"A disk read error occurred ... " after restore of the virtual environment.
Submitted by Svetoslav Trochev on November 11, 2006 - 9:52am.
Hi Everyone,
I installed moka5 on my USB HDD. And start building my virtual environment and everything was working fine. I have maintain backup in addition of moka5 backup. I had to return the my USB drive because a cosmetic problem. I follow the instructions form this page:
1. I restore all my files except moka5 directory and everything work as expecting.
2. Then I installed Moka5 and the Installation wizard had detected my backup and ask me to restored it. The installation process when without problem.
3. After the installation completed it ask me to eject and reinsert my USB drive. Then I try my virtual PC it didn't start :( I receive error:
A disk read error accurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
I believe that this error is cause by corruption in the virtual HDD. I try different away to recover from it without any success.
Is there is any chances to recover my data from the virtual disk? Is there a tool to export the disk back to VMware server in order to use VMware tools?
I have partial success.
Submitted by Svetoslav Trochev on November 14, 2006 - 6:29pm.
Hi John,
Yes, I always wait for the backup to complete and always use "Safely Remove Hardware" to disconnect the USB drive. So I really was surprised that I end up with corrupted file. Any way I have done some hacking into m5engin and now I have basic understanding of each file. I have decide to try this.
1. Create new LivePC with exact same configuration.
2. Installed my Windows XP with the same options.
3. Test that LivePC works without error.
4. Shutdown the LivePC and wait for the backup to complete.
5. Copy local.cdsk.0 and local.vmdk from the old LivePC.
6. Start the new LivePC and recover all my files from the local disk.
This help my to recover most of my personal files :)
When I try to repeat the same for the system.cdsk.0 it failed.
It will be good If can fix it enough to be able to recover some files and windows registry settings, but I don't think it worth your time. But I have made some observations, that may help us. When I try to start the LivePC the new file 'system.cdsk.1' is created with 0 bites size. I don't see the same for other virtual drives.
I also notice something abnormal for me. Some time the backup freezes when it try to backup the System disk. It remains frozen no other files are backup until I shutdown the LivePC. I guess it is caused by file-system access lock. So may be the backup process times-out and that how I end up with broken backup. I that is the case I have couple suggestions:
1. If the backup encounters access lock to skip this file and backup other files and come back to this file after the LivePC is shutdown. This will speed up shutdown process of M5engine because most of the files will be backup.
2. Add the backup consistency check-up option. When this option is invoked the backup should run md5 check sum (for example) to confirm that backup file is not corrupted.
Thanks,
SAL-e
Hello, Sorry you are having
Hello,
Sorry you are having a problem restoring. It sounds like somehow a file in your backup became corrupted. When you shut down for the last time, did the backup say "backup complete" at that time? If you send us a copy of the file (most likely "system.cdsk"), we might be able to repair it for you. You can use something like www.sharebig.com to upload the file and then send us a link to it at [email protected]. Other information that would be useful in diagnosing the problem would be the m5engine.log and also the vmware.log from starting the LivePC when you get the error. If you email support, we can also send you a program that you can use to convert between cdsk format and vmdk format.
Did you say that you also made another backup besides the moka5 built-in backup? If so, I would be very curious to see if/how the backups differ.
Again, sorry you were having problems and I hope we can get to the bottom of this soon.
-John