Is there any disk image software that recovers from bad media?

  • Thread starter Thread starter *Vanguard*
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*Vanguard*

Okay, I'm really sick and tired of DiskImage. Nice concept but
absolutely no graceful recovery from a bad CD-R. I'm trying to make a
disk image of my large drive. This means lots of CD-Rs will get used.
I keep a disk image on a different partition of the hard drive but that
is an intermediate disk image. Eventually I want to cut a disk image on
removable media in case the hard drive goes bad. I may eventually get
another hard drive but it will always be spinning and just as
susceptible to failure as the current hard drive. That's why I'd like
to get an image burnt onto CD-Rs. It will take a lot of CD-Rs to save
the disk image, anywhere from 24 to 48 of them. There is NO media for
CD that I've yet used that won't have some bad discs. If you buy them
in lots of, say, a hundred then about 2 to 5 are bad.

You're saving the disk image onto CD-Rs. Somewhere along the way, one
of the discs results in a failure (damn peculiar how it is always right
at the end of writing onto the disc when it gets full). Maybe you've
complete a couple dozen discs and, bloop, an error pops up, something
like "Error #1805 - Error writting to image file." Yeah, so what?
Scrap what got written onto that disc and start from the same point used
for that disc when using a new disc. But, no, Powerquest has never
provided any recovery for bad media. As I recall when trialing Ghost,
it did not have any recovery, either. This sucks and virtually makes
using CD-Rs or even DVDs impossible for saving disk images unless you
have very little to save. However, if you have so little to save then
you might as well as use tape. It's slow but you don't have much to
save. I do have a tape drive and already did a data-only full backup -
all 35 gigs of it along with doubling the time to perform a verify since
there's no point in having backups that you don't know are any good only
to find out they are bad when you need them for a restore. I waste
hours trying to save a disk image onto CD-Rs only to have it completely
trashed because of one bad disc. What is so freaking difficult about
keeping track of the last sector read on the prior disc so the program
knows where to begin on the next one. It's just one ****ing variable in
the program. Then WHEN - not if - a bad disc is encountered, it gets
tossed and the imaging continues from with the next sector after the
last one read and written on the prior successful disc write.

So I'm trying to find a product that will recover from a bad CD-R when
saving a disk image. Anyone know of any? DiskImage doesn't. That's
the one I've used for several years. I gave up on Norton Ghost about a
year ago. I got it with Norton Systemworks Pro and tested it over a
month but discovered there were a lot of problems with their "personal"
version (don't know about their "corporate" version). What other disk
image software is there? If there is something else, does it recover?
If it cannot recover from bad media then it's nothing I want. I've
already got software that does that!
 
Ahead Nero comes with a program called BackItUp. This program does recover
from a bad disk error as your describing. It warns you of the bad disk and
then prompts you to replace it with a new disk then continues on your merry
way. You can download the free trial version of Nero6 Ultra here:
http://www.nero.com/us/nero6-ultraedition.php
Every aspect of the trial works for I believe it's 60 days and then you
would have to purchase it but purchasing it is very highly recommended. As
far as I am concerned it's the best burning package I've seen out there.

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"wojo" said in news:[email protected]:
Ahead Nero comes with a program called BackItUp. This program does
recover from a bad disk error as your describing. It warns you of the
bad disk and then prompts you to replace it with a new disk then
continues on your merry way. You can download the free trial version
of Nero6 Ultra here: http://www.nero.com/us/nero6-ultraedition.php
Every aspect of the trial works for I believe it's 60 days and then
you would have to purchase it but purchasing it is very highly
recommended. As far as I am concerned it's the best burning package
I've seen out there.
Click to expand...

I'm currently at Nero 5.5.10.54, the last version before customers get
forced to pay for the upgrade to version 6.

The problem with backup software is that it is a logical backup, not a
physical backup. Files are read and copied onto the target media. You
can run into problem on a restore of EFS-protected files. You can run
into a problem that the logical restore of reading files and trying to
replace them onto the hard drive won't give you the same exact image
because files were inuse and they are not placed exactly as they were
before. The Veritas Backup Exec Desktop program also lets me select the
CD-RW drive so I could use it to span a backup file across multiple
CD-Rs but that's not the type of backup that I'm looking for.

