ThinkPad W510, Acronis backup fails.

[Charles Mann]

ThinkPad W510, Acronis backup fails.

The failing condition is a LOOONG time for backup (7 to 8 hrs), and a corrupt backup. The failing hardware is a 4318CTO W510 with cpu Q820 @ 1.73ghz, internal hdd Crucial C300 256MAG firmware V006, Lenovo Caddy hdd Hitachi 500gb. Operating system is XPPro (32 bit) Service Pack 3, all updates have been installed by Auto Updates as of 5/10/2011. Factory Reinstall DVD’s have been used several times, but no success. The failing backup application is both Acronis True Image Home 2010 and 2011, Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2011 Suite (demo) has failed also. The backup “to” device is either Fantom 1TB or Fantom 2TB external drive on either eSATA or USB, all fail. I see the activity light on the front of the Fantom drive showing less and less activity as the backup progresses, with long periods of steady light, and then bursts of activity. I have used the Paragon Alignment Tool on the SSD without success. I can take either the C300, or Hitachi 500gb in a caddy placed in a ThinkPad T60p with XPPro and any of the failing backup applications and produce a successful backup! The C300 and Hitachi do not have any partitions except as created with the “factory reinstall”. The W510 appears to function normally aside from the backup problem, and a failure to run Memtest86 rel 4.0 and 3.5b, these both run on the T60p. Now for the “gotcha”, with Win7 installed the backup works on the W510. With the exception of the C300 and Hitachi 500gb the W510 is 100% Lenovo and still under warranty. My work around is to go to the T60p and do the backup. I cannot go to Win7 because of applications that will not run on it. Any help will be appreciated.

Charles

[KongMD]

Hi, Charles. I'm afraid I can't be much help when it comes to your troubles with Acronis True Image Home.

Fortunately, there are several free alternatives that you can try. The one I've been using on my Latitude D630 laptop for the past year or so is Macrium Reflect. I did a quick search, and it looks like it works fine with solid-state drives, so I'll definitely be using it with my W520, when it arrives. After a quick Google search, it looks like Macrium Reflect also works with Windows XP.

I know you want a solution that works with XP Professional, and you mentioned not wanting to switch to Windows 7. For what it's worth, every old application that doesn't work too well w/ Windows XP "Compatibility Mode" works like a charm in the XP Mode, because it's actually a virtual machine of Windows XP. You can download XP Mode for free after you buy Windows 7 Professional (or any of the more expensive versions) - and now I can play Robert E. Lee: Civil War General and Star Wars: Rebellion from decades ago.

The nice thing about Macrium Reflect is that it compresses your disk images, and it's easy to use. You can pick what level of compression you'd like to have for the disk image (I'd go with Maximum, because it doesn't take to long). With my 7200 RPM hard drive, I usually get images that are half the space of what's currently on the drive, and it takes about 27 minutes with ~80 GB used on the drive, and that's over USB 2.0. I've also restored a backup successfully using their Restore CD, and I think the program has scheduling options as well.

Anyway, I hope that this info is of help to you

[Charles Mann]

Dr. Kong,

Thank you for the response to my backup problem. I will look into the use of XP mode in Win7 Pro. I have downloaded Macrium Reflect, and guess what, at 16% the projected time to finish is 5hr, and that is using eSata. Thanks again for the suggestions.

Charles

[davidhbrown]

I wonder whether the discrepancy in duration might be in part because of Windows 6.x's (Vista/7) improved Volume Snapshot Service which appears to have been still in a somewhat rudimentary form (at least in terms of general Windows integration) in XP.

If your backup software isn't able to use VSS, it could spend quite a long time trying to get access to in-use files on a whole system backup. (I used to use Acronis TrueImage 2009/2010 for a while, but not on XP. I think it used VSS, but I'm not sure.)

Currently, I'm backing up my mSATA 80GB C: drive (80GB full) plus around 150-200GB of data files on a D: HDD using Windows 7 Pro x64's Backup Control Panel every morning at 4:00 AM. It's usually done around 4:40, including making a system image of the C: drive. Oh, and that's over a network to my NAS (gigabit Ethernet, but a cheap router that supports only the smallest "jumbo" frames). I also use Genie Timeline Pro for continuous backup during the day.

If you do find that you can run your XP programs under "XP Mode," you should give the built-in backup a try.

[QFoam]

Charles, try running from the Acronis boot CD, and check out this. Good luck!