I seem to be unable to back up the G:\ partition on my hard drive to another drive.I can back up the C:\  (system), D:\ and F:\ drives, but not G. I previously had 4 kB of bad sectors, but I believe I have eliminated them by cutting them out with PartitionMagic, then combining to remaining "good" drives.  Running CHKDSK reveals no bad sectors on the G  partition, even if run with the /R switch.

What happens is that the backup seems to work, but stalls at 5% while "calculating remaining time" or some such.  I then cannot get it to cancel the backup without restarting the computer.  I haven't seen any threads similar to this listed in this form until now, and wonder if this is a unique problem.

I'm a complete newbie at using NS&Ror Ghost, as I haven't had any data loss problems to this point; I hope it stays that way, but I figure I better have some working knowledge of these programs, as well as an automated backup plan before disaster strikes.

Thanks in advance for all your help,
Bill Zigrang

Brian,

     It's set as a job, with no joy on both "backup now" on creation of job, or after waiting for the schedule to run. I haven't tried "One Time Backup."

     G:\ drive contains:
2 movie-size .JPG files,
a folder with a CD database (?Nero??Creative?),
a folder with ERUNT registry backups,
a folder with other movie .JPGs,
2 folders with several TV-size .JPGs,
several folders of old partitions from a former computer (?packrat??--me?? - it's only   electrons),
a folder with public domain e-books for Palm OS,
the Google Earth setup program,
a folder with Google Earth files,
a folder with registry backups from jv16 Power Tools
a folder for storage of RAW pictures being processed
a folder with an old profile for Netscape browser (similar to Firefox)
the pspwise.jbf file that has to do with seeing files in PaintShop Pro Album , or somesuch.
a .dbf database of labels for an Avery labelmaking program

I just checked "hidden files & folders" and found "VSNAP.IDX"

Are there types of files that will interfere with a backup? Even if within folders??

I've also (besides CHKDSK /X/R) scanned my drive with Seagate (it's a Maxtor) Seatools for Windows "Long Drive Self Test" and get a "Pass."

Hope this helps.

Thanx again,

Bill Zigrang

Brian,

    Same result - hangs at 5% "Calculating remaining time."

Bill Z.

I have been having a similar problem.  Am using Ghost 12.0.  Creating incremental images is taking a very long time.  I am using:

a Toshiba laptop with a c: drive (80gb) running XP sp2
USB 80 gb hard drive (e:\)
a Network attached storage drive
Linksys wrt54g router

C: drive backup will usually finish eventually.
E: drive backup is hanging much like yours was.

Both are being backed up to the NAS drive.  Have tried it wirelessly & direct cable.  Haven't been able to get a backup of the E: drive for 3 weeks now.    Tried deleting the vsnap.idx file on the e: drive and it seems to go ok up to about 30%-50% and then it locks up again.  What's frustrating is that I have been able to get backups in the past and don't know that I've changed anything to cause the problem now.

Wondering if it's a network issue except that the C: drive backup does complete albeit slowly.  Have a powered usb hub on its' way along with a USB Y cable (2 usb A connectors to 1 usb B) so maybe that will help the E: drive. 

Thanks for any advice.

still working on trying to get that usb drive backed up.  The Y cable showed up yesterday.  Still no luck.  Am running out of ideas.  Maybe I'll try the new ver 14 and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for your advice.  I haven't been able to try it out yet though.  I started another attempt at backing up the E: drive 24 hours ago.  This time by direct cable (wireless is off) and it seems to be progressing albeit slowly.  It has about 55 gb of data to backup (out of total 80gb capacity).  Should it be taking this long? My c: drive backups are not this slow. Last night the progress meter was at about 16% complete and had transferred about 16gb.  This morning the meter is at 0% complete!!!!!  Transferred data is about 21 gb.  The filesize is increasing so am letting it run.  Will see where it's at when I get home tonight.  Network utilization per Task Manager is less than 10%.   I think that when this particular task is done I am going to restart that NAS drive. (WD MyBook World edition 1TB).  Is there a good network testing/diagnostic utility out there that you can recommend?

As a point of comparision, I backup one partition which has 24 USED Gigabytes to external usb2 drive.  It takes about 15 minutes and the resulting image is 13 gigabytes on the usb2 drive (normal compression).

This is using Ghost 12 and Vista.  I had similar results with Ghost 10 and XP.

shendy wrote on Feb 21^st, 2008 at 12:22pm:


When backing up your E: (usb) drive, don't forget what is happening:  Xp must first read from the external usb2 drive via usb2 cable into memory, and then it must combine/create sector image and then write it out to the NAS device using tcpip protocol.  There are more external i/o's than if you were backing up your internal c: IDE/SATA drive.

Is the usb2 drive a powered one?  I get the impression it is not.  I personally don't like unpowered ones because the drive must draw its power from the usb2 cable and sometimes that isn't enough.  Also to minimize the power drain, most portable/unpowered usb2 drives run at slower rpm (usually 4000 or 5400) so they don't have the power demands of a normal 7200 rpm hard drive.

Bottom line is that unpowered usb2 hard drives are handy for portable casual use, but not for demanding use (in my opinion...others may differ...)

Is your laptop a new one?  I am assuming it has usb2 ports and not one of the older original very slow usb ports.

And also that the 80 gb usb hard drive is really a usb2 one?

What is the make and model of the usb hard drive?