Did I destroy my Acronis backup?

[jmt356]

I was copying pictures onto my new laptop from my Acronis backup stored on an external harddrive and it was taking a while so I went to the gym and came back and found my computer asleep because I apparently left it there for more than 20 minutes. I woke it up and found that the copying from the external drive had not yet been completed so I let it complete but I wasn't sure if somehow not all of the photos got copied because of the sleep interruption so I tried an experiment twice where I started copying photos from the Acronis backup and put the computer to sleep and woke it back up to see if all 40 of the photos were there. It appeared they were, but then when I went back into the backup to copy other items, my laptop couldn't open up the backup. I would click on "Backup 4," and then a window woudl pop up with an hourglass but no files. I would wait and wait and wait.

Then I tried reading the backup on the external drive from another computer and that computer wsa able to get Backup 4 open, but when I navigated to the C and D drives on the backup, they were empty.

Then I tried it on a third computer and it was able to read all of the files. But now I am stuck copying all those files to another medium and transferring to my laptop rather than copying them directly from the Acronis backup to my laptop.

2 questions:
- Did I corrupt the Acronis backup by putting my computer to sleep during the process (in which case Acronis users should be told to disable sleep when copying files from the Acronis backup)?
- Why is it that some computers can read the Acronis backup while others cannot and is there a way to get my computer to recognize the Acronis files?

Regards,

JMT

[StuartR]

A good start would be to run a CHKDSK on that external drive

[jmt356]

Actually, I just restarted the original computer that was having the problems, adn now it's able to read the back up. I'll try a CHKDSK later.

[HansV]

A reboot is almost always a good idea if your computer is acting weirdly - lots of problems disappear after a restart.

[viking33]

Actually, I just restarted the original computer that was having the problems, adn now it's able to read the back up. I'll try a CHKDSK later.

What version of Acronis are you using?

[Doc Watson]

Actually, I just restarted the original computer that was having the problems, adn now it's able to read the back up. I'll try a CHKDSK later.

As Hans said, a reboot should be one of the first things you try when your system starts thinking "independently".

[jmt356]

I’m using Acronis version 11.0, build 8,101.

Stuart, I tried running a CheckDisk of my external hard drive. It got through Phases 1-3 quickly but it’s been stuck on Phase 4 for like an hour and a half and there has been one single bar on the horizontal bar that appeared quickly but none have appeared since then so I think it’s stuck and the external drive is getting hot because it’s been spinning. Is there a way to terminate the application? I am afraid to pull the cord of the external hard drive while this is still running.

[StuartR]

...I tried running a CheckDisk of my external hard drive. It got through Phases 1-3 quickly but it’s been stuck on Phase 4 for like an hour and a half...

I'm not sure which part Phase 4 is, but a full CHKDSK can take 24 hours or more, especially if there are bad sectors detected.

Edited by StuartR to add
Phase 4 is when every sector on the disk is read and rewritten. See this Microsoft Knowledge Base article for details.

[jmt356]

Are you serious? Won't a standard hard drive burn out from overheating after so long? It's like killing a hard drive while trying to fix it. Better not to even check if it's sick, especially if it's an external hard drive like mine since those don't come with fans and can get hot!

Start and Cancel are grayed out in the Check Disk window. I wish they weren't so I could cancel.

I will give it one more hour. If the progress doesn't progress beyond that one bar I'm going to try to shut down the computer. .

[StuartR]

Most disk drives are able to operate 24 hours a day for periods of many years. If you have an external drive in an enclosure with no cooling then I guess this could be a problem. Can you raise it off the surface and put a fan near it?

[jmt356]

I find that hard to believe. I have had two hard drives, the last one in an HP Pavilian DV 2500 laptop with an AMD Turion processor that I was told would make the hard drive last longer because it makes it spin less, and both that hard drive and the one in my Compaq V2306US crashed in a little more than 2 years of use. Before those, I had a Compaq 2190US that crashed and because I had no warranty, I had to pay Best Buy $100+ just to get my documents off the hard drive. I use these laptops 10-15 hours a day, mostly on Word processing, but sometimes on heavy programs as well, and none of them have lasted 3 years. Hard drives are extremely sensitive and vulnerable to jabs and jerky movements inevitable for laptops and they get easily corrupted which is why I try to run a scan disk at least once a month because once those bad sectors start appearing I know death is near.

