I have a mess going

[Philip Herlihy]

I use Spinrite, and it's an essential tool (bootable CD or memory stick)
in my kit. It really has two major components. The data recovery
facility is obsessive, and can take many hours on a troubled big drive,
doing things like approaching a troubled sector from different angles in
the hope of picking up a little more. (It's only a couple of hours or
so if the drive is reasonably healthy.) Its maintenance mode does the
recovery scan and also reads, inverts, writes, reads, re-inverts and re-
writes every block (often takes 18 hours or more) after which you can be
pretty sure what state your disk is in - underperforming blocks are
flagged, of course.

If a disk doesn't appear to have less than a day's life left I use
Spinrite on it then run chkdsk (omitting the disk scan, which has been
taken care of by Spinrite). It's surprising how many unbootable
machines I've rescued this way, and at the end I get Smart data (most
times) out of Spinrite so I can advise on whether the disk should be
replaced.

For disks which are very close to the end I've had recommendations for
the "Unstoppable copier" from Roadkil.net, although I've never had
occasion to use it.

For recovering deleted files and partitions I use TestDisk/Photorec, but
recently used Recuva for the first time and was really impressed.

Before I hand a machine back I like to install Acronis Drive Monitor
(free) on it (disabling backup checks if True Image is not installed).
That pops up (configurable) warnings for temperature and breaches of
SMART thresholds (which are being sensibly interpreted by the software)
and I've found it has saved a lot of customer systems which otherwise
would surely have become difficult recovery situations.

Worth adding I usually boot the problem machine from a Memtest86+ CD and
run a memory test before using that machine's internals to mess about
with a customer's precious data!

It's worth adding that if the machine isn't bootable from its own disk
you can run chkdsk from the excellent Universal Boot Disk for Windows.
http://www.ubcd4win.com/

 

[Menno Hershberger]

Thanks for all your top posted help. Judging by your last post in this
group I take it that your aren't really here to help anyway.
--------------------------------------------------------------
"And what makes you think that he will notice what you have written when
he can't notice this on the little window to select your choices?
Some people are just thick.
------- choro
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Char Jackson]

I use Spinrite, and it's an essential tool (bootable CD or memory stick)
in my kit. It really has two major components. The data recovery
facility is obsessive, and can take many hours on a troubled big drive,
doing things like approaching a troubled sector from different angles in
the hope of picking up a little more. (It's only a couple of hours or
so if the drive is reasonably healthy.) Its maintenance mode does the
recovery scan and also reads, inverts, writes, reads, re-inverts and re-
writes every block (often takes 18 hours or more) after which you can be
pretty sure what state your disk is in - underperforming blocks are
flagged, of course.

<snip>

Lots of good info, thanks.

Meanwhile, the Samsung drive that I low level formatted is once again
showing 100% good health in all of the tools that I've used,
(Samsung's drive diagnostic ESTool, HD Tune Pro, and chkdsk), so I'm
gradually placing it back into service to see what happens. If bad
sectors were caused by physical damage to the platter surface, I
expect to see additional issues down the road.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

Meanwhile, the Samsung drive that I low level formatted is once again
showing 100% good health in all of the tools that I've used,
(Samsung's drive diagnostic ESTool, HD Tune Pro, and chkdsk), so I'm
gradually placing it back into service to see what happens. If bad
sectors were caused by physical damage to the platter surface, I
expect to see additional issues down the road.

A good candidate for using Acronis Drive Monitor!

 

[Char Jackson]

A good candidate for using Acronis Drive Monitor!

Thanks, I'll be looking into it shortly.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Any suggestions are welcome. I'd like to see her just buy a new computer.
But if she does that, will we be able to restore her vhd backup? If it
restores everything back to the way it was, then won't all the drivers be
messed up?
Further reasoning to talk her into a new one is that this one has always
run hot. Never hot enough to shut down, but the case is almost too hot to
touch. There's one fan on the processor and one in the power supply. Both
running quietly. The inside of the case is discolored (brownish black) in
places.
I have posted this rant in the Windows 7 group since that's the OS she
has the backup VHD for and what she wants back on it.
For anyone that made it this far, thanks for listening!
(up to 10866 now)

Just because Chkdsk is saying there are unreadable segments doesn't
necessarily mean that the underlying hardware actually has bad sectors.
You should run Hard Disk Sentinel on it, and let it determine from its
SMART parameters that there are actually bad sectors. Sometimes
unreadable sectors at the filesystem level are due to corruption of the
indexes, which can be fixed with a simple reformat. But if the
underlying hardware is actually bad, then SMART will pick up on it. HD
Sentinel reads the SMART information and assigns an easy-to-evaluate
health rating on the drive.

http://www.hdsentinel.com/

Chances are likely that Chkdsk is seeing the same thing that SMART is,
but you gotta make sure.

