writer is only USB 2.0 being some years old!

ATI would get confused if you still have a backup task in the main Backup list that has the same name as that you have on the optical media, and it may also get confused if you point it at .tibx files on the optical media when it will be expecting to find .tib files!  This may indeed require that the .tibx files are copied back to a disk if being used for any recovery, but this may be something to try with a small disk backup, i.e. backup the 2GB FAT32 partition for a Survival Kit drive to disk then copy it to optical media.

You may be ok with booting from the rescue media but again you should do a simple test as above to check this.  The key advantage of using rescue media is that the internal database used by the Windows ATI app is not used.

Both the Windows and rescue media apps should be able to handle split backups provided that they have no issues if .tibx files are encountered from the optical media.  There would be no point in providing options to split backup files at set sizes if the app couldn't handle these!

J K wrote:

IanL-S :  Thanks for testing.  Was your test using DVD or BD media?  If you have the time/inclination, could you also test this (backing up to optical media) using the bootable ATI version on WinPE rescue media?  

The disk oddly does not indicate what type of dick it is, I expect it is a DVD (max capacity given as 7.96 gb). I just grabbed a disk that was handy. (I rarely use optical media, so it is not well organised, just sitting in a box on the top shelf of my components store.) The next thing is to try bootable media.

Ian

Thanks Ian.  Your disc was a dual layer DVD.

Things are getting interesting. I was able to successfully create a backup with Linux Recovery Media (booting from a DVD). However I had repeated failures with the Simple Recovery Media and the WinPE recovery media using the ADK (log file for the latter attached).

I am wondering if you have to use optical media for it to work - will test that now!

Ian

PS The Linux media recognised the two M.2 NVMe drives - so not sure why others are having problems - blank drive which had not be added?

Using ADK WinPE via DVD failed, so the media used is not the cause of the problem. Looks like there is a problem with Acronis. The log file is attached.

I have submitted a support ticket - will advise number when known.

update ticket number 04770968

Ian

Ian, Thanks for doing these tests.  You may have a separate issue from the one I am facing, though.  I have been able to successfully make backups to external hard drives using the simple rescue media; I only experience failed backups when I attempt to backup to DVD or Blu-ray from the simple recovery media.  I have also submitted a ticket, but no response yet.*

*Update: I did just receive a response from Acronis tech support, and their response gives me no confidence that they have the technical competence to actually solve the problem.  They claimed that ATI2021 does not support optical drives, and supported this absurd claim by citing the User Guide (https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2021/index.html#…); of course, the User Guide lists "CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R (including double-layer DVD+R), DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, BD-R, BD-RE" among the supported storage media, so the tech support representative did not even bother to read the information on which he based his answer...

I only tested optical media, did not test backup to local drive. Will do that to confirm it is the same issue or not.

edit: Tech support may have been confused by the fact that *.tibx architecture does not work with optical media; you have to use *.tib for disk and partitions backups.

Ian

I only tested optical media,

I see.  When you had said earlier that you were testing "if you have to use optical media for it to work," I thought you meant optical vs. magnetic media for the backup storage location.  But I think I just figured out you were actually testing whether the recovery media had to be optical or not.  So, yes, seems like we are in fact dealing with the same issue (failure to write backup sets to optical disc when in a recovery media environment).

Yes definitely the same problem. I could successfully backup to a local HDD using both the Simple and Advanced Windows Recovery Media (ie WinRE and WinPE). The PC I tested on has Intel Chipset and has an i5 9400 CPU.

Going to try on an AMD system to confirm the results.

Ian

Same problem with the WinPE and WinRE recovery media on the AMD Ryzen 1700X PC. For some reason could not get the Linux recovery DVD to work at all. Will recreate it and try again.

Ian

Guys, WinPE doesn't support writing to optical media.

Mustang  - What about WinRE?

WinRE doesn't either.

Paul, is this restriction / limitation documented for WinPE / WinRE?

I don't think it is documented. I seem to remember in early versions of Paragon Hard Disk Manager that it was enabled by adding a dll (win32aspi.dll) I think. That was a long time ago, so I'm not even sure that was the correct name of the dll. I now see that win32aspi.dll isn't even used in regular Windows.

I think it could work in the WinPE-SE project because they have WinPE running on the Explorer shell. It's also been a long time since I played with that. 

