I use Acronis True Image 2014 Premium for laptop backup (although in light some recent pesky issues, I’m considering a change to ShadowProtect – but I digress).
This past weekend, after changing backup destination from a Samba share to an internal FTP server, I attempted to execute a full system backup (as opposed to incremental) for the first time in over a year. I was repeatedly and randomly confronted with “poor media” errors on validation.
It turned out that during the validation, I was briefly and temporarily losing network connectivity. I don’t know if the fault is/was my WiFi access point, my laptop’s WiFi radio, my laptop’s WiFi driver, some internal Windows 8 issue, some bug in Acronis, or some combination of any or all of those, but the issue had nothing to do with the fact that it was FTP (vs. Samba), nor with my FTP server, nor with my server’s attached storage. The issue was squarely on the interruption of my WiFi connection.
So I switched to CAT5. And encountered exactly the the same issue – only this time, the network connection problem wasn’t transient. A close inspection revealed that the cable I’d chosen was badly kinked and likely suffered from broken wires. A few twists and tugs on the cable confirmed this to be the case.
So I swapped to a cable to one I knew to be good, and voila! The backup worked start to finish without issue, as did subsequent backup runs.
I hope this prevents some of the same heartache and frustration I endured this past weekend.