Yousuf Khan

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Philip Herlihy

For disks which are very close to the end I've had recommendations for
the "Unstoppable copier" from Roadkil.net, although I've never had
occasion to use it.

For recovering deleted files and partitions I use TestDisk/Photorec, but
recently used Recuva for the first time and was really impressed.

Before I hand a machine back I like to install Acronis Drive Monitor
(free) on it (disabling backup checks if True Image is not installed).
That pops up (configurable) warnings for temperature and breaches of
SMART thresholds (which are being sensibly interpreted by the software)
and I've found it has saved a lot of customer systems which otherwise
would surely have become difficult recovery situations.

Worth adding I usually boot the problem machine from a Memtest86+ CD and
run a memory test before using that machine's internals to mess about
with a customer's precious data!

Excellent list, thanks: marked as a keep for reference.

(To save others time:
http://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/
is a current URL for that one.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"I'm very peachable, if people know how to peach" - Sir David Attenborough (on
being asked if he was tired of being described as impeachable), on Desert
Island Discs, 2012-1-29.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, "J. P. Gilliver

(To save others time:
http://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/
is a current URL for that one.)

Or rather, not: the download link on that page (identical on the .com
version, too) takes me to another page, where there is no download link.
Anyone have a link to a page where it can actually be downloaded?

Also, in searching, I found this:
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/07/06/software-to-steer-clear-of-acronis-drive-monitor/
which, though obviously only one person's opinion, is interesting.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"I'm very peachable, if people know how to peach" - Sir David Attenborough (on
being asked if he was tired of being described as impeachable), on Desert
Island Discs, 2012-1-29.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

In message <[email protected]>, "J. P. Gilliver


Or rather, not: the download link on that page (identical on the .com
version, too) takes me to another page, where there is no download link.
Anyone have a link to a page where it can actually be downloaded?

Also, in searching, I found this:
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/07/06/software-to-steer-clear-of-acronis-drive-monitor/
which, though obviously only one person's opinion, is interesting.

Sure, the backup monitor only works with Acronis's own product, but it's
free, and you can opt out of that function. I can live with Farenheit
(but then I am as old as dirt).

The download page asks if you're a Home or Business user, and for the
Home version you're asked for your name, country and an email address. I
get very little traffic from Acronis. For a free utility which makes
sense of SMART and has undoubtedly saved several customers from a
"recovery" situation it's great value!

 

[Char Jackson]

Sure, the backup monitor only works with Acronis's own product, but it's
free, and you can opt out of that function. I can live with Farenheit
(but then I am as old as dirt).

The download page asks if you're a Home or Business user, and for the
Home version you're asked for your name, country and an email address. I
get very little traffic from Acronis. For a free utility which makes
sense of SMART and has undoubtedly saved several customers from a
"recovery" situation it's great value!

I installed it for evaluation and so far it's a mixed bag for me. I
know I can get around the 'no backups' warning by simply disabling
that function, but the other two categories, (disks and critical
events), are a bit more problematic. For the record, this category is
complaining that I have no recent backups. It's not complaining that I
don't have backup software installed because it sees Acronis True
Image.

I have hundreds of disk errors logged in Event Viewer because when a
drive starts going bad, it really goes bad, and Windows logs each and
every error it sees. That's well and good, but ADM (Acronis Drive
Monitor) is showing me that list of hundreds of critical errors, and
it seems like I either have to live with that list, disable critical
event warnings as a category, or right-click on each one individually
and choose to ignore it. Currently, the ADM icon is in my Tray with an
ugly red X on it.