With DriveImage, the first CD was bootable. I didn't need the bootable
floppies. I could just boot right from the disk image CD and start the
recovery (not a logical data restore but a physical drive recovery).
With a logical data backup, you have to use a bootable floppy. Also, in
some full recovery modes for backup programs, this bootable floppy
merely lets you install Windows which then automatically starts the
backup program to perform a logical restore (boot by floppy, installs
Windows, auto-runs the backup program, does a logical restore). That's
how the Veritas "Disaster Recovery Set" works. You need up to 6
floppies (equivalent to the Windows 2000 startup floppy set), the
Windows installation CD, and you create a full backup (on tape or CD).
This takes a hell of a lot of time not only in creating this recovery
set - which is STILL a *logical* backup - but also in using it because
of the time to boot from the multiple-diskette set and installing
Windows before it even gets to run its minimal version of its backup
program. I did that once. I never used it again. It also was not a
*physical* disk image backup. I think a later version of the Veritas
Backup Exec Desktop (and probably the one that I have) lets you
eliminate the bootable floppy set by letting you make the first CD-R
bootable. Still doesn't eliminate it being a logical backup.

I need a *physical* disk imaging product that reads the hard drive
sector by sector and restores that *exact* physical image on the hard
drive. I don't want it reading anything from a file system (which means
you have to boot that OS to provide the file system in the first place).
Ghost had the problem that it defaulted to a logical disk image because
it read the files instead of the sectors. You can use the /IA switch
but, when I trialed it, it would include the unused sectors in the disk
image to the image file was huge. DriveImage would do a
sector-by-sector read of the hard drive regardless of what OS was on
that partition, do compression to minimize the media count, and skip the
unused sectors to further reduce the image file size. Unfortunately it
has absolutely no graceful recovery from media failures. I don't recall
Ghost having graceful recovery, either.

I did take a look at Nero's ViewIt tutorial on how to use BackItUp. It
mentions when selecting a target of where to place the data that you can
select "Nero Image Recorder". Does this force a reboot of the computer
to then run a DOS-mode-like version of its program? Obviously you
cannot create an exact image of the hard drive with a live OS currently
running and making changes to the disk when you are running the disk
image. There was nothing described of "image recorder" in the manual.
 
Hi, Vanguard.

Your CD burner probably uses CDFS or UDF, not FAT or NTFS. Therefore, a
physical backup from HD to CD is probably not possible - with ANY software.
HD to HD, yes, but not HD to CD to HD.

I'm no expert on this, so corrections are welcome. ;^}

RC
 
Incorrect. I use norton ghost 2003. It will backup up your hard
drive to the cd. (You may need to make a boot disk to boot your cd)

You can also restore from the cd as well. (Note-It takes a little
time to learn ghost)


Brian
 
*Vanguard* said:
"wojo" said in


I'm currently at Nero 5.5.10.54, the last version before customers get
forced to pay for the upgrade to version 6.

The problem with backup software is that it is a logical backup, not a
physical backup. Files are read and copied onto the target media. You
can run into problem on a restore of EFS-protected files. You can run
into a problem that the logical restore of reading files and trying to
replace them onto the hard drive won't give you the same exact image
because files were inuse and they are not placed exactly as they were
before. The Veritas Backup Exec Desktop program also lets me select the
CD-RW drive so I could use it to span a backup file across multiple
CD-Rs but that's not the type of backup that I'm looking for.

With DriveImage, the first CD was bootable. I didn't need the bootable
floppies. I could just boot right from the disk image CD and start the
recovery (not a logical data restore but a physical drive recovery).
With a logical data backup, you have to use a bootable floppy. Also, in
some full recovery modes for backup programs, this bootable floppy
merely lets you install Windows which then automatically starts the
backup program to perform a logical restore (boot by floppy, installs
Windows, auto-runs the backup program, does a logical restore). That's
how the Veritas "Disaster Recovery Set" works. You need up to 6
floppies (equivalent to the Windows 2000 startup floppy set), the
Windows installation CD, and you create a full backup (on tape or CD).
This takes a hell of a lot of time not only in creating this recovery
set - which is STILL a *logical* backup - but also in using it because
of the time to boot from the multiple-diskette set and installing
Windows before it even gets to run its minimal version of its backup
program. I did that once. I never used it again. It also was not a
*physical* disk image backup. I think a later version of the Veritas
Backup Exec Desktop (and probably the one that I have) lets you
eliminate the bootable floppy set by letting you make the first CD-R
bootable. Still doesn't eliminate it being a logical backup.

