Register    Login    Search    Articles & downloads     Who We Are    Donate    Jaylach Free Sites

Board index » Technical Forums » General Computing




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 60 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next
Author Message
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 5:24 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
I have two Seagate 2TB external drives that I want to use for backup purposes (system image only). The older drive is USB 2.0 and it works fine, whether it's plugged into a 2.0 or 3.0 port.

My new drive is USB 3.0, and it is causing me problems. It will store data files, but not a system image. When I try to create a system image of my Win 7 Pro C: drive (and by default the EFI System Partition), it goes through the following steps:
- Windows is saving the backup
- Preparing to create the backup
- Preparing media
- Backing up EFI System Partition

At that point I get the Backup Failed screen shown in the attachment.

I am totally perplexed as to why one drive is successful and the other is not. Any help/advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

P.S. I know there are other backup programs, and I may end up using one. But for now, I really hope to understand why Windows Backup works on one external drive and not another.


Attachments:
BackupFailed.JPG
BackupFailed.JPG [ 48.06 KiB | Viewed 26719 times ]

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net
Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 5:50 pm 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:48 pm
Posts: 2946
Location: New Jersey
It has something to do with the formatting/structure of the external drive where the failure is happening. See this thread:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... bab?auth=1

-steve

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 6:38 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
sboots wrote:
It has something to do with the formatting/structure of the external drive where the failure is happening. See this thread:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... bab?auth=1

-steve

Thanks, Steve. I had actually seen that thread and most of the references contained therein. The issue I'm having is that there are just so many methods and suggestions for the problem that I don't know where to start. And this problem has actually occurred on three Seagate 2TB drives. So I was hoping that someone had encountered the same problem and could tell me the exact steps that he/she used to solve it.

Absent that, I guess I will tackle my problem in the following order:
- Work with services.msc
- Do a clean boot and then try to do a backup
- Try shrinking the external drive volume using Diskpart
- Clean the volume using Diskpart and then define a new partition
- Lastly, when I have a day to kill, run checkdsk. (I reformatted one of the errant drives and that took about 18 hours, lol!)

Anything else you can think of? Thanks again.........

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 8:16 pm 
Offline
Resident Geekazoid Administrator
User avatar

Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
Posts: 9438
Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
Make sure that the drive is NOT set up as GPT but IS set up for MBR. Partition Master is a good choice for doing this.
http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html
It will convert between MBR and GPT on the fly without data loss. Two TB is the absolute max for MBR.

I have not 'played' enough to state as fact but I strongly suspect that the Windows 7 image backup will not work on a drive set to GPT. I will soon be in a position to actually test this out at least partially.

There is also the thought of using Partition Master to totally wipe the drive as to partition and data. Then you would be wanting to partition the drive in to two equal partitions. Try an image on one of the partitions.

_________________
Image
Free sites from jaylach.com
I NEVER forget... I just remember late.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 8:41 pm 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:48 pm
Posts: 2946
Location: New Jersey
Ah, unfortunately, the referenced Seagate forum link is no longer working and the person posting that the instructions from the thread there solved the problem has not returned with the details.
The general instructions would seem to be this:

"IF I understood the "solution" correctly - it appears I would need to re-partition the SeaGate drive so that the logical sector size matches the current windows 7 default.
I received a response from SEAGATE Support which solved the problem. They provided detailed steps on bascially how to erase and repartition the 3TB external hard drive with GPT format. Once that was done the GoFlex Desk 3TB drive backed up my system with both an image as well as file copies. I was able to use the Windows 7 Backup system - desired because it also created a disc Image of my system."


Not all that helpful, but contrary to what Jay said about GPT format.

The issue would seem to be 4K Logical Sector sizes probably in use by your newer drive.

-steve

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:00 pm 
Offline
Resident Geekazoid Administrator
User avatar

Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
Posts: 9438
Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
Steve, I can only speak from personal experience but I have not gotten a GPT drive to do a successful Windows image backup. I played with this a bit when I got my second 4TB drive. In my small test I was able to successfully do an image with the Windows image routines. The only way it would work wasted most of the drive but it was just a test. If I set up 1-2TB partition set as MBR with the rest of the drive unallocated it worked. If I converted the drive to GPT under the same partition state it failed.

