Backup error – bad sector on hard drive

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I have several friends and family members that I have set up to use Acronis for weekly backups. I visited one of them yesterday, and no backups have completed for the last five months. She is running Acronis TI Home 2009.

The first thing we did was check her anti-malware stuff. She has both MSE and Webroot running. We got the latest updates for Webroot installed. Next, I checked the Acronis log file, and it showed something like: “unable to find volume name XXX”, which made no sense. This was the location to write the backup – apparently her partition information had changed.

I fired up the scheduled task, and edited it to write the correct location. After 15 minutes we got an error message something like “fail to read data from the disk” with a sector number. I have attached a jpg for a similar message (not from her PC) that I found on the internet.

We spent over an hour running the Windows disk checker tool. When the system rebooted, not much of anything would work. I could not load Task Manager without getting an error. I could not even shut down the PC – the screen would flash, Explorer would vanish and reload. Eventually, Windows gave us a web page saying that it had a serious problem accessing the hard disk.

After a while, I gave up and pressed the power OFF button. The I re-did everything described in the previous paragraph. After another hour and 15 minutes, we had the same results. I hate using the power button when Windows is running, so I created a desktop shortcut to reboot her PC.

Surprisingly, this time the system acted normally after rebooting. I told her not to shut down or restart the PC until I can get back to her next week. I also suggested she should run the Acronis backup at the first available opportunity (hoping that it will get around the error).

I am open to suggestions for how to proceed. I’m pretty sure she has some bad sectors on her hard drive. Is there any easy way to fix them permanently? If not, I have plenty of spare hard drives hanging around. If the Acronis backup completes, we can transfer all her stuff to a new drive.

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Run chkdsk /f /r. It will recover all information it can from the bad sectors.
If everything is running as it should (other than Acronis), probably chkdsk /f /r will be enough.

Once you complete that, run Acronis to backup and dump that drive. I would still copy relevant documents and files independently of the Acronis image (just to be double safe).

If chkdsk /r /f doesn’t do it, maybe a specialized tool like Steve Gibson’s SpinRite will help.

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Run chkdsk /f /r. It will recover all information it can from the bad sectors.
If everything is running as it should (other than Acronis), probably chkdsk /f /r will be enough.

Once you complete that, run Acronis to backup and dump that drive. I would still copy relevant documents and files independently of the Acronis image (just to be double safe).

If chkdsk /r /f doesn’t do it, maybe a specialized tool like Steve Gibson’s SpinRite will help.

Thanks for the suggestion – I had forgotten about CHKDSK /R. Based on my past experience, that takes even longer to run than what I already tried!

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For those lurking, chkdsk /r implies /f, so there’s no reason to explicitly specify /f.

Zig

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I would also run Malwarebytes, Super anti spyware, and tddskiller . No one application will detect all malware.

Jerry

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If that is really a message from your hard disk – not a connection problem – then the hard disk is on it’s last legs and needs to be replaced.
Modern hard disks have built-in error correction and should never report bad sectors to Windows. I would also check the data and power cable connections – un-plug and re-plug.

cheers, Paul

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Still waiting patiently for my friend to run CHKDSK /R – she is afraid it will mess up her computer :flee:

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Tell her to back it up, then run chkdsk.

cheers, Paul

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Tell her to back it up, then run chkdsk.

cheers, Paul

As described in the first post, Acronis backup fails with a “bad sector” error message. The CHKDSK / R is an attempt to repair the bad sectors.

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You might want to try individual file copy of important files to back them up.

Jerry

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It too way too long to get to this point, but …. finally got to run CHKDSK / R, and then to run the Acronis backup again.
I’m a happy camper – the backup succeeded, and her files are safe now!

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I’d be very suspicious of the hard disk. Any bad sectors reported may mean the disk is on it’s way out. Download the disk manufacturer’s diagnostic program and check the disk.

cheers, Paul

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I’d be very suspicious of the hard disk. Any bad sectors reported may mean the disk is on it’s way out. Download the disk manufacturer’s diagnostic program and check the disk.

cheers, Paul

I would love to do that – but it may not happen for several months. It took two weeks for two baby steps:
CHKDSK /R and subsequent backup.

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I’d be very suspicious of the hard disk. Any bad sectors reported may mean the disk is on it’s way out. Download the disk manufacturer’s diagnostic program and check the disk.

cheers, Paul

I agree – now started moving her towards this next step …

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I had the same problem tonight – Acronis TI Home 2012. My reading of the error message was that Acronis could not read from the sector, but I am frequently wrong. However, this is the second time Acronis has let me down – different drives involved. I think I’m going to junk all the on-machine backup programs and go to Carbonite.

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I had the same problem tonight – Acronis TI Home 2012. My reading of the error message was that Acronis could not read from the sector, but I am frequently wrong. However, this is the second time Acronis has let me down – different drives involved. I think I’m going to junk all the on-machine backup programs and go to Carbonite.

Don’t discount that error message! Every time I have seen it, the hard drive had bad sectors. In all cases but one, I could get the drive working properly after using CHKDSK /R. I had one instance of hard drive failure, on a VERY old laptop. I used Acronis to restore a prior image to a new laptop drive.

