# Acronis corrupted file. Can it be saved?



## thepcjanitor (Aug 28, 2005)

Is Acronis a bad product?

I bought it, backed up to an external HD regularly according to instructions. Now I can't recover my data after my internal HD has been wiped out.

I validated the archive file, and it appears to be saying it's OK.

I boot up from the Acronis bootable disk and try to recover, but it says the file's corrupted.

(& If I may indulge myself in a small rant on the side: I would NOT recommend Acronis to anyone, by the way, based on their TERRIBLE customer support if nothing else--days, not hours, getting through--DAYS! Meanwhile I'm out of business.)


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I've had excellent luck with it, but there have been a few people here that have indeed had file corruption issues with the backup images. It's clear that it's not a perfect product...

Did you verify the backup when you created it? I don't know of any way to get TI to use it if it's corrupted. Have you tried mounting it as a logical drive and accessing some/all of the necessary files?


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## thepcjanitor (Aug 28, 2005)

John,

I'd appreciate ANY help or ideas you have. This is extremely serious. I never imagined I'd need more than one backup for my data! Everything is in this TI file on the external HD.

1) I did the "Validate Archive" operation and it said "Operation Successful". I assume that means it finds the file to be OK?
2) But then (following instructions from Acronis tech support) I boot up from the Acronis bootable CD I had made, and I try to recover, and it says "file corrupt". 

Sounds like an Acronis software issue to me: Good File/Bad File. It can't have it both ways, can it?

Ed


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Before you give up, you might consider mounting the drive as a secondary in a desktop machine and trying to access it there. Several people have had issues with access to backup files on USB drives.


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## bernardus (Oct 13, 2004)

First of all check the drive under windows with Chkdsk and the repair option. I had a corrupted backup with another program (Power Quest) but by unselecting of the verify options during backup I succeeded to mount the backup. after that I ran Chkdsk with /f and the thing worked. See my notes under Power Quest Drive Image and the famous 1516 error. Partition improperly unmounted! 

bernardus


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## thepcjanitor (Aug 28, 2005)

Is there any value in doing a chkdsk on the external BEFORE I get the backup data out of it? and is it safe, or is there risk of making matters worse?

I'm working (at glacial speed) with Acronis tech "support" people and still hoping they can help me recover my data.


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## bernardus (Oct 13, 2004)

there is a slight risk running Ckdsk with the F option. but I had never any trouble with it. If it fails you may imagine that greater harm and to much damage done which cannot be restored. Never rely on one backup, it may be infected, frequently make fresh backups. store them on a second drive is the safest way. At least every month a fresh backup. Make folders with new backups because you usually can't store more than one backup on any partition or drive. Norton Ghost makes incremental backups. In case of just one drive make a backup on DVD. If your maindrive becomes corrupted, you can format the drive and restore your backup from another medium or second drive. I advice a small drive of about 40 GB as maindrive and a large second, say 160GB or more as backup and storedrive.

Click Start, Run, type cmd, and then click OK. The Command Prompt should appear. Next you need to indicate the disk you want to repair. Type cd C:\, and then press ENTER. If you suspect that the error is on a drive other than C:\, substitute the appropriate letter for the drive you want to check. Next, type chkdsk /f, and then press ENTER. This command checks the drive you indicated for errors, while the /f switch fixes any errors. You may need to run the utility more than once to fix all errors.

bernardus


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## bernardus (Oct 13, 2004)

thepcjanitor said:


> John,
> 
> I'd appreciate ANY help or ideas you have. This is extremely serious. I never imagined I'd need more than one backup for my data! Everything is in this TI file on the external HD.
> 
> ...


Now there is more trouble with USB drives on a external disk. One of the reasons is that this option is relative new and the software or hardware is having problems.

bernardus


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## acronis (Dec 22, 2006)

thepcjanitor said:


> Is there any value in doing a chkdsk on the external BEFORE I get the backup data out of it? and is it safe, or is there risk of making matters worse?
> 
> I'm working (at glacial speed) with Acronis tech "support" people and still hoping they can help me recover my data.


Glacial Speed?? We have gone above and beyond for this issue! Acronis has given you support numerous times without paying per incident as required.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I also would not do any other operations like CHKDSK on the drive until you determine what's going on. I can't think of anything that CHKDSK could "repair" that would improve this situation.