And yes Steve, I totally agree that this is a 4K boundary issue.

@ bbarry: Is this issue on your old 32bit Win 7 system or your newer 64bit system?

_________________
Image
Free sites from jaylach.com
I NEVER forget... I just remember late.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:16 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
jaylach wrote:
@ bbarry: Is this issue on your old 32bit Win 7 system or your newer 64bit system?

Jay, this issue is on my new system. Since the new external drive is USB 3.0 I thought I would try it there first (and maybe do some drive swapping later).

And per your previous suggestion, I've already checked to make sure that the drive is MBR and not GPT

You mentioned using Partition Master to wipe out the drive. I had actually arrived at what I think is the same solution using the 'clean' command within Diskpart. That is suppose to take the drive down to unallocated space where I could then, like you suggested, create two new partitions. I guess I was just waiting on someone to tell me that it's OK to wipe out my brand new drive. :shock:

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:22 pm 
Offline
Resident Geekazoid Administrator
User avatar

Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
Posts: 9438
Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
And the results?

_________________
Image
Free sites from jaylach.com
I NEVER forget... I just remember late.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:27 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
sboots wrote:
The issue would seem to be 4K Logical Sector sizes probably in use by your newer drive.
-steve

Steve, it sounds like that may be the problem.....the infamous 4K problem.

How can I tell what my Logical Sector size is, and can I change it? All I know is that the 'Allocation Unit size" is 4096 bytes.

And why would the Logical Sector size be different on my new 2TB USB 3.0 drive versus my older 2TB USB 2.0 drive. Does USB connectivity type change Logical Sector size?

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:29 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
jaylach wrote:
And the results?

The results of what? Me trying to get up enough nerve to wipe out my new drive????

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:34 pm 
Offline
Resident Geekazoid Administrator
User avatar

Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
Posts: 9438
Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
Oh... I thought that you were going ahead and wiping the drive.

Yes I would wipe the drive. I always do so when I get a new drive. Still, in this situation, wait for Steve's response before doing so.

_________________
Image
Free sites from jaylach.com
I NEVER forget... I just remember late.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 9:47 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
jaylach wrote:
Oh... I thought that you were going ahead and wiping the drive.

Yes I would wipe the drive. I always do so when I get a new drive. Still, in this situation, wait for Steve's response before doing so.

OK, OK........don't rush me, lol.

I was drawing a blank on using Partition Master. For some reason I thought that was another program that you liked to use. I didn't associate it with being EaseUS Partition Master, which I started using recently (and like). So that's what I will use.

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 10:09 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
Jay, Partition Manager has a command for Wipe Partition, but not for Wipe Disk. I think my external drive only has one partition, but I can't be sure that something is not hidden. So I was hoping to wipe the entire drive.

And then it wants to know how many times to wipe the partition. The User Manual is not much help in this regard.

What do you usually do on your new drives?

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 11:39 pm 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:48 pm
Posts: 2946
Location: New Jersey
bbarry wrote:
sboots wrote:
The issue would seem to be 4K Logical Sector sizes probably in use by your newer drive.
-steve

Steve, it sounds like that may be the problem.....the infamous 4K problem.

How can I tell what my Logical Sector size is, and can I change it? All I know is that the 'Allocation Unit size" is 4096 bytes.

And why would the Logical Sector size be different on my new 2TB USB 3.0 drive versus my older 2TB USB 2.0 drive. Does USB connectivity type change Logical Sector size?


I suspect that the sector size was defined when the drive was manufactured. It's not a USB 2 vs. 3 thing, just what the drive manufacturer did when creating/preparing the newer drive.

-steve

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 11:42 pm 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:48 pm
Posts: 2946
Location: New Jersey
jaylach wrote:
Oh... I thought that you were going ahead and wiping the drive.

