FYI on system event ID 7 for bad blocks using Acronis

[mikesw]

Awhile back I asked if anyone experienced "bad block" errors being reported to the system event log

when one tries to use Acronis Trueimage Workstation v9 (and now Echo). This occurs on OS bootup

due to various Acronis servers (group,deploy,backup, etc) being started via the Windows startup list

and when one selects Windows trueimage (not the console manager one) to the point the gui is displayed.

It doesn't occur on exiting Acronis products. Apparently this occurs for Trueimage v8 too and I see

that it occurs in Seagates DiskWizard and Maxtors Maxblast which are Acronis products.

Here is a forum post that states it is due to Zip drives (which I have) not having a disk inserted at the

time one starts Acronis and it scans all the drives to figure out the partition tables. This is a nuisance

since one doesn't really know if one has a bad disk based on the error message or if it was due to Acronis.

This was reported but nothing has been fixed to correct this spurious error message to date. Moreover,

the situation may occur if instead of Zip disks, one has lets say two removable hot swapable drives. That

is the first hotswap drive is installed containing the OS and the second isn't which contains user stuff.

Upon Acronis scanning the drives because it sees the SATA and/or IDE drive cables interfaces being connected,

it may report a bad block when the hotswap drive is not inserted. Now that Acronis Echo is out

that handles Raid and dynamic disks this adds additonal issues since one can have a disk offline

(either installed or removed from the array) that when Acronis scans will/may report a bad block too.

I don't have the hotswap drives or Raid arrays to try this out to confirm it or not but this may occur

since missing ZIP disks causes this problem.

This needs to be fixed when removable disks in various drive types are removed.

Here's another post in June of 2007 stating the same thing and Acronis

responding. Time to fix this issue in Trueimage and Echo and anything

that shows up in the windows startup list for Acronis that does a disk scan

for example the various group, backup, deploy servers etc.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread....tem+event+block

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread....tem+event+block

Another twist for future reference is this issue with Seagate eSata drives for bad blocks.

http://blogs.mcbsys.com/mark/post/Seagate-...ock-Errors.aspx