Problems with backup programs

[bobprimak]

Thanks again to all who responded and kept this thread going.

The problem was solved by updating the version of Acronis TI WD edition I used; I don't know why, but since I updated everything has been fine. This definitely suggests a software problem.

All of my drives, both internal and the external drive, are WD, so that should not have been as issue.

The formatting of the drive was not the issue; I formatted the drive correctly. Also from what I understand, there are problems with drives over 2 TB. As I already indicated, an update of the Acronis software solved the problem, so I think this would eliminate the drive as the culprit.

I received an interesting reply from WD support. They claim that they do not recommend or support the use of Acronis WD edition to backup to an external drive. This is quite astounding, since the manual for the software states "Since hard disk drives are now quite inexpensive, in most cases purchasing an external hard drive for storing your backups will be an optimal solution." Apparently the people at WD didn't read the manual!!

I am leaning towards using Macrium Reflect Free or Easeus Pro version, as they work on both my desktop and laptop with no problems.

I am quite disappointed in WD, and their "we can't help you" attitude.

So to summarize, I believe that the problem was clearly caused by the software, not my hardware, and that whatever the cause was, the newer version of Acronis WD edition works well (as long as you have WD drives!).

Thanks again to all - great forum!!!

I am referring not to the drive's file system as installed, but to a change in hard drive architecture. The 48-bit LBA is hard-coded into these new-style drives' hardware. They cannot be reformatted to make the drives compatible with 32-bit Windows versions. The result is that about 128MB of the drive seems to be visible to the Operating System, and not the full capacity. This is what made me suspect this sort of situation might be affecting you. Turns out, the number may have been just a coincidence.

I am glad the Acronis update solved your issue. Personally, I use the full paid version. It never fails to recognize the full capacity of an external hard drive. But use what works best for you. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

And shame on WD for not helping you. If they bundle a limited-features version of backup software with their hard drives, they should offer some support for the backup software. Just my opinion, of course.

[- bill]

fifer - your patience has been admirable, especially with those who kept telling you that there really was a 128 GB RAW partition on your disk after you had made it clear that there wasn't and that when ATI-WD was not running your 2TB drive showed exactly the right size (1863 GB) leaving no room for such a reserved (hidden) area. You are also correct that no '48-bit LBA' problem exists for 2 GB drives: Windows versions (including 32-bit) since Win2K SP4 have supported this (though not necessarily until a later service pack has been applied; there's even a third-party patch that lets Win98 support it) for directly attached internal drives (there's never been a problem with USB drives larger than 128 GiB, since they use a SCSI-like interface rather than an ATA interface) - I suspect that Bob is confusing this with the new 'GPT' partition layout, which removes the old MBR limitation to a 32-bit sector value when addressing the drive and allows the full space on a drive larger than 2 TB to be accessed (actually, with the 'advanced format' 4KB sector size this would be possible anyway as long as the drive did not emulate 512-byte sectors, but sectors other than 512 bytes can confuse older BIOSs; my impression is that the new 3 TB USB drives can, however, be used even with older systems because their idiosyncrasies are visible only to their own internal USB firmware which has been appropriately updated).

Incidentally, you probably would not have gotten any better response from Seagate had your problem been one with Disc Wizard (I certainly didn't - though I did get a useful response when I bypassed Seagate and asked the Acronis people directly about a possible issue).

DoWho - I often install ATI (Seagate Disc Wizard version) so that I can mount existing partition images (e.g., to retrieve a backed-up version of a file that I've inadvertently modified or deleted) or to operate upon partitions that aren't being used by anything in the currently-running OS (though I do take care to boot the CD version or reboot to use one installed in a different OS when I want to image anything being used in the current OS, just in case). With disk space now routinely down (if you track good deals) to under $0.04 per GiB (actually, I just bought a 2 TB Samsung HD204UI for $55.99 after cash back, which works out to $0.03 per GiB) I'm really not worried about the cost of installing it, nor do its running services seem extravagant in their use of system resources.

alan.b - While it's true that the Seagate and WD versions of ATI will balk if if the respective proprietary drive is not present, at least the Seagate (Disc Wizard) version can be convinced to relent and run (a Seagate tech described the way to respond to the objection pop-up a long time ago and it still works in the current version - but I'll let people Google around for it just in case the management here would consider it inappropriate to post it).

scaisson - I've used an earlier version of Disc Wizard (version 10, build 5077, which dates back to 2008) and even ATI V8 (whose copyright dates suggest it dates back to 2004-2005) with an SATA drive without problem, though I too have heard the claims that problems might occur. But I routinely use the current version of Disc Wizard these days just because I've found no reason not to.