UPDATE:

I dug up an old ISO of Win10PE-SE. I booted it up and was able to write to optical media from Windows Explorer just like it works in regular Windows. True Image wasn't added to that ISO, but I see no reason why True Image should fail to write to optical media. Sorry I don't have the links to the Win10PE-SE project. It used to be in a website called The Oven. You would need the project and a script that adds True Image to the build.

UPDATE 2:

Here's the link http://win10se.cwcodes.net/

Thanks Paul, was just for interest.  I haven't used optical storage media in years and doubt I will be starting again in the near or distant future!

I understand. Optical media has an appeal because it can make for a convenient way to have an off site backup. I gave up on that idea many years ago because optical media is very time consuming to recover from. I found recovering a single file from a backup required reading the contents of every file in the backup. You had to swap disks until you were blue in the face and it took hours. There are many better options now.

Mustang wrote:

Guys, WinPE doesn't support writing to optical media.

Paul, that is something I did not know (or had forgotten). I suspect my prior backup to optical media would have been using Linux recovery media (probably during beta testing of ATI 2015 or 2016).

Ian 

I just tested the Linux recovery media for TI 2021 and it appears to work. The backup to DVD-R disks is under way. I'll report back when it completes.

UPDATE:

The backup completed successfully.

On a related topic:  While the User Guide indicates Blu-ray (BD-R and BD-RE) discs are supported (at least in the full version of ATI2021), does anybody know whether this support is limited to single-layer BD-R or whether it should also be possible to back up to BD-DL (dual-layer) or BD-XL (triple layer)?

I suspect that you would need to ask Acronis this question as we only have access to the information published in the user guides and KB documents.

Acronis tech support has been incommunicado for the past 4 days.  I was hoping for maybe some anecdotal evidence from someone who's done it.  I can't test it myself, because my ATI2021 installation fails to write even a single-layer BD-R, which is an official supported medium (thus, any failures with dual or triple-layer BD would be inconclusive).

P.S. Found this: https://kb.acronis.com/content/1958 . Is the "cdrecord" debug log still available in ATI2021?  Can it be accessed through MVP Assistant?

While the Linux recovery media works works with Intel based systems, it does not work at all with AMD based systems. The recovery media would not load on my Ryzen 1700X system (Aorus GA-AX370-Gaming 5); it loaded on my ancient ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+ based system (AMD A88X (Bolton-D4) chipset); it crashed when trying to select disk to be backed up. 

There is another report of the Linux recovery media not working with an an older AMD PC.

Ian

J K wrote:

P.S. Found this: https://kb.acronis.com/content/1958 . Is the "cdrecord" debug log still available in ATI2021?  Can it be accessed through MVP Assistant?

The good news is that KB 1958 is still valid and produces a cdrecord.log file in the C:\ProgramData\Acronis\DebugLogs folder when the registry key is entered and enabled, and this shows detailed information on the burning process for optical disks.
I tested this by creating the Simple Acronis rescue media on a DVD+R disc.

The log is not available via the MVP Assistant as is not one of the standard ones given it needs additional changes to the registry to be enabled.  That said, it is a plain text log file that doesn't need any special tools to be able to read it.  Notepad is fine!

The registry entry is very simple:  Just enter the text below into a .reg text file.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Acronis\DebugLogs]
"cdrecord"=dword:00000001

J K wrote:

On a related topic:  While the User Guide indicates Blu-ray (BD-R and BD-RE) discs are supported (at least in the full version of ATI2021), does anybody know whether this support is limited to single-layer BD-R or whether it should also be possible to back up to BD-DL (dual-layer) or BD-XL (triple layer)?

I have not used BD-DL or BX-XL for any purpose - My SATA burners do not support BD-XL. Not sure about the USB drive. Not sure about my newer USB 3 burner.

No idea if either are supported by Acronis. All I can suggest is that you ask Acronis (it is possible that they do not know; particularly if ATI uses generic drivers for burners, both for Windows RE/PE and Linux.

Ian

Mustang  wrote:

I just tested the Linux recovery media for TI 2021 and it appears to work.

Unfortunately, even with Linux-based recovery media, I was unable to create a backup on optical media from the bootable environment (attempted a small partition backup on CD-R).  My processor is an Intel Core i7-8650U, in case it makes a difference.

