perfect disk - not so perfect?? Question

I'm running winXP Home, SP2 on a 3.0Gh system.
I have 2 SATA hard drives (not RAID) and an external HD.
I use Acronis True Image to create a mirror image of the 2 HD's and use the
external HD to hold the image files.

Perfect Disk ran ok on the 2 HD's, no problems. When i tried it on the external
HD, it 'appeared' to go into a loop on the image files. This lasted for 4 hours and
then i stopped it.
I could access the external HD files and they appeared ok.
I removed Perfect disk and tried using the winxp defrag program. It started doing
the same thing as perfect disk.

I had to reformat the external HD and re-create the image files. Then when i
ran the winXp defrag program, it finished in about 12 minutes.
The files were titled as 0114051.tib, 0114052.tib, 0114053.tib and 011405.tib
(month,day,year and acronis provides the last digit in file names).

Anyone have this or a simular problem with perfect disk??

thanks,
savagcl

 

Hi Christer,

From what you said, it seems the answer would be to set up a fairly small
partition on the external HD exclusively for the backups and never defrag it.
Just do deletes (and adds) of the images as needed.

Sounds ok to me.

thanks for the feedback,
savagcl

 

I set up a 50 Gig partition. That gives me enough room for holding 3 backups.
A backup foe me takes approx 12-15Gig so 50 is good.

If i ever hit 3 bad ones in a row, I'll get a new backup software package But i
have had good luck with acronis. Have had to apply an image twice since i had
it and both times was error-free. Altho i have heard horror stories, i havent had
any. Maybe its because i always verify the images i create.

thanks,
savagcl

 

Acronis has a small area on a HD that it uses for changes since last backup. I
dont use it since it only takes maybe 25 minutes for a full system backup and
a little less time to restore it. I keep it there because use the F11 key during
boot time to restore everything (if needed). Their alternate method is to use a
bootable CD (which also works, i tried it once) and then not have the small
changes area.

I copied the backup image (a new one) to a different partition on the external
HD, re-installed Perfect Disk and did another defrag. This time it worked!!! So
i suspect a bad image may have made PD start looping. Never will find out what
happened. Hey, its working now so guess i'll buy it (and cross my fingers).

Thanks, Guy,
savagcl

 

A follow-up.

The multi-image files (1,2,3,4) was produced because of the FAT32 file size
limit and not acronis true image software.
I reformatted the external drive as NTFS and only 1 files was created and it
was a couple of gigs smaller than the multi-file output (10.xx vs 13.xx gig).
Quite a bit of savings there.

The NTFS file did work successfully in Perfect disk, so i still think that PD is
attempting to merge the FAT32 image files into 1 file and maybe its hitting that file limit....... Or am i totally off-base??

savagcl

 

Christer,

A good question of course, i dont remember if it showed any fragments before
defragging.
Over the next couple of days, i'll be creating some more backups, just to be
safe, and i'll make sure i check if any fragments are present before defrag.

Quick response - do you live on this forum?

Have a good one,
savagcl

 

Yes, there is. It can check the file it just created and let you know it's ok (or
not). I've never seen one that was not ok. I try and check it immediately
after creating, well i checked it the first few time i did it and they were all ok.

So now i just spot check every so often. Creation time and check time is about
equal (1/2 hour to create , 1/2 hour to check).


glad you have another life.

savagcl