Re: Disk backup causes reboot

Pegasus (MVP) wrote:
"Philip" <me@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:nsednUkVu_7fBiHanZ2dnUVZ_qWtnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Pegasus (MVP) wrote:
"Philip" <me@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:IfOdnaTCef3-9iHanZ2dnUVZ_uCinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Pegasus (MVP) wrote:
"Philip" <me@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:GNidnUtZtftPbS3anZ2dnUVZ_vGinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have been trying to back up my XP home desktop to a network server/drive.

I have tried ntbackup.exe and NasBackup. However, in both cases, they get a good deal into backing up 5-10 GB when the system spontaneously reboots (just like a "reboot now" command when installing software).

When the system recovers, and I re-log in, I get the send error dialog which follows with a serious hardware failure web page ironically advising me to back up my disk.

I ran a disk check diagnostic (C: Properties, Tools tab, Check Now) and had no problems. Everything seems fine. Never any problem like this before.

Any thoughts as to track down the cause of this.
I can think of a couple of possible causes:
- You have a memory leak. Observing the Task Manager when the backup
process approaches the critical time would reveal this.
- There is a conflict with some third-party program. Disconnect your
network from the Internet, then use msconfig.exe to kill all non-essential
programs ***and services*** before running the backup process.
Firewalls and virus scanners can do this sort of thing.
I ran the back up with just task manager running, nothing else. Memory utilization stayed constant at 30%. I did not see anything that looked like a leak. The cpu load never got over 40%.

It always seems to fail when backing up my directory tree of jpeg photographs. It never fails when other directories are backed up. It almost sees like whenever a particular disk area is accessed it triggers the fault. I say this because every back up mechanism I try always fails: NasBackup, NTbackup.exe, Nero BackItUp ...
Good observation. In this situation I would do this:
1. Demonstrate that the crash can be caused by backup up this folder.
2. Copy this folder to some other folder. Does this cause a crash too?
If not, what's the difference between copying and backing up?
3. Run one of your backups on the copied folder. Does it crash the
machine?
Thank you for the suggestions, I think I have the culprit.

I made a new folder and did a drag-n-drop-copy of the photograph
directory into it. Watching it closely, it crashed as I was fortuitously
watching the filename on the copy dialog. Recovering from the crash, I
manually selected and attempted to drag-n-drop-copy that one file to the
new folder, and it crashed again! Recovering from the crash, I then
attempted to copy the all the remaining files. NO problem. I then tried
to copy this one file again, it crashed! I then tried to backup the
copied folder without this file, NO problem. Then I deleted the specific file and was able to backup the original folder.

What would be in a jpeg that would cause a system crash that records a hardware failure in the event log?



The operating system does not care about the contents of a file
but these might:
- a virus scanner
- a physical flaw on the disk
- a logical flaw in the filing system

Given that a little time has passed here, I can report that since I removed the culprit file, I have never had a crash since then, despite a daily backup regimen. So because the fault was deterministically triggered by one file and the disk has passed repeated diagnostics, I would think a disk flaw can be ruled out.

I do not use a virus scanner

So I guess that leaves a NTFS filing system flaw somewhere.

.

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