I tested the full Win10 installation of ATI2021 some more, and at appears capable of backing up files/folders to DVD-R or DVD+R media, even of the M-Disc variety.  My previous failure with a single-layer Blu-ray had also been an M-Disc, so I wanted to make sure that was not the source of the problem (it appears not to be).  After the current backup completes, I will repeat my previous attempt of backing up to BD-R, but this time with the cdrecord log enabled.

Will update here when I have additional results.

UPDATE 1:  On the DVD-R backup, I had selected the options to "Place Acronis True Image 2021 (64-bit) on media" along with Universal Restore and System Report, the finished DVD-R was not bootable.  It shows a 3-option text menu, where 1 = retry boot, 2 = boot into setup, etc.

UPDATE 2:  Reattempted one of the tasks that had failed in my original post (file/folder backup to M-Disc BD-R SL media, using the full Win10 isntallation of ATI2021).  This time, the backup started with no error.  The main differences between that first (failed) attempt and the current attempt is that I disabled the USB Selective Suspend on Steve's advice, and added the DebugLogs registry key with cdrecord=1.  Maybe the selective suspend made a difference, or maybe I was just unlucky on the first attempt.

---

So for me, the remaining unresolved questions are whether the Linux-based bootable version of ATI2021 supports partition backup to optical media (Blu-ray, in particular) or not (Mustang and IanL-S seem to have had success, but I have not), and whether there is a reason why the options "Place Acronis True Image 2021 (64-bit) on media" etc. do not produce a DVD that can be successfully booted on my system.

I had the opportunity to test Blu-ray media on a desktop system with an internal Blu-ray drive. The media used was single layer BD-R. The results were mixed.

TI 2021 in Windows was able to complete a full disk backup of a Windows 10 UEFI system. I asked for the Acronis Recovery media to be placed on the media. The backup spanned two disks. There was NO recovery environment placed on the disks. This is clearly a bug or just not supported for Blu-ray media. True Image in Windows could not do anything with the backup. There was no way to mount, explore or recover the backup. This would have worked if the backup was small enough to fit on one disk. With a 2 disk backup the program just kept complaining that not all volumes of the backup were available. One would need to copy all the tib files from the disks to a single folder on a hard drive to use the backup in Windows.

WinPE recovery media was able to complete a full disk restore from the disks. It required a lot of disk swapping. There were 5 parts to the recovery. Each part required seeing disk 1 and disk 2. This worked until it reached step 5. That step was entitled Recovering Partition Structure. That step kept asking for disk 1 then disk 2 in an endless loop. When I realized it was never going to end, I hit cancel enough times to get it to stop. The programs then progressed to the final operation of Synchronizing with the Operating system. Then the Successful message appeared. Windows booted fine so the restore was indeed successful.

The Linux recovery environment also seems to be able to do a recovery. I started the process and went along until the backup was accepted and stopped just to save time. I think the recovery would have succeeded. I then tried to do a backup to Blu-ray in the Linux environment and was greeted with the immediate Operation Failed message. So I would have to say Blu_ray media was not supported. 

You should give up on the idea of using Blu-ray media to store Backups!       

Thank you, Paul, for doing these tests.  I think it's now established that the support for removable optical media in ATI2021 is very limited!

You should give up on the idea of using Blu-ray media to store Backups! 

I'm not ready to give up on this completely, but I think I'm resigned to using a hard drive in the actual backup and restore processes, and copy the .tibx files to/from Blu-ray media as an extra step.  As noted, this affords me the possibility of storing off-site archival copies of key backup sets, with a manageable number of discs if using 100GB BDXL. But the primary motivation for storing the backups on M-Disc Blu-ray media is that these have a longer shelf-life than magnetic drives or SSD.

"Routine" backups will just be kept on external hard drives, but the M-Disc archives will provide some insurance against long-term data loss.

That's a good plan.

Just a quick update. My Support ticket is progressing very slowly [ticket 04770968]. They started to take in very seriously when I uploaded a video showing the process from booting up the PC with the recovery media to the process failing.

It was not the easiest thing to create a video of the full process; needed a HDMI duplicator and then using the HDMI input on my aging Topfield PVR I was able to create a full recording of the process.

I will report progress.

Ian

IanL-S  

Any progress?

No progress; without knowing if the latest build solved the problem they suggested I test it - been on the road for the best part of two weeks so have not had a chance to do do. I doubt that anything has changed due to short period between the problem being escalated and the release of that build.

Ian