Macrium repeatedly failing verification, out of ideas

K

klepp0906

Gawd
Joined
Jul 1, 2013
Messages
594
ok. So macrium fails image verification suddenly, but only on full backups, and only on internal hard drives.

I just put in a brand new 1tb evo plus not too long ago, and ive burned through alotta terabytes that i shouldnt have writing 300gb backup after 300gb backup testing this/trying to fix this.

Ive gone through the usual suspects like memory timings. Nothing else fails, or has failed ever. I crush prime/ibt/realbench etc. computer is dead rock stable outside of the sudden macrium failures. (either sudden or i didnt catch them before cause as i said, its only on full backups and those are only once a month)

Either way, I ran a backup to an external/usb drive twice in a row and all was well. One would assume it was just the usual internal drive giving issues, so i tried another internal drive - same damn thing. wrote image, failed verification.

Im out of ideas and I cant keep burning an hour and 300+gb at a time of mine and my ssd's life trying to shoot in the dark.

Is there like, a voltage thats related to this sort of thing in the bios? I am running the m.2 and 6 internal 8tb drives so im not sure if theres voltage that needs to be supplied to the i/o / sata bus or something somewhere that would be different than what is used over usb to my external? Perhaps the increased demands?

Truly at a loss.
 
Last edited:
I've got no great ideas, but I can help you rule out the voltage one. The voltage for the I/O subsystems isn't adjustable.

Can I ask exactly what model 8TB drives you have? Your sig says 6x 4TB Barracudas, but that's obviously a bit out of date :) If they are Archive branded drives, then I'd be looking at them sideways as their strange write behavior can manifest in all sorts of weird ways.

Also, you might just try a different backup product - maybe the problem is with Macrium, rather than with your hardware? Veeam has a free endpoint backup that's capable and certainly usable for testing purposes. I'm also a big Storagecraft Shadowprotect 5 fan, and there is a trial version - though no perpetual free option.

Lastly, and I know this isn't the real point, unless you're writing your backups to SSD - which makes zero sense to do so I hope you're not - then you're not harming your SSD's life. It's only write traffic to SSD that counts against its lifetime; reads are non-destructive. If you are writing backups to SSD (why?) then you still don't really have to worry; a german magazine c't ran an endurance test of 12 SSDs starting in 2016 to see exactly when they would fail. Both the low end 750 Evo 250GB drives they tested lasted >1200TB of writes before they failed. The 850 Pro 256 drives lasted 9100TB. The worst drives on the list, some low end Crucial drives, still lasted >180TB of writes, which is *way* beyond their advertised endurance. Though in Samsung's case, you should be aware that your warranty does expire when you use up the advertised write endurance OR it comes to the end of its warranty term, whichever comes first.
 
Change the cables, be they USB or SATA. I cannot tell you how many SATA cables have just gone bad over the years even though they never moved or were even touched.
 
“It’s always the cable”- me, to every new EE through the years.

It’s correct a horrifying amount of the time.
 
sinisterDei said:
I've got no great ideas, but I can help you rule out the voltage one. The voltage for the I/O subsystems isn't adjustable.

Can I ask exactly what model 8TB drives you have? Your sig says 6x 4TB Barracudas, but that's obviously a bit out of date :) If they are Archive branded drives, then I'd be looking at them sideways as their strange write behavior can manifest in all sorts of weird ways.

Also, you might just try a different backup product - maybe the problem is with Macrium, rather than with your hardware? Veeam has a free endpoint backup that's capable and certainly usable for testing purposes. I'm also a big Storagecraft Shadowprotect 5 fan, and there is a trial version - though no perpetual free option.

Lastly, and I know this isn't the real point, unless you're writing your backups to SSD - which makes zero sense to do so I hope you're not - then you're not harming your SSD's life. It's only write traffic to SSD that counts against its lifetime; reads are non-destructive. If you are writing backups to SSD (why?) then you still don't really have to worry; a german magazine c't ran an endurance test of 12 SSDs starting in 2016 to see exactly when they would fail. Both the low end 750 Evo 250GB drives they tested lasted >1200TB of writes before they failed. The 850 Pro 256 drives lasted 9100TB. The worst drives on the list, some low end Crucial drives, still lasted >180TB of writes, which is *way* beyond their advertised endurance. Though in Samsung's case, you should be aware that your warranty does expire when you use up the advertised write endurance OR it comes to the end of its warranty term, whichever comes first.
Click to expand...

theyre the seagate barracuda st8000dm004. same drive as the 4tb in my sig but bigger i believe. Just upgraded all my storage, im a data hoarder + tax time :p I did consider other solutions but all i kept hearing was macrium or acronis and i veto'd the latter. I'll peek at those you mentioned. Though it makes me question if they "didnt" present the error if that was a shortcoming. I believe the error checking is pretty low level and not software specific so to speak.

