Partimage refuses to save NTFS

[Guest]

Hi,

I am using a Knoppix 3.4 CD to save and restore my Windows XP partition with partimage 0.6.2. After doing this several times without any problems, there is suddenly the problem that after entering all parameters and starting, partimage does not start saving the partition, but displays "0%" for minutes. What can be the reason?

Background informations: "cat /proc/partitions" displays all partitions correctly. Also creating an image from an VFAT partition to a file on an other VFAT partition works fine. The partition to be saved is 15GB NTFS with about 5GB data and the image should be saved to a large VFAT partition on the same 160GB drive. I chose splitting of image to files of the size 2GB and last time I created this way successfully an image consisting of 2 files smaller than this limit. Unfortunately I don’t know much about Linux.

I buyed this PC in august 2004. The only thing that have changed after the last successful image creation is an update of the following 2 BIOS components:

Code: Select all

ASUS A7V600 ACPI 1006 - to version 1008
Serial ATA RAID BIOS Setting Utility 2.01 - to version 2.31


Can this be a problem for Knoppix 3.4 or partimage 0.6.2? Is it a good idea to try a newer Knoppix or partimage version? After rebooting Windows XP I see a file created by partimage at the right path but with size zero.

On the partimage homepage http://www.partimage.org/ there is written:

"The NTFS (Windows NT File System) is currently not fully supported: this means you will be able to save an NTFS partition if system files are not very fragmented, and if system files are not compressed. In this case, you will be able to save the partition into an image file, and you will be able to restore it after. If there is a problem when saving, an error message will be shown and you won't be able to continue."

But there is no error massage. Therfore I think fragmentation is not the problem.

Thanks for any hint!

[wolfgangbeyer]

It's me who posted this question. I simply forgot to login - sorry

--
Wolfgang Beyer
www.wolfgangbeyer.de

[wolfgangbeyer]

In the meantime I tried a freshly downloaded Knoppix 3.7 with partimage 0.6.4 (instead of 0.6.2 before): Now partimage exits to the bash prompt and I see an error message saying memory access error (the original german message is "Speicherzugriffsfehler"). So far I remember, partimage diplays usually a window with the main properties of the partition to be save before starting action. But obviously the error occurs before this window is displayed. What can I do?

Thanx for any hint!

--
Wolfgang Beyer
www.wolfgangbeyer.de

[szaka]

What happens if you run ntfsclone?

[wolfgangbeyer]

In the meantime I restored and saved an older image of the same partition without problems with the old Knoppix CD. That means, that the update of the 2 BIOS components was not the problem (I did this test so late because I feared to destroy the partition content due to an partimage problem during restoration). That means there is obviously a partimage problem concerning a special content of a NTFS partition which occurs during the determination of the partition parameters just before saving the partition. This follows from the observation that the error occurs just before partimage can display these parameters.

I did not yet try ntfsclone, but I was able to save the critical partition content with DriveImage 7 without problems.

[jurij]

http://www.device-image.de

Regards,
Jurij