Yes I would wipe the drive. I always do so when I get a new drive. Still, in this situation, wait for Steve's response before doing so.


No need to wait for me, and wiping the drive is optional, in my opinion. You'll delete the existing partition, create the new one(s) and define the structure when creating the partitions and formatting. I'll go with Jay's advice on not setting it up as GPT, but rather MBR. I only pointed out the "solution" referred to in the thread I linked that involved a Seagate drive experiencing the issue.

-steve

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 12:00 am 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
sboots wrote:
jaylach wrote:
Oh... I thought that you were going ahead and wiping the drive.

Yes I would wipe the drive. I always do so when I get a new drive. Still, in this situation, wait for Steve's response before doing so.


No need to wait for me, and wiping the drive is optional, in my opinion. You'll delete the existing partition, create the new one(s) and define the structure when creating the partitions and formatting. I'll go with Jay's advice on not setting it up as GPT, but rather MBR. I only pointed out the "solution" referred to in the thread I linked that involved a Seagate drive experiencing the issue.

-steve

OK, Steve, now you have me confused. Are you suggesting that instead of wiping the drive that I just delete the partition? And then are you suggesting that in the process of creating a new partition(s) and formatting that I can define a structure that will then negate the 4K issue and solve my backup problem?

In what little drive formatting I've done, the only choices I had were Allocation Unit Size (4096 or greater) and File System (e.g., NTFS). So what is this structure that you say I can define? And how?

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 11:29 am 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:48 pm
Posts: 2946
Location: New Jersey
I often confuse myself, too.
:-)
No, sector size is not something you can control. I was referring to the settings you can define, but failed to explain that with my "define the structure" phrase. Sorry about that.
The act of deleting and recreating the partition may resolve the problem in that the partition table and layout of the partition to physical disk changes somewhat. It may not resolve it at all, but it won't hurt anything either.

-steve

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 11:50 am 
Offline
welcoming committee
User avatar

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:47 am
Posts: 2399
Location: North Central Arkansas
sboots wrote:
I often confuse myself, too.
:-)
No, sector size is not something you can control. I was referring to the settings you can define, but failed to explain that with my "define the structure" phrase. Sorry about that.
The act of deleting and recreating the partition may resolve the problem in that the partition table and layout of the partition to physical disk changes somewhat. It may not resolve it at all, but it won't hurt anything either.

-steve

Thanks, Steve. After sleeping on the issue, I am getting ready to wipe my drive and create a new partition.........just to see what happens.

But I have just about resigned myself to the fact that Windows backup will never work with these 4K drives. So if I want to use my new drive for backup purposes, I guess I need to find a new software program that will handle it. Do you have any suggestions? From what I read, Macrium Free also has issues with these 4K drives.

When I started this thread, I mentioned that my older Seagate drive is USB 2.0 and it works fine, but that my new drive is USB 3.0 and it is causing me problems. Well, you were absolutely correct.....USB speed has nothing to do with it. My old drive has a 512 byte sector size, and my new drive has the 4096 byte sector size. Darn...... :(

_________________
BB
http://barrypatch.net


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 8:44 pm 
Offline
Resident Geekazoid Administrator
User avatar

Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
Posts: 9438
Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
It MUST be remembered that if there is a problem with the drive structure that is causing this it is not the allocation size of 4096KB, it just is not. The internal drive to which I do images is formatted with an allocation size of 4096. You can right click on the drive icon and select to format and set the allocation size to 512 if you want, who knows, might even help. I don't think (not sure) that you can do this in Drive Management.
Attachment:
format dialog.jpg
format dialog.jpg [ 48.67 KiB | Viewed 26657 times ]


The 4K boundary issue is a totally different critter and was not supposed to affect drives up to 2TB. You could try partitioning the drive. I am sure that you do not need 2TB for an OS image. You could partition the larger partition for other uses and try the remaining space for the image. Figure the image partition as around 1.5 the size of what you figure your finished C: drive to be.