The other category is disk warnings, and I had a problem there, too.
I'm running a drive pooling program called Drive Bender, which takes a
series of disks and makes them appear to Windows as a single (but much
bigger) disk. I have 5 physical disks in that pool, totaling 8.64TB of
storage. ADM shows no problems with any of the 5 physical drives, as
well as the physical drive that's not part of the pool, but it choked
and threw up a warning on the 8.64TB virtual drive created by Drive
Bender. I was able to disable monitoring on that virtual drive to
clear the warning in that category, but it was disconcerting for a
moment.

If I can find a way to acknowledge the Critical Event warnings all at
once rather than one at a time, then I'd probably keep the app for
now. As it is, though, it's showing the red X for things that I
consider to be resolved.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

In message <[email protected]>, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"

Or rather, not: the download link on that page (identical on the .com
version, too) takes me to another page, where there is no download link.
Anyone have a link to a page where it can actually be downloaded?

Also, in searching, I found this:
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/07/06/software-to-steer-clear-of-acronis-drive-monitor/
which, though obviously only one person's opinion, is interesting.

If you look at the reader comments, it's more than one person's
opinion...

I had some problems with Acronis a few years back, in particular an
installation that rendered my computer unbootable (but luckily for me,
Windows recovered it OK). I switched to Macrium, but lately I have come
to feel that EaseUS Todo is better, so I might switch yet again.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

If you look at the reader comments, it's more than one person's
opinion...

I had some problems with Acronis a few years back, in particular an
installation that rendered my computer unbootable (but luckily for me,
Windows recovered it OK). I switched to Macrium, but lately I have come
to feel that EaseUS Todo is better, so I might switch yet again.

Acronis True Image is not the same as Acronis Drive Monitor, which is
what I was talking about. I've had very few problems with True Image,
but I've heard that some people have. I've also tried recently the
equivalent from Paragon "Hard Disk Manager" and that seems very good,
with a few useful extra features. However, with a disk that was a real
challenge, both threw similar errors. I've heard a lot of people say
good things about Macrium, but True Image is good enough for me, and I
use it regularly.

 

[Char Jackson]

I had some problems with Acronis a few years back, in particular an
installation that rendered my computer unbootable (but luckily for me,
Windows recovered it OK). I switched to Macrium, but lately I have come
to feel that EaseUS Todo is better, so I might switch yet again.

In the past few days I've put Easus Todo Free on two systems to see
how well it works. One runs 7 Ultimate x64 while the other runs 7 Home
Premium x64. I'm impressed with it's flexible scheduling, it's ability
to back up to network shares, its ability to let me manage how many
backups are kept, and in general just how well it works. I haven't
tested all of the features yet, and I especially haven't tested a
backup yet to make sure I can restore from it, so that's at least one
task still outstanding.

On the negative side, anywhere you see text, whether on the GUI itself
or in the help file, be prepared for, what's the politically correct
term, Engrish? If I loosen my internal filters a bit, I can mostly
make out what each function does, but I'm a bit uncomfortable being
that loose when it comes to technical things like this. Even so, I'm
keeping it for now.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

I installed it for evaluation and so far it's a mixed bag for me. I
know I can get around the 'no backups' warning by simply disabling
that function, but the other two categories, (disks and critical
events), are a bit more problematic. For the record, this category is
complaining that I have no recent backups. It's not complaining that I
don't have backup software installed because it sees Acronis True
Image.

I have hundreds of disk errors logged in Event Viewer because when a
drive starts going bad, it really goes bad, and Windows logs each and
every error it sees. That's well and good, but ADM (Acronis Drive
Monitor) is showing me that list of hundreds of critical errors, and
it seems like I either have to live with that list, disable critical
event warnings as a category, or right-click on each one individually
and choose to ignore it. Currently, the ADM icon is in my Tray with an
ugly red X on it.

The other category is disk warnings, and I had a problem there, too.
I'm running a drive pooling program called Drive Bender, which takes a
series of disks and makes them appear to Windows as a single (but much
bigger) disk. I have 5 physical disks in that pool, totaling 8.64TB of
storage. ADM shows no problems with any of the 5 physical drives, as
well as the physical drive that's not part of the pool, but it choked
and threw up a warning on the 8.64TB virtual drive created by Drive
Bender. I was able to disable monitoring on that virtual drive to
clear the warning in that category, but it was disconcerting for a
moment.