Zig - thanks for your comments about ToDoBackup. I've been meaning to try it out since finding out that it allegedly supports incremental backups (both file-oriented and partition-oriented: I wonder how it handles the latter?) and restoration of a system to different hardware (something I've been trying to do for my wife with varying degrees of success: I've convinced her to move most of her activities to Win7 but there are still some legacy applications for which she no longer has intallers that she needs Win2K and even Win98SE for, and migrating them to newer hardware such that they can multi-boot with Win7 has been challenging, though they sort-of work).

[fifer1943]

Thanks to Bob Primak and Bill for their comments.

Bob, I have Windows 64-bit, so your comments may not apply - you referred to 32-bit Windows. Besides, I believe based on my readings (and Bill agrees), that the LBA issue only applied to drives OVER 2 TB.

Bill, yes it took a while to convince some that I really did not have a hidden 128 GB partition, that was sometimes visible, and sometimes invisible! However, I appreciated all of the help and suggestions offered. I was convinced that there was a software issue/conflict, but the hard part was tracking it down.

This forum has been a great help for me in learning more about backup programs - as well as learning how to solve computer problems related to backing up. I still have lots to learn, but I am getting there.

[DrWho]

When I first read all the chatter on the net about ATI, (several years ago) I just had to try it.
I got the versions from both Seagate and Maxtor and they both did essentially the same things.
I installed both on separate HD's , let them make the Recovery CD and then deleted them off of the
corresponding HD's. The recovery CD's worked a treat, for both backing up and restoring a Vista HD.
It just seemed like the GUI was a bit more complicated than necessary.
And a few features I've grown used to, were not there.

But even though my field test of ATI was successful, I went right back to Ghost, the program I've
been using since 1997 when I got a Demo copy from the originators in New Zealand.
Ghost set the bar very high for backup software and to this date, I've found nothing better.
BUT..... (there's always a BUT, right?)

But, once Symantec got their grubbies on Ghost, it began to morph into a "Creature from the Black Lagoon".
The last version which still runs from DOS and closely resembles the old DOS versions, and works great for
Vista and Win-7, is Ghost 11.5.
It's funny, that one Symantec engineer, denied that v. 11.5 ever existed.
There is actually a Ghost32.exe (v 11.5) that will run from within Windows, along with the "Ghost Explorer (11,5)" which
will allow you to open up a Ghost backup Image File and look at and even restore individual files.

Being very "Old School" and a creature of habit, I still use Ghost 11.5, run from either a CD or Flash Drive,
once a week to backup my own system. I do the backup, followed by a "Check" of the backup file, followed
immediately by a "Restore" which re-writes my C: drive, effecting a really great 'Defrag'.

Ghost also allows me to use three different levels of compression, of my Backup Image File, depending on where
that file will be put.

Doing backups in DOS, totally bypasses Windows and all of its overhead, allowing Ghost to run as fast as my
hardware will allow it. Actually, Ghost pushes my SATA II drives to their maximum data transfer speeds.
A typical backup takes less than ten minutes.

Sometimes, being "Old School" ain't all that bad!

Cheers mates!
The Doctor

[- bill]

I believe based on my readings (and Bill agrees), that the LBA issue only applied to drives OVER 2 TB.

Minor correction: the 48-bit LBA 'issue' does not apply at ALL to this discussion, since 48-bit LBA support has been required for the past decade to support any ATA disk larger than 128 GiB when attached natively (rather than, e.g., via USB). The problem with disks larger than 2 TiB is not related to 48-bit LBA but to the fact that MBR fields describing partition locations and sizes on the disk can't extend past 2 TiB if 512-byte sectors are used or emulated as all older operating systems require (well, if you began a partition before the 2 TiB mark then the MBR fields could allow it to extend almost another 2 TiB beyond that point, as long as other software didn't get confused), which is one reason the new GPT partitioning structure was created (and it is this structure which is not supported by some older operating systems and not supported as a boot disk even for some newer 32-bit operating systems and BIOSs).

[bobprimak]

Minor correction: the 48-bit LBA 'issue' does not apply at ALL to this discussion, since 48-bit LBA support has been required for the past decade to support any ATA disk larger than 128 GiB when attached natively (rather than, e.g., via USB). The problem with disks larger than 2 TiB is not related to 48-bit LBA but to the fact that MBR fields describing partition locations and sizes on the disk can't extend past 2 TiB if 512-byte sectors are used or emulated as all older operating systems require (well, if you began a partition before the 2 TiB mark then the MBR fields could allow it to extend almost another 2 TiB beyond that point, as long as other software didn't get confused), which is one reason the new GPT partitioning structure was created (and it is this structure which is not supported by some older operating systems and not supported as a boot disk even for some newer 32-bit operating systems and BIOSs).

Not entirely true. There has been a hardware change in some big hard drives, starting at the 2TB size (there were articles in CNet news among other places a year ago warning about this) and 32-bit Windows is not compatible with the change. I recall that this is said to be because the newer hardware prevents changing the drives' cluster size, which is thus stuck at 512 bytes (unreadable in a 32-bit Windows Operating System). The WD overlay (which may install itself silently if 32-bit Windows is detected on the host computer) is unreliable, even if the computer can now see the entire 2 TB of the drive's capacity. I still would not use this drive for critical backup operations on a 32-bit computer, given its behavior at the time of the original post in this thread.

