Acronis True Image (and Macrium, Windows Backup) won't create image/clone of C-drive - Windows 7 freezes

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Ben112233

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My system:
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
C-drive is a 250GB Plextor SSD
Acronis True Image 2011

Background:
I setup a weekly scheduled disk image of my system drive (C:) that gets sent to an external HDD (4TB). This was working very well for months with incremental backups most of the time and a full backup every five or six weeks. I recently noticed that my backups haven't been happening since mid-August. No errors or anything. They're just not running.

I opened Acronis and tried to run a backup manually. But when I click the Back Up button, nothing would happen. I recreated my backup scheme as a new backup and ran that. It runs, but my computer slows to a crawl and eventually (within minutes) nothing responds to my clicks in or out of Acronis. The hard drive light on the case lights up, and even after I've let it run for several hours, it never finishes. I have to reset the computer to get it back up and running again.

Changing compression levels or priorities doesn't make a difference.

I installed Macrium Reflect and tried running the same disk image backup there, but I had the same problem.

I also tried doing the backup using Windows backup program. The backup doesn't slow down or crash my computer, but it does fail at the end of the process. I get this error:

One of the backup files could not be created.
Details: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
Error code: 0x8078002A

I can back up a non-system drive just fine, so it seems like it's something wrong with my C-drive. But I've had no other problems with it other than this.

Any help you could give me would be appreciated!
 
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Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

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Did you check the acronis log file? Also have a look at the event viewer for any errors. It sounds like one of your drives is nearing full, or one of your drives is possibly going bad (could be the source or destination drive). Grab a 3rd party utility like seatools or WD Datalifeguard to check your drives. You will most likely need to replace a bad drive.
 
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Ben112233

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Thanks for the advice!

The Acronis logs didn't show anything. It's like the backup never happened. I also didn't see any problems in the Event Viewer.

I had a similar problem happen maybe a year ago. Back then, though, the backup in Acronis would run and then fail at the end. No slowdown. I replaced the 4TB backup HDD and it was working well since then. Maybe it was my SSD screwing up all this time. The SDD is relatively new, too, though. Less than a year old. I'll have to do diagnostics on both I guess.
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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someone in another forum that is an acronis user suggested creating a bootable disk in acronis, then rebooting with that ddisk and cloning - when it boots from the disk it loads Linux or a form of it, and clones without opening the OS

worth a try

otherwise google for EaseUS ToDo and download their freeware version - i've been using it since 2008 and love it - real simple, easy to follow GUI
 
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Ben112233

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Well, I tried updating the firmware of my Plextor M6s SSD and got nowhere. When trying through the Plextools utility, it says, "There is no new update." That's definitely wrong since I bought up before several firmware updates even went online. I tried to manually update it by just executing the firmware update file and got the message, "No matched drives detected." Ugh

So still kind of ambiguous, but not a great sign. Plextools also won't analyze the health of the drive, maybe because it doesn't detect it?

Kind of sounds like this problem, though I can't reproduce it since I don't have Windows 8.1. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-hardware/windows-81-detecting-ssd-as-an-hdd/ed05188b-607b-45f5-96ae-6c4bacae7a69?auth=1

Update: I ran CrystalDiskInfo and it said the drive health is good for both my SSD and my external HDD. I don't really know where to go from here. I can't update the firmware. I guess I'll contact Plextor support.
 
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Ben112233

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After some advice from someone on sevenforums.com, I tried running a chkdsk. Here's part of my post there:

Then I ran chkdsk and got this error after I restarted:
Cannot open volume for direct access.
Autochk cannot run due to an error caused by a recently installed software package.
Use the system restore feature from the control panel to restore the system to a point prior to the recent software package installation
An unspecified error occurred (766f6c756d652e63 3f1).
Unfortunately, for some stupid reason, the oldest system restore point I have is from this morning when I updated Windows. But the original imaging problem is at least three weeks old. I don't have a system restore point going back that far or I would've used it.

Anyway, I'm at a loss.

Do you think this is really a problem with my SDD or one of my HDD? If that seems likely, I'm inclined to just replace the drive and start with a fresh install. And maybe get a better brand SSD like Intel (I'd get Samsung, but I've had problems with Samsung SSDs and ASUS motherboards in the past).
 
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Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

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Did you run chkdsk on the SSD or the HDD? I'd try running it on both. Also as Ralph suggested, you can make an Acronis Rescue Disk. Create one, then boot from it. See if it will allow you to backup properly from there. That should elimate windows as a problem.

It sounds like one of your drives is going bad or misbehaving. You did say you can backup other drives to the 4TB external with no problems, right? You're just having trouble backing up the C drive (SSD) correct? If this is the case I'd be suspicious of the SSD, especially if you can't run a chkdsk on it.

Also, do check out the Acronis forums. They do have a good group of people there, or at least I never had problems getting answers there.
 
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Ben112233

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I burned a rescue disk through Windows and was going to try and run a chkdsk through WinRE. I can try using an Acronis Rescue Disk, too (or is that the same thing?).

So if I do that and chkdsk still won't run, that points more towards the SSD as the problem, right?

As for backing up other drives, for the most part I don't have a problem with non-C drives. And I think I mentioned earlier that I had a similar problem (Acronis backups failing at the end) with a previous 4TB drive that I then replaced. While the SSD isn't really older than my current 4TB HDD, it seems less likely that I'd have two failed 4TB HDDs in a row.

I have a post sitting on the Acronis forum, so hopefully they have something to add. I was going to check for updates, but when I tried to register my key, I saw it was blacklisted! Serves me right for buying a software key off of eBay... (this was back in 2011). Oh well...

Thanks again for the suggestions! I'll be updating this thread if I learn more.
 
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Ben112233

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I came home from work today to find the computer had shut down. When I started it back up again and checked the Event Viewer, I saw this error:

The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume System Reserved.

System Reserved is the small partition that was created when I installed Windows 7 on this SSD.
 
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Ben112233

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I managed to run a read-only chkdsk while in Windows, but it found no errors.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk c:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
350464 file records processed.
File verification completed.
1096 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
2 EA records processed.
48 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
451846 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
350464 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
50692 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35980832 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

249954303 KB total disk space.
116514416 KB in 297251 files.
164460 KB in 50693 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
524075 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
132751352 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
62488575 total allocation units on disk.
33187838 allocation units available on disk.
 
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Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

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The system reserved partition is seperate from the C partition and since the system reseved partition has no drive letter you can't run chkdsk on it. If you have acronis imaging the entire drive, the sytem reserved partition is included in the backup. If the system reserve partition does indeed have problems, it can cause the backup to fail.
 
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Ben112233

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I was able to run chkdsk on the partition by giving it a drive letter in Computer Management. Or at least Windows said I ran chkdsk! It said there were no problems with it.

Also, if I uncheck the System Reserved partition when trying to do a disk image/backup, it still screws up. So that's not the (only?) cause of my problems.

By the way, I did manage to solve my Event Viewer errors. I was getting a ton, like one every few minutes. They seemed to be associated with the System Restore turning on and off. After some googling, I disabled System Restore completely by turning it off. Then I rebooted and turned it back on again. Haven't gotten any Event Viewer errors since then.

But the original problem remains. I still haven't had time to run a chkdsk using a rescue disk yet. And I'm a little worried that I might mess up the computer even more. I really need a working computer through the end of the month, so I'll probably hold off on any more major solutions until then.
 
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