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## thomasjk (Feb 8, 2006)

thepcjanitor, on the official support forum at Wilders Security forums http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65 there are numerous reports of this issue with external USB drives. Can you remove the hard drive from the enclosure and install it as slave drive and then restore that way? The image is most likely not actually corrupt but the linux rescue environment does not interact well with the various flavors of USB chip sets. Alternatively, build a BartPE disk http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ and use one of Mustang's plugins http://www.mechrest.com/plugins/. You may also want to post in the Support forum. Lots of user support there.


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## bernardus (Oct 13, 2004)

Hints on Back up restoration	27/12/2006

Before you create a backup you have to run Ckdsk /f on the partition or drive containing the files or OS to be backed up, and the drive or partition you want to write/save your created BU on. This is vital, because there may be an unknown Partition error or lost file or cluster or read error in the MFT. Windows can cope to a certain extend with such problems but your backup cant. So you may create a disrupted backup. Or you wont be able to restore the back up. One option is to run a Ckdsk /f on the back up containing partition, even with another PC if its an external HD. Or to mount the drive as a second drive in another PC, but that is more difficult for inexperienced users. It is possible to disable the check options of some BU programs and restore the backup, this only in hopeless cases, and after the restoration run Ckdsk /f on the restored drive. A disrupted BU file could mean a disrupted partition/drive, the BU may be intact, this can be repaired only by Windows. Until now I never found a program that was equal to the NTFS version of XP and therefore could not repair File errors in the way XP does or accepts. Even if XP indicates no errors, a partition could carry an improperly mounted partition, this has to be repaired with XP or during a reformat. In worst cases you could load XP on a fresh formatted drive/partition and than run the mentioned procedure. It must be emphasised that the restoration of a drive will change the formatted partition into the type of the BU. Different file types cannot be mixed or merged. Power Quest Partition Magic is capable to test a drive and format (if chosen) in the standard XP size of 512B/cluster.

bernardus


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

thomasjk said:


> thepcjanitor, on the official support forum at Wilders Security forums http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65 there are numerous reports of this issue with external USB drives. Can you remove the hard drive from the enclosure and install it as slave drive and then restore that way?


See post #4.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

bernardus said:


> Power Quest Partition Magic is capable to test a drive and format (if chosen) in the standard XP size of 512B/cluster.


The standard size for NTFS clusters in 2K/XP/Vista is 4k, not 512 bytes. The only reason that some of them show up as 512bytes is a bug in the CONVERT application when converting from FAT32 to NTFS.


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## thepcjanitor (Aug 28, 2005)

The demands of work have kept me away from this site for a while, so I'm just now reading all your replies. Thanks for all the tips. I'm still trying to work this out with Acronis, still at glacial speed!

I talked to the Director of IT at Acronis HQ in Burlington, Mass (next town over from me!) and I'm hooked up with one of his guys who talked with me today and emailed me a new "recipe" which I'm going to try. He recommended I do all the try-try-again stuff from the existing External HD to a new one he suggested I get, so that I can work out things without having to shut down my internal drive, etc. Good thought. At least the glacier moved a bit today! (Note to Acronis guy eavesdropping: Glacial speed is when it takes WEEKS to solve a problem--with one or more days between emails, etc.!)

I'll post something here after I try this new thing. Stand by.


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## chucktronix (Mar 29, 2007)

Hi, All.

New to the forum. I come bearing "an" answer if not "the" answer. To make a long story short, I had a scrambled hard disk and a lovely Acronis 9 backup on my external USB hard disk. "No problem" I thought. "I have a backup." "Archive is corrupt" Grrr. Well, after reading the good stuff above that says the Boot CD uses Linux which deals with USB in a different manner than Windows, I did a variation of the hint about installing the external drive as an internal slave. I have a home network and another old desktop machine. I connected the USB drive to the old desktop and then booted the scrambled desktop using the Boot CD. The Acronis loader was able to look through the network to find the USB drive on the other machine. It all recovered just fine. The file was never corrupted. It just thought it was. 

Cheers!


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## bernardus (Oct 13, 2004)

Whell that's good news!


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## thomasjk (Feb 8, 2006)

Another option to access the external USB drive is BartPE Beginners Guide to Building a BartPE CD with one of Mustangs' TI plugins for BartPE Mustangs' TI plugins for BartPE.


