Question on Acronis True Image 9.

[Poppa_Meth]

I just set this software up with an external HDD at my place of business as a back-up system. WHen I first load Acronis it scans the drives and gives me an error that it cannot read sector 63. Any idea what would cause this? I'm not finding any bad sectors listed on the drive. There is an SQL server running on this machine and I know many programs have trouble accessing open databases like that.

[lumis]

are you doing this from within the system o/s? have you tried booting from an acronis made floppy or cd-r to see if it will let you do it through the custom acronis o/s?

[InXess]

my guess would be partition table error (overlap? shift? MBR?), 2 possibilities: use partition doctor or similar and if unlucky reimage (last image) or backup, recreate partition and restore.
damn I mean backup the data not create image as backup doesn't verify partition table.
Partition magic can scan and fix some partition errors.
Good suggestion (!) by previous poster to use boot CD you can create in Acronis to recheck in DOS.

[Poppa_Meth]

I'll have to try it as soon as I get a boot CD ready. This PC doesn't have a burner in it yet. I have one arriving today so I should be able to try it. As soon as I open Acronis inside Windows XP Home it scans drives and finds an error reading from Sector 63. It pops up a warning several times before continuing. Unfortunately this is a new install of Acronis and the only image I've made from it is after the problem manifested.

I've read a few posts on the web about these errors being commong with Acronis but it's undecided whether it's a problem in Acronis or actually a bad sector and Acronis is just better at picking it out that other programs.

I attached an external HDD for this backup system and set it up as an extended logical drive as I saw recommended on another website. I don't guess that could be an issue with this. Also of note, this is a Dell PC and has a hidden partition on the C drive for diagnostics so perhaps that could be causing the error. It's also running an SQL server which is an open database so that could be an issue. I'll definitely try to image from the CD and see if that helps as it should eliminate some of the possibilities.

Thanks.

[RLT69]

As soon as I open Acronis inside Windows XP Home it scans drives and finds an error reading from Sector 63. It pops up a warning several times before continuing. Unfortunately this is a new install of Acronis and the only image I've made from it is after the problem manifested.

I echoe lumis's idea - use the acronis' floppy.

You are not going to backup SQL Server while it's running. That's a given.

I'm not sure what Acronis does when it performs it's scan while running in XP. Perhaps reading the documentation might tell you something. Assuming you can't scan a running program, try shutting down SQL Server and then perform the scan again. Your best bet though is using the floppy.

The hidden partition might cause problems. Check documentation or if you can unhide the partition.

[Poppa_Meth]

The partition isn't really hidden. Acronis can see it fine. I had the CD boxed version of Acronis so the CD was bootable. I used it to get into Acronis's own OS and still get the same error. It could very well be a bad sector I suppose. The new HDD I've got in the enclosure gives no such errors. I might boot acronis on another Dell here and see if I get any errors on that since it also had the diagnostics partition.

[Poppa_Meth]

I ran Maxtor's software a few times and finally it too discoverd and apparently fixed a bad sector. Acronis no longer complains about a read error.

Thanks for the input guys.

[InXess]

Don't remember disk layout but sector 63 marks beginning or end of partition, which lead me to believe that it's a corrupted patrition table. Good you fixed it. Acronis is very capable even on "live" (in use) partitions, may skip some files but will not complain about an error unless there's a corruption. In this case it'll alert the user that it's unable to create such (damaged) partition mirror.