I need a *physical* disk imaging product that reads the hard drive
sector by sector and restores that *exact* physical image on the hard
drive. I don't want it reading anything from a file system (which means
you have to boot that OS to provide the file system in the first place).
Ghost had the problem that it defaulted to a logical disk image because
it read the files instead of the sectors. You can use the /IA switch
but, when I trialed it, it would include the unused sectors in the disk
image to the image file was huge. DriveImage would do a
sector-by-sector read of the hard drive regardless of what OS was on
that partition, do compression to minimize the media count, and skip the
unused sectors to further reduce the image file size. Unfortunately it
has absolutely no graceful recovery from media failures. I don't recall
Ghost having graceful recovery, either.

I did take a look at Nero's ViewIt tutorial on how to use BackItUp. It
mentions when selecting a target of where to place the data that you can
select "Nero Image Recorder". Does this force a reboot of the computer
to then run a DOS-mode-like version of its program? Obviously you
cannot create an exact image of the hard drive with a live OS currently
running and making changes to the disk when you are running the disk
image. There was nothing described of "image recorder" in the manual.
Click to expand...
I use Power Quest Drive Image 7.0 "Copy Drive" to clone (C:\) drive 1 to
external USB2.0 backup drive 3, which is a duplicate of drive 1...
I use "Ghost /IA /IB /2 /1" on a DOS A: boot floppy to copy the cloned
backup drive 3 to C:\, sector by sector including the MBR...
(Used with Windows2000pro on my Notebook and Desktop external drives)

Willard
 
Hi, Brian.

Most any backup program will backup FILES. But Vanguard wanted a "physical
backup" of cylinders, heads and sectors. (At least, that's how I
interpreted his message.) My understanding is that CDs record everything in
a single spiral track, rather than in concentric circles divided into
sectors. So, I don't think that any software can do a PHYSICAL backup of
CHS from FAT or NTFS to UDF or CDFS.

As I said, I welcome corrections from any guru who really knows.

RC
 
*Vanguard* said:
Okay, I'm really sick and tired of DiskImage. Nice concept but
absolutely no graceful recovery from a bad CD-R.
Click to expand...

I have been using Acronis True Image. I don't know for sure if you can
back it up directly to CD-R Media or how it will recover from an error
if it does do that, but it will allow you to create an image of one
partition and sore it on the same or other partition, even across the
network. It can also create and restore images of linux partitions. It
will break the image file up into 700MB chunks so, you can after the
fact, burn all of the 700MB images to CD-R media. It will create a
bootable CD so you can boot from the CD and create or restore the image.
Generally speaking you don't need to reboot to create an image but you
do to restore an image to the active partition. The only down side to
putting the image in multiple chunks, is it won't allow you to brows
through the files in the image like it will if it is just one large
image file.

Chris W
 
Sorry. R.C. White. Misunderstanding


Norton Ghost 2003 pro has 2 options. This is the close-if that what
he is wanting. I am not sure.

IA Foces A sector by sector copy of All Partitions.
Caution the option above use 49 cdrom disk or more depending on your
data. Note--I didn't do that-since it said it would need 49 cdrom
disk.

IB Copies the Mbr. (Does not copy boot manager)

IA=Image All
IB=Image Boot
I not sure of ID (image disk) Would do the same thing or not.

Brian
 
"Brian Coats" said in news:[email protected]:
Sorry. R.C. White. Misunderstanding


Norton Ghost 2003 pro has 2 options. This is the close-if that what
he is wanting. I am not sure.

IA Foces A sector by sector copy of All Partitions.
Caution the option above use 49 cdrom disk or more depending on your
data. Note--I didn't do that-since it said it would need 49 cdrom
disk.

