Disk Errors - How to properly clean up?

[sparkyguy]

Relatively new to Rollback (less than 6 months); Former long-time GoBack user.

RollBack Ver 9.1 Build 2695045130; XP SP3 with all updates.

I'm suddenly getting disk errors on a computer that has historically been solid as a rock.
Specifically, when I save a duplicate Quicken database file, Quicken is suddenly telling me I have corrupt files in the Program Files\Quicken Folder. Quicken is telling me to run Chkdsk. However, should I DO this? I ran Chkdsk without the /F parameter (so it didn't fix), and it did find errors. Which should I do first; Run Chkdsk or try a RollBack? I'm concerned about corrupting things further.

[carfal]

Sparkyguy, i'm assuming your disk errors are the result of a BSOD or power failure or a computer lock up of some sort resulting in a hard reset.

In the past (v8 and early v9), letting chkdsk run after this scenario resulted in a trashed HD (most of the time) however I'm uncertain if this has been resolved in this latest version.

The reason I'm uncertain is that I've been burned too many times in the past and refuse to go through that experience again.

So when ever I get BSOD's or power failure or a computer lock up, I simply

1. Press the Home key upon the reboot and Rollback to the previous snapshot. During the rollback, Rollback Rx loads the snapshot, rebuilds the "VDisk" and windows boots perfectly.

2. I recover whatever files I like from the old snapshot (taken automatically when I rollback) and then delete the "damaged" snaphsot.

3. Then i run the Rollback Defragger

4. Then just to be sure i manually run chkdsk on all of my partitions. On my PC, Drive C: and D: require that i reboot and let windows chkdsk from DOS. On a rare occasion my free space or NTFS table requires a minor correction after which all is OK.


Some important improvements on the above procedure that i have noticed since latest V9. When i rollback, the "VDisk" restore procedure never happened for me in V8 and maybe even in early v9 (not sure). This VDisk rebuild seems to make for a stable snapshot recovery.

Following on from this, recovering latest data files was always a hit and miss affair with V8 in that most of the time the "recoverable" files located in the crashed snapshot would be corrupted and utterly useless. Not the case with this latest version of Rollback. So far i've had 100% success rate.

In summary, i suspect that Horizon have resolved the chkdsk issues of previous versions but i dont have the will to test this out. (burned to many times already )

Perhaps somebody else can put our fears to rest.....like a Horizon Dev member?

[Froggie]

I won't put any additional HDS fears into the mix... but I sure would be concerned that SparkGuy just may have a hard disk that's beginning its slide into the abyss of non-recovery. I'd get a recent image of the HD before I'd start anything else (choose your backup tool, and quickly)... just in case. I've seen this too many times and it's not just power failures, et al, that start this process... HDs do go bad.

Good luck!

[sparkyguy]

Thanks for the responses.
Interestingly, I had just posted another response in another post on this forum regarding imaging before this happened. It has not yet been responded to. I don't like mixing posts, but I was concerned if an image (ignoring my errors for a moment) would successfully image and restore the existing snapshot IF i simply did NOT restore the MBR on restore. I use True Image. If anyone could look at that post, I'd be much more comfortable on what should be my safest NEXT step. I don't mind losing my snapshot history, if necessary, doing a re-install of RollBack. My biggest concern is to get the logical data on the HD corrected without screwing it up further. It's coming up with the best-case of next logical steps that has me a bit concerned. Can anyone clarify what would be best, and in what order? I'm guessing if I try to make an image at this point TI will gag and puke because the HD has errors. Therefore, it would appear that I would need to try and run Chkdsk first. However, I was concerned about how well Rollback plays with Chkdsk.

[wvbill]

Originally Posted by carfal

Sparkyguy, i'm assuming your disk errors are the result of a BSOD or power failure or a computer lock up of some sort resulting in a hard reset.

In the past (v8 and early v9), letting chkdsk run after this scenario resulted in a trashed HD (most of the time) however I'm uncertain if this has been resolved in this latest version...



...Perhaps somebody else can put our fears to rest.....like a Horizon Dev member?

I have been using RollBack for 3 months, now, v9.1 2695223310 XP Home SP3.

I had not been aware of a prior chkdsk issue. In the past month or so I have had several hard shutdowns due to power failures. On subsequent power up, RollBack does indeed run chkdsk which completes in a few seconds with no apparent problems.

