Volume destruction on restore
Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 2:32 am
I have a disk containing, among other things, an extended partition of size 653860 MiB. It contains volumes as follows:
Data: 5001 MiB
Installs: 5001 MiB
Data-X: 5000 MiB
Backups: 638854 MiB
Sometimes when I try to restore an image to one of the volumes, that volume and following volumes become Free Space.
The first occurrence was when I used IFL 2.86 to restore an image of Data to Data-X without noticing that Data was 1 MiB larger than Data-X. The restore appeared to complete normally, but I was left with
Data: 5001 MiB
Installs: 5001 MiB
643854 MiB Free Space
Most of the time I'm able to use Undelete to get the partitions back though I think the 5000 MiB has, not surprisingly, been corrupted with restored data. At least once, Undelete was unsuccessful and I had to recover from backups on DVDs.
I think the scenario of IFL wiping out two volumes when trying to restore the 5001 MiB Installs volume to the 5000 MiB Data-X volume is repeatable. At first, I thought the difference in size was relevant, but I've also had the two volumes disappear when trying to restore an image of Data-X to Data-X. This may well be repeatable also, but I haven't done it enough times to be sure.
IFL seems more prone to this problem than IFD though IFD is not immune. Most of the time, restoring Installs to Data-X with IFD ends correctly with the target volume being resized. Strangely, it's resized to 4999 MiB rather than 5000 MiB. Restoring Installs again to that target causes it to be resized to 4998 MiB. Each subsequent restore reduces the size by 1 Mib, but once in a while the last two volumes become Free Space. I haven't been able to detect any pattern in when this happens and when it doesn't using IFD.
The undesirable behavior is much more consistent in IFL, but I can't guarantee that it happens every time.
Data: 5001 MiB
Installs: 5001 MiB
Data-X: 5000 MiB
Backups: 638854 MiB
Sometimes when I try to restore an image to one of the volumes, that volume and following volumes become Free Space.
The first occurrence was when I used IFL 2.86 to restore an image of Data to Data-X without noticing that Data was 1 MiB larger than Data-X. The restore appeared to complete normally, but I was left with
Data: 5001 MiB
Installs: 5001 MiB
643854 MiB Free Space
Most of the time I'm able to use Undelete to get the partitions back though I think the 5000 MiB has, not surprisingly, been corrupted with restored data. At least once, Undelete was unsuccessful and I had to recover from backups on DVDs.
I think the scenario of IFL wiping out two volumes when trying to restore the 5001 MiB Installs volume to the 5000 MiB Data-X volume is repeatable. At first, I thought the difference in size was relevant, but I've also had the two volumes disappear when trying to restore an image of Data-X to Data-X. This may well be repeatable also, but I haven't done it enough times to be sure.
IFL seems more prone to this problem than IFD though IFD is not immune. Most of the time, restoring Installs to Data-X with IFD ends correctly with the target volume being resized. Strangely, it's resized to 4999 MiB rather than 5000 MiB. Restoring Installs again to that target causes it to be resized to 4998 MiB. Each subsequent restore reduces the size by 1 Mib, but once in a while the last two volumes become Free Space. I haven't been able to detect any pattern in when this happens and when it doesn't using IFD.
The undesirable behavior is much more consistent in IFL, but I can't guarantee that it happens every time.