The OP said that some WD software auto-installed before the drive's full capacity could be seen, and I am concerned that the WD overlay may have been silently installed at that time. Once installed, this overlay does not appear as a removable program or Windows component, so good luck restoring that computer to normal operating condition. WD does have a removal tool for all of its self-installing software, depending on the exact model of the external drive.

Even once the overlay is installed, 32-bit Windows cannot reformat or repartition these GPT formatted external hard drives. With the exact drive model, I could go to the WD web site and verify how the drive is formatted, and which Windows versions (32-bit and 64-bit, or 64-bit only) are supported by the drive's hardware and file system. That is the only reasonable way to resolve any issue about whether or not this drive can be used with 32-bit Windows.

UPDATE 8-23-2011: ALL OF THIS TALK ABOUT 32-BIT WINDOWS DOES NOT APPLY TO THIS THREAD, as I just found out. The OP's Windows is indeed 64 bits, which was not stated at the beginning of the thread. Please ignore anything I have posted here about 32-bit Windows and large external hard drives from Western Digital. It is useful information only to those who are running 32-bit Windows. Sorry for any confusion or aggravation.

[bobprimak]

Thanks to Bob Primak and Bill for their comments.

Bob, I have Windows 64-bit, so your comments may not apply - you referred to 32-bit Windows. Besides, I believe based on my readings (and Bill agrees), that the LBA issue only applied to drives OVER 2 TB.

Bill, yes it took a while to convince some that I really did not have a hidden 128 GB partition, that was sometimes visible, and sometimes invisible! However, I appreciated all of the help and suggestions offered. I was convinced that there was a software issue/conflict, but the hard part was tracking it down.

This forum has been a great help for me in learning more about backup programs - as well as learning how to solve computer problems related to backing up. I still have lots to learn, but I am getting there.

It turns out I was posting stuff which does not apply to this thread. But the original post did not specify 64-bit Windows. This information came to my attention rather late in this thread.

Sorry about belatedly noticing that yours is a 64-bit computer running 64-bit Windows. This computer may have had to install a driver or two for the specific WD drive, so that would explain the initial 128 GB Windows size. Ignore the discussion about 32-bit Windows. But that information could be useful to anyone running 32-bit Windows who is thinking about buying a large external hard drive.

Issues associated with 512 byte clusters (not compatible with 32-bit Windows) do occur on some Western Digital and Seagate external USB 2.0 hard drives as small as 2TB stated capacity. Western Digital says that the issue only applies to drives larger than 2 TB, but I thought I read several news articles about a year ago which stated that the issue was showing up on some drives which were stated to be 2 TB exactly. I cannot right now find the original articles online. So the articles may have been referring to drives larger than 2 TB after all, for all I now know and can document at this time.

Some older computers running Windows XP have BIOS versions or motherboard limitations which incorrectly reduce the apparent size of some 2 TB USB hard drives to 1 TB, according to some online forum threads.

All of which is irrelevant to this thread. What may be relevant is as follows:

In any event, no overlay would have been applied in 64-bit Windows at the time the other software self-installed, if this is indeed what happened.

Reading more carefully, the original post never said that Windows could not see the whole drive, nor that Windows could not reformat and repartition it -- as long as the Third-Party Backup programs were not installed.

This is the key to the issue in this thread. At least Acronis True Image, and maybe other backup programs, will keep its own, independent reckoning of the structures of the partitions on your internal and external hard drives. This partition management system is not always well synchronized with Windows, especially if a new drive (even an external drive) is introduced. If the backup software gets out of sync with Windows in this way, my experience is that stopping and restarting the backup software's services is not sufficient. The software needs to be removed and reinstalled.

And this is exactly what you posted you eventually had to do. So my comments regarding 32-bit Windows compatibility issues aside, you did the right thing, and the drive should be available for full reformatting and repartitioning, and the OEM software should be fully removable.

Even the encryption software and the encrypted portion of the drive (if it exists) should be capable of being deleted or (the software) moved elsewhere. But you may have to operate outside of Windows to do this. Running a partitioning utility from a bootable CD will allow the utility to access almost any partition on any drive, and do with it as you please, within broad limits.

If the drive is working well now, and shows its full capacity, and if the encryption features have been removed or disabled, it appears all is well. You can use the drive for backup and recovery operations without any problems.

Be aware moving forward that some backup software keeps track of partitions and disks independently of Windows. And sometimes this independent reckoning needs to be brought back into alignment with Windows. Occasionally, reinstalling the backup software is necessary to accomplish this. That is the take-home lesson from all of this.