IB Copies the Mbr. (Does not copy boot manager)

IA=Image All
IB=Image Boot
I not sure of ID (image disk) Would do the same thing or not.
Click to expand...

I trialed Norton Ghost about a little over a year ago. It was okay but
I also had DriveImage and preferred it over Ghost. Ghost, by default,
does logical read to save a logical image of the drive. The problem I
ran into was with EFS-protected files. You had to do the image restore
using the same account as for the EFS-protected files; otherwise, the
logical read of the file would fail because it was encrypted plus you
didn't have the certificate needed to grant permission inside the file.
The restore also would place the files in different locations. After
realizing that Ghost was doing a logical image by default, I found its
/IA command-line switch. Unfortunately that has Ghost saving the
contents of every sector, even those that are not used (in the file
system). Ghost would write the contents of the unused sector just like
it does for all used sectors; i.e., Ghost doesn't differentiate used and
unused sectors. DriveImage does differentiate and simply records the
sector as unused with the result that its image file is a lot smaller
that the one made by Ghost.

When you say you live as 123 Main Street, do you actually present your
*house* to whomever you are speaking? No, you provide your address by
reference. Similarly, the *physical* image file saved onto whatever is
the backup media (tape, CD-R, DVD-R, hard disk, Zip disk, lots of
floppies, or whatever) is NOT a duplicate of the drive you are imaging.
It contains the data from a *sector* read along with the sector number
so on a restore it can put that same data in the same [relative to the
partition] sector. You can save the physical disk image, wipe the
partition, recreate it, format it (actually unnecessary), and restore
the physical disk image and you end up with exactly the same hardware
image you had before, including and fragmentation, physical positioning
of hidden or unmovable files, and you don't have to be concerned about
EFS because you are writing sectors that have nothing to do with a file
system which is built atop all that data in the sectors.

I do not remember that Ghost was any better at recovery from bad media
than was DriveImage. If you were an hour and a dozen CD-Rs into the
image file backup process that was almost done and the last CD-R was bad
media, DriveImage (and Ghost, as I recall) would abort the image file
create, you would lose all your time, and all those used CD-Rs that
you've written to so far are worthless and get tossed. This gets
expensive in time and for the cost of the wasted CD-Rs. It is primarily
the wasted time that gets me pissed off when the image creation simply
aborts because of bad media. I don't care what brand you buy. Even
when I buy top-grade premium branded CD-R media, there is still 2 or 3
bad discs in a batch of 100. If the image file will need to span across
50 CD-Rs, it is likely that you'll hit a bad disc.
 
"Willard" said in news:eh%[email protected]:
I use Power Quest Drive Image 7.0 "Copy Drive" to clone (C:\) drive 1
to external USB2.0 backup drive 3, which is a duplicate of drive 1...
I use "Ghost /IA /IB /2 /1" on a DOS A: boot floppy to copy the cloned
backup drive 3 to C:\, sector by sector including the MBR...
(Used with Windows2000pro on my Notebook and Desktop external drives)
Click to expand...

Using a hard drive makes the process easier and much faster, but
definitely not cheaper and leaves the image susceptible to failure of
the drive mechanicals.

I have a 120GB hard drive. DriveImage will do compression but you
cannot guaranteee there will be compression. For the 50GB currently
used on my hard drive, it created a 30GB image file (I put it, for now,
in a hidden partition on the same drive although that's not where I want
it since it gets killed, too, if the hard drive dies). So if my 120GB
drive gets filled up and I do an image of it, and if the compression
ration was the same, I'd need at least a 72GB drive. 80GB comes closest
(about $70). Then I'd need an USB enclosure with power supply and a
power adapter (about $40). So the external USB-connected hard drive
would cost around $110.