While this does not qualify as a test of the issue, it appears to work fine in my experience -- I agree -- it would be nice to hear from development that the issue has been addressed.

Bill

[Froggie]

SparkGuy, the "ChkDsk" run by Rollback itself doesn't look like the Windows CHKDSK to me... it just looks like a Rollback consistency check of its structures.

I also had a power failure upon which Rollback ran its "check" and said all is OK, but Windows then ran its CHECK and found some errors to deal with... it dealt with them and finally came up. Rollback seemed to be happy with whatever Windows CHKDSK found and fixed, but I'm not sure that would be the case in all Windows repair scenarios. We need to hear from DevTeam on that one.

As far as imaging your system is concerned, if you're running True Image HOME 2010 or newer, I would suggest an off-line (recovery disk) image backup in the sector-by-sector mode which will preserve Rollback and all its snapshots. The sector-by-sector imaging operation will produce a pretty big image (mine produces a 45gB image for a 60gB disk). The online mode will only do the most recent disk status, no snapshots. If TI has problems with the disk errors, the surface of that disk is already in serious trouble and you'll probably have to rely on previous backups.

There may be a backup tool that handles errors in a different way but I know not of one off the top of my li'l green head.

[sparkyguy]

Froggie,
I was concerned about the True Image issue, but as long as it grabs the latest snapshot version, and it can restore it, I can live with that scenario It will certainly take a while to make a sector-by-sector image for me. Unfortunately, I was trying to be cute when I purchased Rollback and got a 1.5TB drive and partitioned it into 3 x 500 GB partitions. I wanted to get the most bang-for-the-buck by having Rollback on the entire physical drive. My OS (C: drive) partition is only using about 90 GB of actual data but since it is a 500 GB partition it is certain to make a "Gonzo" image file if done sector-by-sector. Fortunately, I also have a spare 500 GB SATA drive I can temporarily plug in as a target slave. I'm not as worried about the time the process will take as much as I'm concerned about data integrity. Any suggestions on whether to clean-up with a clean-boot CHKDSK c:/f first, or try and image then clean up? Initially I thought TI might gag because of the file errors . . . but then, if I do a sector-by sector image it shouldn't even care. TI will just be copying all the drive as one gulp, errors and all. If I need to restore, I believe it will do so OK, but I would just lose the Rollback history. Agree? Disagree? I don't want to rush into any action before I have a chance to think thru what I should do, and in what order.

[nexstar]

sparkguy,

I'll try to answer your queries here from the other thread. Although I'm not a ATI user, I've seen quite a few posts from users and my understanding is that you can make an image within Windows with ATI and you will get the current snapshot only. You will not get the correct MBR but as Rollback would need to be reinstalled anyway then that's not a problem.

As Harraka has said, you can make a sector-by-sector image from outside of windows and that will be able to restore all snapshots together with the MBR.

With your current potential problem, the first thing I would do would be to make an image of the current system from within Windows to a different physical hard drive. The next thing I would do would be to uninstall RollBack. At least with the image, you still have a backup in the event something goes wrong with the uninstall.

If that all goes ok then I'd run chkdsk and any other disk/file integrity scanners you care to use just to make sure that everything is as it should be.

With RB uninstalled you might also want to think about resizing the partitions if you think a smaller system partition would be a better option. One thing worth noting though is that all imaging software I've used has compressed the unused sectors in a sector-by-sector backup and truly empty sectors (not forming part of a RB snapshot) will compress dramatically providing they have not had data written to them at some point in the life of the partition.

If you think about a new partition which then has Windows installed on it, the empty sectors will be full of zeros and will compress extremely well. Supposing you copy a DVD to the desktop and then delete it, the data from the DVD will have been written to empty sectors. On deletion, the data will still be in the empty sectors and so those sectors won't compress well even though they are 'officially' empty.

For that reason, I often use a utility to 'wipe' empty sectors when RB is uninstalled to help minimise sector-by-sector images once RB is installed again. You might find it worth doing that if you are going to image that way. It would certainly be worth defragging the drive at this point as well.

Having done all that and assuming it has all gone ok, then I would make another image of the system before reinstalling RB.

Graham

[Froggie]

SparkGuy... Nexstar's advice is spot on! I know it's a bit of work but it offers the best chance to save that data, just in case.

Good luck!