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## mrgiggle (Apr 24, 2008)

I recently called Acronis, and this is why I will not trust their program.

info: Thank you for contacting Acronis! The chat operator will be with you approximately in 0 minute(s) and 16 seconds. Thank you for waiting. 
info: You are now chatting with 'Tatiana'
Tatiana: Hello! Thank you for contacting Acronis Sales Team! My name is Tatiana, how can I assist you?
larry: need some info on your server software
Tatiana: Do you mean Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server or Acronis True Image Echo Server for Windows? What is your scenario and OS?
larry: a client of mine is using your Home 11 version, and while moving an image from a Hard drive that was installed in the machine to a usb drive, it becomes corrupt, and this happens most of the 10 times we tried it. my question is, is this something that will always happen as we need to move things around and can't afford loosing an image like this?
larry: using winxp sp2 and vista 32bit
Tatiana: Ok, do you mean if this always happen when you use Acronis True Image 11 Home: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ or not?
larry: what I need to know is, does Acronis advise against moving an image to other media for this very reason. this was done using true image 11 home, but we need a network solution, and need to know if this is an exsisting issue.
Tatiana: No, this is not the existence issue, as you need to validate the image and then move it. Also it depends on the media where it is located.
Tatiana: But the machines with what OS are you going to backup?
larry: the image is always validated and shown to be good, the media it is moved to is a usb2 ext. hard drive that did not and has not since had any problems and after a drive scan shown to be in perfect condition.
Tatiana: Ok, Larry, you can download the trial version of the Acronis True Image Echo Workstation: http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATICW/ and see how it will work in this case
larry: as I said before, we did this 10 time, and 7 of those ten time, the image became corrupt by just moving it, and to more than one drive.
larry: so no known issues with this?
Tatiana: Did you try to create the image by means of the Acronis True Image Echo Workstation. Sometiems it happens, but it is really rare cases.
larry: no, home 11 version
larry: thanks for your help, I'll check some of the message boards and see what others think. thank you
Tatiana: Ok, Thank you for visiting. Please feel free to contact us at any time if you have further questions. Good bye.

Blame it on anything but the software and you never have to fix it!!


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## bernardus (Oct 13, 2004)

Don't know if this will be of any help but I found out that a partition can be corrupted because of minor errors in the file table. I had this very often with Power Quest True Image. So I checked with PQ the drive. However it also happened that the file or the previous partition seemed to be corrupted by PQ. PQ is unable to repair found errors. Therefore I always ran a chdsk on the drives with Windows before creating a backup. Whether this was specific for PQ I don't know. But perhaps it may be of any help. I am using Acronis now but on the HD itself and until now no problem occurred.


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## Plantsman (Jan 20, 2008)

If anyone wants a more reliable alternative look at Storagecraft's Shadowprotect here.

http://www.storagecraft.com/products/ShadowProtectDesktop/

Then if you've a mind to read this exhaustive thread on another Acronis glitch and why I made the switch and haven't regretted it since.

http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-software/675067-solved-acronis-trueimage-11-boot.html


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## fforum (Aug 17, 2008)

Solution backup and restore Acronis archives on extenal USB disks.

When using external USB disks to locatte Acronis archives on, you need to use an Acronis Secure Zone on souch a disk, otherwise an error "Archive is corrupted" will cause the restore process to stop.

Acronis True Image v10.0 has a menu option to create a protected (and hidden) partition on an external USB disk. This partition is called an Acronis Secure Zone. When creating backups, use this Secure Zone as the backup location and restoring from it. Everything will work well!


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## thomasjk (Feb 8, 2006)

Using the secure zone is not a solution to a file corruption problem. I use an external USB drive without the secure zone and have not experienced any file corruption. File corruption can be caused by the USB chip set in the hard drive, bad memory, a bad disk. or by TI itself or other causes.


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## fforum (Aug 17, 2008)

Well, that's funny... How can you say it isn't a solution if you didn't meet the problem at all?!

I did experience the file corruption problem and the use of a Acronis Secure Zone gave the solution.
Furthermore, the manual of Acronis recommends using of a Acronis Secure Zone because it is a protected zone (i.e. partition).
I hope this info will help other people. I'm very curiuous if it does.


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