This external hard drive has lasted me an amazing 5 years but that's becuase I pull it out twice a month to run an Acronis backup and then when I need to restore information after my hard drive has crashed. It ahs lasted me an amazing three laptops but I'm afraid the stress of this Check Disk will kill it too.

[jmt356]

Update: it reached Phase 5!!!!

[jmt356]

I have it delicately balanced on my radio buttons and have turned the AC on

[jmt356]

Just ended. I went into Event Viewer to look for the results, but there is no record of it there. Do only scans of my local hard drive show up in Event Viewer? Where coudl i find the results of my external hard drive scan?

[StuartR]

Replying to a number of your questions.

The result of the CHKDSK should appear in the command window from which you issued the command. I think that it will also add events to the event log if there is a failure.

A typical modern disk drive has a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) of 80,000 hours. Since there are 8760 hours in a year this means that if you had ten disk drives you would expect one failure each year. They also have a typical lifespan of about 5 to 8 years. This means that you should plan to replace a disk drive when it is about 5 years old as the risk of failure will start to increase at that age.

[jmt356]

Stuart, do you mean the result fo teh Checkdisk should appera in the Event Viewer ? Once I got the Event Viewer open, I clicked on Application in the left pane and looked for “Winlogon” in the Source column of the right pane, but found nothing for December. Is it possible that that is only recording Winlogons for my local (C) drive and not for my external (E) drive?

I had a Compaq in around 2003 that crahsed in 2005; then I bought another Compaq in 2005 that crashed in 2008; and an HP in 2008 that crashed in 2010, so clearly I am not getting the 5-8 years of life. Perhaps the 80,000 hours of mean time is only if you are doing light things on the hard drive and not challenging it or if you are only using it a few hours a day verses continually. I use mine continually and this probably wears them down becasue they don't have as much time to rest except for a few hours a night.

[jmt356]

I just ran a Check Disk on the hard drive of the computer itself, and its results DID show up in the Event Viewer. So I conclude that the Check Disk results of the external hard drive are not showing up because the event viewer is to show the events of the local disk only.

Has anyone ever performed a Check Disk on an external drive and been able to find the results of it??

JMT

[Doc Watson]

From here.....

"For a look at the chkdsk log.

Open the Event Viewer...
Start | Run | Type: eventvwr | Click OK |
Look in Application | Listed as Information |
Event ID: 1001
Source: Winlogon
[[Description: This includes file system type; drive letter or GUID, and
volume name or serial number to help determine what volume Chkdsk ran
against. Also included is whether Chkdsk ran because a user scheduled it or
because the dirty bit was set.]]

[[When Autochk runs against a volume at boot time it records its output to a
file called Bootex.log in the root of the volume being checked. The Winlogon
service then moves the contents of each Bootex.log file to the Application
Event log.]]

[[This file states whether Chkdsk encountered any errors and, if so,
whether they were fixed.]]"

"This will create a chkdsk log.

Paste this into a command prompt...

CHKDSK C: /F > C:\CHKDISKLOG.TXT

Hit your Enter key.

Click YES on the popup to reboot.

After CHKDSK has run paste this in Start | Run...

C:\CHKDISKLOG.TXT

Click OK."

And you can check out what Wikipedia has to say here.

HTH

[jmt356]

I ran the Event Viewer and the only thing showing up under Event 1001 that is a Winlogon is the 12/6 Check Disk that I ran on my C drive; nothing for my 12/5 external drive Check Disk shows up.

Then I tried to open a command prompt (I assume this means the same as going to Run and typing cmd in Windows XP), and a Window popped up with white letters on a black backgroudn with "C:\Documents and Settings\JMT>" written out. I then typed after that "CHKDSK C: /F > C:\CHKDISKLOG.TXT" (I couldn't paste it because when I pressed ctrl + V in that black window, "^V" would show up; so it's slightly possible that I misstyped something) and when I pressed enter, the only thing that happened is my cursor moved down to the next line.

[StuartR]

...I then typed after that "CHKDSK C: /F > C:\CHKDISKLOG.TXT" (I couldn't paste it because when I pressed ctrl + V in that black window, "^V" would show up; so it's slightly possible that I misstyped something) and when I pressed enter, the only thing that happened is my cursor moved down to the next line.

That is because all the output has gone to the file C:\CHKDISKLOG.TXT, have you looked in this file? I suspect it contains a message saying it can't lock drive C and asking if you want to schedule a CHKDSK to happen during the next reboot!