If I can find a way to acknowledge the Critical Event warnings all at
once rather than one at a time, then I'd probably keep the app for
now. As it is, though, it's showing the red X for things that I
consider to be resolved.

I think that is a weakness in ADM - it would be great if you could draw
a line and tell it to ignore everything older than today. It would be
good if it understood that a manually-initiated chkdsk needn't be a
problem, too. In the past I've tried clearing the event log and
reinstalling ADM and that seemed to clear ADM's long memory of event log
vice. However, I've also chosen to set the temperature alert higher
than the default for a small form factor PC which routinely reached 47C
but no higher (yes, I realise my copy is in Celcius - someone was
saying theirs was only Farenheit?). I think it makes perfect sense for
you to turn off the event log monitoriing feature - the SMART data, and
the fact that you'l be alerted if they change - is what makes it most
valuable. And of course, most ordinary users would have no idea that
the event log is full of worrying error messages about their disk!

I'd guess there are other similar monitoring utilities out there, but I
haven't found a better one (certainly not a better free one!).

What score (%) it it giving the disk?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

In message <[email protected]>, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
[]
(To save others time:
http://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/
is a current URL for that one.)

Or rather, not: the download link on that page (identical on the .com
version, too) takes me to another page, where there is no download link.
Anyone have a link to a page where it can actually be downloaded?
Also, in searching, I found this:
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/07/06/software-to-steer-clear-of-acronis-drive-monitor/
which, though obviously only one person's opinion, is interesting.

If you look at the reader comments, it's more than one person's
opinion...

I had some problems with Acronis a few years back, in particular an
installation that rendered my computer unbootable (but luckily for me,
Windows recovered it OK). I switched to Macrium, but lately I have come
to feel that EaseUS Todo is better, so I might switch yet again.

Acronis True Image is not the same as Acronis Drive Monitor, which is
what I was talking about. I've had very few problems with True Image,
but I've heard that some people have. I've also tried recently the
equivalent from Paragon "Hard Disk Manager" and that seems very good,
with a few useful extra features. However, with a disk that was a real
challenge, both threw similar errors. I've heard a lot of people say
good things about Macrium, but True Image is good enough for me, and I
use it regularly.

I was trying to point out how I got my current opinion of Acronis the
company. Nowhere did I say that I thought that True Image == Drive
Monitor.

 

[Char Jackson]

I think that is a weakness in ADM - it would be great if you could draw
a line and tell it to ignore everything older than today.

That's essentially what I was expecting to find somewhere in the GUI,
but no luck, apparently.

In the past I've tried clearing the event log and
reinstalling ADM and that seemed to clear ADM's long memory of event log
vice.

That seems drastic. I rather like being able to view some history
there. I see your point, though.

However, I've also chosen to set the temperature alert higher
than the default for a small form factor PC which routinely reached 47C
but no higher (yes, I realise my copy is in Celcius - someone was
saying theirs was only Farenheit?).

It's F here, probably using my region settings? Are you in C land?

I think it makes perfect sense for
you to turn off the event log monitoriing feature - the SMART data, and
the fact that you'l be alerted if they change - is what makes it most
valuable. And of course, most ordinary users would have no idea that
the event log is full of worrying error messages about their disk!

Ok, I've turned off Event Log monitoring and Backup monitoring and now
I have the wonderful green icon in the Tray, but somehow it seems that
I've neutered the program a bit to get there.

I'd guess there are other similar monitoring utilities out there, but I
haven't found a better one (certainly not a better free one!).

I also use HD Tune Pro and Hard Disk Sentinel, but I don't remember if
both are free. I rather doubt it, especially the second one. The
Sentinel program is nice in that it shows the temperature for each
drive in the System Tray, green for safe, yellow for caution, and red
for hot, and when you open the full interface you can see a host of
other information, including SMART data.

What score (%) it it giving the disk?

I don't see percentages in ADM, but for the virtual drive it was
basically complaining that it couldn't monitor it properly.
Temperature was listed as Not Available, and the SMART tab was blank.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Sure, the backup monitor only works with Acronis's own product, but it's
free, and you can opt out of that function. I can live with Farenheit
(but then I am as old as dirt).

