Win7 backup is SLOW
I just upgraded to a 4 core win7 box with 16gb of memory. On my winXP box (2 core 4 gb) a full backup (57 GB) took 4 hours to a USB drive. Now it takes 3 days to backup 87 GB to the same usb2 drive, which is impossible.
Thoughts, suggestions ?
bill
On a recent machine, with normal compression and high priority, ATI is capable of saturating the USB 2.0 bandwidth. You should see 57*1024/25/60 = 38mn, assuming 25MB/s for USB 2.0, and 57GB is the resulting data size.
actual backup time
It is running at low priority, how do I tell acronis to use highest priority (with 4 cores I can afford that).
bill
Which version of ATI do you have? for 2011, you can edit your backup settings, go to the performance tab and choose the priority.
It seems you have something else going on that is slowing ATI.
Are you using higher than normal compression? (you shouldn't)
Do you see the same speed with other USB Disk? Are you using some RAID?
At high compression I do not use more then 36% of my available cpu. Why not use high ?
I have 2011, no raid.
From normal to high, you will lose overall performance and TIB size if your backup includes compressed file formats like music, videos, PDFs, ZIP files, photos, etc. So, for the average home user, normal compression is OK. It typically neutralizes the added data volume that ATI injects in the information archive. If you don't use compression at all, your TIB files are typically bigger than the data being backed up.
Changing priority to high and compression to high reduced the backup time from 72 hours to 36 hours, which is still unacceptable - I will try again with normal compression but doubt this will bring it down to an acceptable level. Anyone have any other suggestions ?
I am backing up the OS partition and a data partition that has some .png files, but mostly uncompressed files.
My method for speed of backups and restores and everything else is to install another internal HDD. if you can put in place a trayless removable HDD fitting you really can get motoring. My current speeds are 6GB per minute for both operations.
I actually have a set of three Main HDDs which are rotated on a weekly basis as each latest image is restored. This gives the confidence that restores actually work and have the added bonus of a pair of ready to go drives safely kept outside the computer. A fixed drive is used to store full images as well as the page file.
William,
When you copy a large TIB file back from the USB to the internal drive, what speed do you get? If you get less than 25MB/s, try to adjust the USB disk volume policies in the device manager. If you get at least 25MB/S, you have a problem with the Acronis installation.
Try to backup from the recovery CD and see if that goes faster. If it does, it confirms an issue with ATI on your system.
Wow, changing the policies to enable write caching changed to estimated backup from "greater than one day" to 1 hour, which is believable from the greatly increased blink rate of both disks. Many thanks.
Bummer, even though the policies are still set to allow write caching, the backup is back to taking 3 days. I tried backing up after a fresh restart with nothing else (applications) running, no joy. As it did backup in 1 hr, once, I know it is possible, but I have no clue where to look next. This is clearly a win7 issue.
bill
I'm having this issue on Windows 7 machines, 64 bit and 32 bit as well. Didn't have the problem with version 10 on 32 bit machines...even if they were running Windows 7.
I updated snapAPIs (search the Acronis site) and backup is back to 1 hour. We will see if it sticks.
It did not hold, after 5 days it went back to taking > 3 days to backup. But I found that if I manually disconnect the USB drive and then reconnect it, the backup time goes back to 1 hour. This may be related to a reboot with the drive connected.
Anyone have any thoughts on this or suggestions on how I can not have to manually disconnect/reconnect the drive each time I reboot ?
bill
Do you have a USB hub? If yes, try without. Do you have other USB devices plugged in? If yes, try unplugging these. Sometimes ATI has issues with certain USB flash disks or networked printers.
The USB disk is plugged into the computer directly. I do have bunches of other usb devices (who doesn't) but unplugging them is not an option. It would be easier to unplug/replug the USB disk after every reboot. I do not have a usb flash disk or networked printer, but do have a usb printer on this computer.
William,
I was just suggesting to unplug devices to see if another device is the source of a conflict. It might not be. If there is one, you can still decide the protocol to follow.
Another thing I would try is to disable the following service: Acronis non stop backup
Thank you.
nonStopBackup coexists just fine - when backup is fast, and disabling it does not help when it is slow.
Next time it fails, I will try disconnecting the other USB devices.
It _appears_ to be related to rebooting with the USB drive attached. Running fine now, we will see.