While this would not help with the old system it could with the new. If I remember correctly the new system was built by Velocity. Regardless if Velocity or not the system is not performing properly and is under warranty. Contact them! You may well find that there is a patch that will emulate the 'old' drive structure in relation to the new.

_________________
Image
Free sites from jaylach.com
I NEVER forget... I just remember late.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 10:02 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee

Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 5:52 pm
Posts: 970
Jay, he is running windows 7 and 7 doesn't support native 4096. His system is indeed performing as expected.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 10:11 pm 
Offline
Resident Geekazoid Administrator
User avatar

Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
Posts: 9438
Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
I'm missing something here. My above screenshot IS Windows 7.

_________________
Image
Free sites from jaylach.com
I NEVER forget... I just remember late.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2016 12:35 am 
Offline
welcoming committee

Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 5:52 pm
Posts: 970
Jay, when I look at the on my machine, I don't even have 512, it starts at 4096, but when I use FSutil, is shows the advanced 512 allocation


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 4:56 pm 
Offline
Resident Geekazoid Administrator
User avatar

Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
Posts: 9438
Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
Here is my solution to doing an image with these Seagate drives.

Test drive: Seagate Backup Plus 2TB USB 3 external setup initially for a Mac.
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

Problem 1: If drive is connected at boot time the loading of Windows will fail. Drive can be connected after Windows is loaded without operational issue if used for data storage.

Problem 2: Image backup using Windows Backup will fail.

As to 'Problem 1' the drive comes set up as MBR. Converting to GPT will solve this issue. This conversion can be done without data loss using either EaseUS Partition Master(actually tested with success) or Seagate's DiscWizard.(not tested) (DiskWizard is a lite version of Acronis)

As to 'Problem 2' the drive is Seagate so go to Seagate for the solution. While I cannot seem to succeed with an image using Windows Image Backup Seagate's DiscWizard.does just fine. Doing an image of my 129GB OS partition took ~15 minutes to the Seagate 2TB external USB drive.

I DID have a minor issue restoring the image though. Booting to the DiscWizard recovery CD failed as I forgot to make it bootable; probable cause anyway. I then started a recovery from within Windows 7 and after a reboot I got the recovery screen but it reported that it could not access the image. This was solved by switching from a USB 3 port to a USB 2 port. This makes sense as my USB 3 support depends on a Windows driver. The image restore was a success but took a while which would be expected being connected via USB 2.

A note on DiscWizard...

As stated DiscWizard is a lite version of Acronis, it is also free. However, if you are interested in the full Acronis True Image package, you can get it for $30.00 instead of the normal $50.00 if you install DiscWizard first and then use the buy option. The $30.00 includes 2 licenses and also Acronis Universal Restore.

_________________
Image
Free sites from jaylach.com
I NEVER forget... I just remember late.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 5:33 pm 
Offline
welcoming committee

Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 5:52 pm
Posts: 970
The recovery disk should have the necessary drivers for USB3


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 5:58 pm 
Offline
Resident Geekazoid Administrator
User avatar

Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
Posts: 9438
Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
Peter2150 wrote:
The recovery disk should have the necessary drivers for USB3


Thanks for bringing that up Pete. I worded a part of my last post in a terrible manner. I did not boot to the actual recovery CD as it would not boot, I saw an option to make the disk bootable but failed to do so. I started the restore from within Windows which, when re-booted, brought up the recovery screens.

Sorry for the bad explanation, going to go and edit to correct. Using an actual bootable recovery CD may well do as you say and enable USB 3.

I did go ahead and accept the $30.00 offer. Heck, for 2 licenses and also Acronis Universal Restore it was hard to say no.

Actually I had never heard of Acronis Universal Restore. Here is what it is supposed to do.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/2149

_________________
Image
Free sites from jaylach.com
I NEVER forget... I just remember late.


Top 
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
 
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 60 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next

Board index » Technical Forums » General Computing


Who is online

Registered users: No registered users

 
 

 
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:

Similar topics


Jump to:  

cron