Yes, I would have lived with both of those!

The download page asks if you're a Home or Business user, and for the

The above page has a big green "V Download Now" button. When I click
that, I get taken to
http://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/download/drive-monitor/
, which is headed "Download Free Acronis® Drive Monitor™". Below that
heading is a block of text on a pale pink background, which (the
background I mean) has a pointy bit on its right, which points to ...
nothing.

Home version you're asked for your name, country and an email address. I

I don't seem to be being asked any of those things. Near the top right,
I do see a "Downloads & Documentation" link. _That_ takes me to a page
headed "Customer Service & Support" (huh?). This does have (in rather
small print) "Installation Files", including Acronis Drive Monitor.
Clicking that takes me to
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/ - which
looks the same as the page I started from, other than having a .com
rather than a .co.uk URL.

Basically, it's leading me round and round in circles. I'm never
reaching a page where it asks for the above.

get very little traffic from Acronis. For a free utility which makes
sense of SMART and has undoubtedly saved several customers from a
"recovery" situation it's great value!

I'd like to try it (-:!

 

[Philip Herlihy]

[snip]

However, I've also chosen to set the temperature alert higher
than the default for a small form factor PC which routinely reached 47C
but no higher (yes, I realise my copy is in Celcius - someone was
saying theirs was only Farenheit?).

It's F here, probably using my region settings? Are you in C land?

London England. I don't see an option to choose, so it's probably
picking up on locale.

[snip]

I don't see percentages in ADM, but for the virtual drive it was
basically complaining that it couldn't monitor it properly.
Temperature was listed as Not Available, and the SMART tab was blank.

That really isn't working for you! I've seen one or two disks which ADM
couldn't 'get', and this sounds like another. Scrap it, it isn't doing
anything for you!

 

[Philip Herlihy]

On 2/24/2012, Philip Herlihy posted: [snip]

Acronis True Image is not the same as Acronis Drive Monitor, which is
what I was talking about. I've had very few problems with True Image,
but I've heard that some people have. I've also tried recently the
equivalent from Paragon "Hard Disk Manager" and that seems very good,
with a few useful extra features. However, with a disk that was a real
challenge, both threw similar errors. I've heard a lot of people say
good things about Macrium, but True Image is good enough for me, and I
use it regularly.

I was trying to point out how I got my current opinion of Acronis the
company. Nowhere did I say that I thought that True Image == Drive
Monitor.

.... but it did rather sound like you didn't appreciate the difference,
which is unlikely given your long record of intelligent and useful
posts. Certainly didn't meant to give offence.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

In message <[email protected]>, "J. P. Gilliver
[]
(To save others time:
http://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/
is a current URL for that one.)

Or rather, not: the download link on that page (identical on the .com
version, too) takes me to another page, where there is no download link.
Anyone have a link to a page where it can actually be downloaded?

Also, in searching, I found this:

http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/07/06/software-to-steer-clear-of
-acronis-drive-monitor/
which, though obviously only one person's opinion, is interesting.

Sure, the backup monitor only works with Acronis's own product, but it's
free, and you can opt out of that function. I can live with Farenheit
(but then I am as old as dirt).

Yes, I would have lived with both of those!

The download page asks if you're a Home or Business user, and for the

The above page has a big green "V Download Now" button. When I click
that, I get taken to
http://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/download/drive-monitor/
, which is headed "Download Free Acronis® Drive Monitor?". Below that
heading is a block of text on a pale pink background, which (the
background I mean) has a pointy bit on its right, which points to ...
nothing.

Home version you're asked for your name, country and an email address. I

I don't seem to be being asked any of those things. Near the top right,
I do see a "Downloads & Documentation" link. _That_ takes me to a page
headed "Customer Service & Support" (huh?). This does have (in rather
small print) "Installation Files", including Acronis Drive Monitor.
Clicking that takes me to
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/ - which
looks the same as the page I started from, other than having a .com
rather than a .co.uk URL.

Basically, it's leading me round and round in circles. I'm never
reaching a page where it asks for the above.

get very little traffic from Acronis. For a free utility which makes
sense of SMART and has undoubtedly saved several customers from a
"recovery" situation it's great value!

I'd like to try it (-:!

I'll email you a link to a copy downloaded recently.