As for ssd lifespan, good to know its purely writes to the ssd and not from. Having just upgraded that as well - I didnt want this to create an unrealistic amount of wear. I guess its just ~an hour of my life lost per run/test then :( lol.



mwroobel said:
Change the cables, be they USB or SATA. I cannot tell you how many SATA cables have just gone bad over the years even though they never moved or were even touched.
Click to expand...

yea, under any other circumstance, thats what I would do. Thing is, i tried 2 different internals with the same result both times. I guess they could BOTH be bad but ugh. That itself would present an additional issue considering its a corsair 900d with those hotswappable built in cables that connect to the drive bays ;p

since i now know that it doesnt create wear on my ssd persay, ill go ahead and do it to be thorough.

so time consuming and frustrating on an otherwise rock stable pc. Things been running this way for years, hence why backups are so important to me. I'll never format again if i can help it :p I dont even overclock beyond the edge of where things begin to taper anymore. Stability and longevity are worth more to my old ass lol.

Thank you for the reply guys. I guess the synopsis is at this point look at some other softwares and test the cables.

Fwiw i tried a few different sata drivers as well with the same result. I wanted to eliminate the USB vs internal thing being a potential source. Usually its the externals that give issue. Also worth mentioning the external is also an 8tb seagate (backup plus) which I'm almost positive uses the same exact drive as the internal one.
 
also beginning to wonder, if it would be the definitions file. can those go bad or become corrupt. I guess its easy enough to test.

the full backups i did to the external were manually done as opposed to using the definitions file for simplicities sake.

wish it happened on differential or incrementals. would make life substantially easier :p

also - dare i ask, lifespan on writes to mechanical hard drives? at 300gb a pop i sorta dont wanna kill these off prematurely either lol.

god forbid im still doing this a few days from now but alotta terabytes in a shortimespan makes me sad :(
 
klepp0906 said:
also - dare i ask, lifespan on writes to mechanical hard drives? at 300gb a pop i sorta dont wanna kill these off prematurely either lol.
Click to expand...

Mechanical drive endurance is not significantly affected by writes. Write with confidence!
 
PhaseNoise said:
Mechanical drive endurance is not significantly affected by writes. Write with confidence!
Click to expand...


*Technically* mechanical drives still have a duty cycle; the st8000dm004 disks are rated at 55 TB/year. For mechanical disks, this is both read and write combined. I don't know whether it affects the warranty status of the drives, though.

I mostly suspect that the duty cycle is something included in the spec sheets just so they can tout bigger numbers for enterprise drives - the Pro line of drives is 180 TB/year and the Exos ones are 550 TB/year. No data exists that supports the idea that the Exos enterprise drives are 10x as 'durable' or 'reliable' than their consumer-level Barracuda cousins, so I suspect the distinction is largely for marketing and 'we get to charge more for it' purposes.
 
so what you guys are telling me - is i wont kill em :p Getting close to finding out the solution btw, will post back once i know for sure.
 
sinisterDei said:
*Technically* mechanical drives still have a duty cycle; the st8000dm004 disks are rated at 55 TB/year. For mechanical disks, this is both read and write combined. I don't know whether it affects the warranty status of the drives, though.

I mostly suspect that the duty cycle is something included in the spec sheets just so they can tout bigger numbers for enterprise drives - the Pro line of drives is 180 TB/year and the Exos ones are 550 TB/year. No data exists that supports the idea that the Exos enterprise drives are 10x as 'durable' or 'reliable' than their consumer-level Barracuda cousins, so I suspect the distinction is largely for marketing and 'we get to charge more for it' purposes.
Click to expand...

Exactly - you can pay for a longer warranty, but it doesn't mean the drive is actually any more reliable. It is a combination of paying for an extended warranty up-front and paying for some extended pre-qualification where the manufacturer can spot more questionable units and reject them before shipment. I don't know what the split is there on cost - I'd wager heavily that is mostly the "extended warranty" portion.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top