The computer mandates it have a CD-RW drive because it gets used for
more than just backups. So it's not like I can detract the cost of a
CD-RW because the computer won't have one. It's there so I might as
well as use it. For $110, I can get 400, or more, CD-R discs. I don't
have to worry about the mechanicals of a hard drive going bad; if a CD
drive goes bad, get another and the disc is still usable. With
compression, I get more than the 650MB raw capacity of a CD-R; I
typically get more than 1GB on a disc. Say it takes 50 CD-R discs to
save that 50GB of used space on my hard drive. That costs me about $13
in CD-R discs. It does take me a lot longer to use lots of CD-Rs; it
might take something like 7 hours to complete (uffda) but I'm doing that
just once because this recovery set gets archived to provide me a "base"
level of recovery but with everything installed, configured, and at a
stable point when I cut the image file. I save later images on hard
drives but I want that base image not on a hard drive. So I spend $13
in CD-Rs and 7 hours of my time swapping CD-R discs to do a one-time
"base" image, or I spend $110, or more, on an external USB-connected
hard drive (that gets permanently stored) and which completes the image
creation in about an hour with no disc swapping by me.

Sometime later I will be adding a 200GB hard drive to use for backups
(both logical backups and physical disk images). At that time, I'll
decide whether to use an internal hard drive or an external one. There
are advantages to the external drive for backups but there is also the
added expense and more prone to shock and head damage during
transportation or if moved while spinning. How much I get to store on
this backup drive depends on my current used space on my work drive.
This will give me data restores and disaster recovery snapshots
(images). When I get to a stable point, the oldest image gets deleted
and a new one added, so I'll end up with 2, or more, snapshots of my
computer - but I'll always have that offline, non-mechanical "base"
image in reserve.
 
"Chris W" said in news:i%_fc.17403$fq4.5799@lakeread05:
I have been using Acronis True Image. I don't know for sure if you
can back it up directly to CD-R Media or how it will recover from an
error if it does do that, but it will allow you to create an image of
one partition and sore it on the same or other partition, even across
the network. It can also create and restore images of linux
partitions. It will break the image file up into 700MB chunks so,
you can after the fact, burn all of the 700MB images to CD-R media.
It will create a bootable CD so you can boot from the CD and create
or restore the image. Generally speaking you don't need to reboot
to create an image but you do to restore an image to the active
partition. The only down side to putting the image in multiple
chunks, is it won't allow you to brows through the files in the image
like it will if it is just one large image file.

Chris W
Click to expand...

DriveImage has the same capability. Just before I read your post and
while answering another in this thread, I recalled that the image "file"
created is actually several files. I think they are about 650MB in
size. Unfortunately, with the problems of always encountering a bad
CD-R disc and then deciding to use up the space on my only hard drive to
store the image fileset, I chose to put the image fileset into a hidden
partition. I just tried to use DriveImage's Explorer and it won't look
in hidden partitions, so I'll have to unhide that partition. So I
cannot look into the hidden partition to see what are the filesize for
each file in the fileset created for the image "file". Like you
mention, I could then simply copy each file onto a CD-R. If the copy
fails, well, I can just toss that disc and redo using another one.
However, this does require that I usurp a portion of my current (and
only) hard drive or space on another hard drive; i.e., to provide speed
and recovery from bad media, I would need to use the hard drive as a
buffer. I mention speed would be enhanced because, I think, DriveImage
seems to default to 4X CD-R write speed although the CD-Rs themselves
support 32X (and the CD-RW drive supports even faster but the CD-Rs are
the limiting factor). The image write for DriveImage is definitely not
at the top speed rated for the CD-R media. But if I copy the files off
the hard drive using, say, Nero then the write will be at the tested max
rate for each disc. Once I copy the image fileset onto CD-R, I can then
reuse that backup partition for another later image.

The default file system for the [hidden] partition is NTFS. However, I
have encountered problems using DriveImage (and Ghost) when trying to
read image files off an NTFS formatted partition. They are supposed to
work but sometimes (actually too many times) you'll get an error
somewhere like a third to two-thirds of the way through the restore
saying the NTFS-formatted backup partition (same or different physical
drive) cannot be read and the restore aborts. Since I just created the
image, I won't lose anything by deleting it and recreating it but this
time it will be on an unhidden partition so the ImageExplorer can look
into the image fileset (if I need to yank some specific files) that is
FAT32 formatted to eliminate the occasional malreads when DriveImage
tries to get at the image fileset on an NTFS-formatted partition.
 
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