RE: Carbonite, I used an online backup service for about one week. I did not really like it much, since it took a LONG time to backup a single machine – and I have four machines to backup. I decided Acronis was a better fit.

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I had the same problem tonight – Acronis TI Home 2012. My reading of the error message was that Acronis could not read from the sector, but I am frequently wrong. However, this is the second time Acronis has let me down

oliverrp,
Hello…Sound advice to “chkdsk/r ” Not that Acronis 2012 is not without problems just check out their forum Acronis Forum However there are several free Imaging programs that work fine …I use Macrium Reflect ( their up to Version 5 now) It can Image , Clone, and run from a “Boot Disk” I use Acronis 2010 V-7046 and it has never failed me yet ( wouldn’t up date to newer versions ) along with Macrium Reflect Free [/url]:cheers: Regards Fred

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I use Acronis 2010 V-7046 and it has never failed me yet ( wouldn’t up date to newer versions ) along with Macrium Reflect Free:cheers: Regards Fred

I also decided Acronis 2010 V-7046 is the “best” version to run on all my computers.

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Several months may be the difference between a working system and a major crash if the disk is flakey.

cheers, Paul

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Oliver,

(Although I’m no fan of Acronis) – look to your HD first (CHKDSK /R, etc) before making wholesale changes to your backup strategy – GIGO!!

Zig

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Oliver,

look to your HD first (CHKDSK /R, etc) before making wholesale changes to your backup strategy

This. I find it unimaginable that Acronis would randomly “invent” disk I/O errors.

Install the free Hard Disk Sentinel from http://www.hdsentinel.com/
and you will immediately know the real state of the disk. Drives have a lot of information in them about bad sectors etc but you can’t get at it without such a program. If it’s a Western Digital drive don’t bother with their own diag program, I’ve tried it, HDDSentinel is a thousand times better.

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Mr Brisvegas,

HD sentinal may be good but it does cost, where the manufacturers software does not.
Is it that much better that the cost is justified?

cheers, Paul

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HD sentinal may be good but it does cost, where the manufacturers software does not.
Is it that much better that the cost is justified?

HDSentinel may be used for free. Download the Trial edition – for our purposes here it is the same as the Professional version. I used it for some years without problem. In my case I decided to pay for it as it was useful in my work and because I am a programmer and can appreciate how much of the authors effort goes into it. Not being forced to pay makes me more likely to pay, if that makes sense.

But for the case we are talking about here, which can be a one-off usage, HDDSentinel gives access to the raw data of the S.M.A.R.T. info so you can know how many pending sector remaps, reallocated sectors and so on are on the drive. Also very clearly presented.

My only tip once you’ve installed HDDSentinel is to change the raw data to decimal instead of Hex. Not sure why it defaults to hex. Anyway just right-click the SMART table and choose Decimal data fields.

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HDSentinel may be used for free. Download the Trial edition – for our purposes here it is the same as the Professional version. I used it for some years without problem. In my case I decided to pay for it as it was useful in my work and because I am a programmer and can appreciate how much of the authors effort goes into it. Not being forced to pay makes me more likely to pay, if that makes sense.

But for the case we are talking about here, which can be a one-off usage, HDDSentinel gives access to the raw data of the S.M.A.R.T. info so you can know how many pending sector remaps, reallocated sectors and so on are on the drive. Also very clearly presented.

My only tip once you’ve installed HDDSentinel is to change the raw data to decimal instead of Hex. Not sure why it defaults to hex. Anyway just right-click the SMART table and choose Decimal data fields.

I downloaded and installed the trial of HD Sentinel on Sunday – this looks pretty interesting. I will try to get my friend to install it, and see what her “hard disk health” looks like.

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I downloaded and installed the trial of HD Sentinel on Sunday – this looks pretty interesting. I will try to get my friend to install it, and see what her “hard disk health” looks like.

I found out yesterday that her PC has gotten VERY slow in the last month. And HD Sentinel Pro confirms that her hard drive is failing. I am replacing her hard drive today, as well as her external backup drive. I like HD Sentinel Pro enough that I purchased a license to support them.

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I found out yesterday that her PC has gotten VERY slow in the last month. And HD Sentinel Pro confirms that her hard drive is failing. I am replacing her hard drive today, as well as her external backup drive. I like HD Sentinel Pro enough that I purchased a license to support them.

The hard drive replacement went smoothly – she is still using Acronis TI 2009. After booting up Windows XP, HD Sentinel Pro reports no errors on the new drive.

But she still complained about how slow her PC was while surfing the internet. One problem is that she had reverted to using MS Internet Explorer, and it was bogged down with ads. So I demonstrated for her how Ad-Blocking on Firefox helps speed things up.

In addition, she had two AV programs running. She had renewed her WebRoot subscription last month, but had been using MS Security Essentials for the last year. I uninstalled MSE and now her PC seems to be running smoothly again.

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Great news. Thanks for updating us with the progress. Out of interest, what did you use to copy to the new hard drive? Sounds like that part went smoothly so it would be good to know which tool you used. Was it Acronis?

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Yes, I used the Acronis boot CD to restore the backup image (which was on a USB hard drive).

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