SSD drives to Windows Server backup extremely slow.
My PC has 2 SSDs. Using Acronis True image 2017 (build 5554) to a Windows Server 2016 (Standard) machine is painfully slow. I have tested my LAN using large file transfers to and from the server, and always get very fast transfers when not using Acronis. Network is a Gigabit Ethernet, and all cables are CAT-5E. My PC is wired and I am not transferring wireless. I have selected particular files for a total of 144 GB to backup. Compression is normal, and so is backup priority. There is no other transfer occuring in the network. I have even tried changing compression to "none" and transfer is still slow.
The 144GB transfer has been running for 4 hours and is still not even halfway done.
Any advice appreciated.
CC
If you were to use Windows to copy/paste all of these files, what speeds are you getting that way - I suspect similar.
File/folder backups are at a file level (sounds basic, but stick with me). In Windows, when you copy/paste files/folders, performance is not solely based on synthetic random read/write speeds of your hard drive as reported by the manufacturer or tools like crystal diskmark. Those are the BEST speeds possible, and usually hold true only for large files (like single large files). When you get to folders that have several little files within them and/or many nested folders within those, transfer speeds go waaaaaaaaaay down when doing a copy/paste of files/folders. You can easily test this by copying a single 4.7gb .iso to your drive and then copy your windows directory to another folder on the same drive an stop after about 4.7gb - the times will be night and day. Ultimately, I challenge you to copy and paste the same folders from within Windows as a test and see how long some of those take - speeds should be similar.
Where Acronis (and other backup products) excel is disk/parition backus which are handled in blocks and not individual files. When you backup blocks of data, vs individual files/folders, the process will go much faster because it doesn't care about all of the individual files and folder structures, it just cares about the data written to each block and backup those up in large chunks. If you really want to put this to a test, try this..
1) Take a full parition image of your C: drive and time it
2) Take a folder backup of yoru C: drive and time it
#1 should be leaps and bounds faster than #2, even though, in theory, they should backup the same data.
RESOLVED. The main culprit was not Acronis, but a setting in my NIC driver. Once I tweaked it, now Acronis is as fast as it could be. Thank you for the advice guys.
Admin, please mark as resolved.
Glad it's sorted out. Is this a unique NIC setting, or something that might be useful to pass onto others to check on their NIC as well?
I will list out detail for anyone who may have this motherboard (and issue):
Motherboard: Asrock - FATAL1TY Z170 PROFESSIONAL GAMING I7
The setting I had to change to get optimal upload speed is to disable both "Large Send Offload V2" (IPV4 and IPV6) under the driver's Advanced setting.
Side note: this motherboard's networking has been a nightmare for me. I bought 3 of them, and have encountered issues such as the one described here, not being supported by windows server etc. In addition, I think the third one may need to be returned as it frrezes and sometimes does not reognize added SSD (even when looking in the bios).
C.C. I feel yoru pain. My Gigabyte Gaming3 Z170X board has been troubling when adding new disks as well. I find that in some cases, if I go into the bios and check the boot order, it will list the disks, but will not be bootable after performing a clone or a recovery to the new disk.
I'm beginning to think that UEFI implemenetations across different boards, vendors and/or even firmware versions, will ultimately detemine your experience with UEFI systems. All of my dell's do this very well. Both of my cusomtized Gigabyte motherboards suffer from this same behavior, despite being a few years apart.
For me, when I make internal disk changes, it seems like I either have to 1) reset bios to defaults (works sometimes).... 2) short the CMOS jumper and reconfigure bios settings (works sometimes)..... or 3) reflash the same bios firmware again (works everytime - but what a pain). Although I've been very happy with the performance and reliabilty of my Gigabyte motherboards, because of this continued behavior among different boards and even different firmware, this will be my last Gigabyte board.
I'd be curious if reflashing the latest firmware (even if it's the same version) will allow you to see the newly installed dives as well? The major downside, is having to reconfigure the settings again (at least I have to with Gigabyte - Dell's seem to leave the previous settings in place when firmware is updated).
C.C. you may find this review enlightening with your board as well.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asrock-fatal1tyz170-progamingi7-hsio-connectivity,30481.html
Are you using any m.2 drives in the system? If so, that may explain why you can't see some of the SSD's on other SATA ports
http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Manual/Fatal1ty%20Z170%20Professional%20Gaming%20i7.pdf
2.11 M.2_SSD (NGFF) Module Installation Guide
The M.2, also known as the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF), is a small size and versatile card edge connector that aims to replace mPCIe and mSATA. The Ultra M.2 Sockets support M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s).
* M2_1, SATA3_0, SATA3_1 and SATA_EXP0 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
* M2_2, SATA3_2, SATA3_3 and SATA_EXP1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
* M2_3, SATA3_4, SATA3_5 and SATA_EXP2 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
Large Send Offload disabling seems to be necessary on some installs and not others. I believe it is largely dependent on other hardware in your network, router, switches, other attached devices.
The UEFI bios having only a basic standard which allows each manufacturer to customise or implement their own flavor so to speak is a problem when it comes to drive swaps. I have come to the conclusion that a good practice to help avoid issues with booting, drive recognition, etc. is 1, if replacing or adding drives do a complete shutdown of the OS and machine (admin command prompt shutdown \s) when doing so and 2, if that involves a system disk restore/clone/replacement perform the same shutdown technique and disconnect all other attached disk drives to the system prior to restore/clone/replacement operations. That seems to lessen the impact such procedures have on the UEFI firmware on the boards.
Bobbo_3C0X1, funny thing you mentioned reflashing bios. I had done that this morning to further troubleshoot the problem. I also have an M.2 SSD as the primary OS drive. I knew that some SATA ports would not be available and I had added the SATA drives to other slots (which were not impacted).
Enchantech, I will follow your process and will update progress (or lack of) in 1-2 days. There is nothing more demoralizing when building a new system, as having things not work as they should. I have 3 identical machines in all aspects/hardware that were built at the same time, but one of them is posing a serious headache.
Thank you for all the advice guys.
CC
Since they're all similar systems - would it be possible to take an SSD of one of the "good systems" and connect to the "bad system" and see if it's detected? If not, then you can pretty much confirm it's localized to the bad system since you know the other system works and so does that SSD.
Likewise, can you take the SSD from the "bad" system and attach to the same port on a "good system" and see if it's detected? If not, that might confirm an issue with drive itself instead of the other board. It it does connect, then you can probably rule out it's not a bad drive, but something on the "bad" system.