TI 2012 *very* slow
Hi folks,
The subject line says it all. I've just upgraded from TI 2010 to TI 2012 and am regretting it already.
I'm testing it by backing up my email. So far it's taken two hours to back up ~465Mb of data.
I have folders with ~100Gb of data that need regular backups. Extrapolating from this, it would take 18 days to perform this operation. This is totally unacceptable. TI 2010 did this in a few short hours. I fear something has gone seriously wrong in the development of this once-reliable application. I've paid money for a backup tool that is not fit for purpose.
Judging from other posts, I hear downgrading back to TI 2010 can also be problematic.
Any advice, please? Are there going to be any major updates (and preferably soon) to resolve this?
Cheers,
Andy.
I'm in the same boat. TI 2011 backed up an image of my 160GB hard drive in 2 - 3 hours. TI 2012 now takes around 30 - 35 hours to do exactly the same thing.
Does anyone know if Acronis support staff actually read these posts? It would be nice to get a response and a fix to such a serious performance issue.
I have similar observations (and some contrasting points-of-view with a competing product) regarding backup-over-LAN performance. In my case, I have 3 home machines backing up to a fourth machine with a 2TB external hard drive as the target media storage for backups. The backups are arranged as one full backup and up-to-6 successive differential backups every week, with the machines starting at different times of the night. I have setup the backup with maximum 4.7GB segment sizes (makes it much easier to copy).
My suggestions:
1. Use computers with fast LAN ports. All of my new machines can now have 1000 Mbit/sec NICs; especially important for the target machine.
2. Use high quality network cables. I'm now using genuine CAT 5e cables for 1000 Mbit/sec transfers.
3. Use a fast LAN switch. In my case, I'm now using a 1000 Mbit/sec network switch (TRENDnet TEC-S80G 8-port Gigabit GREENnet 10/100/1000Mbps switch).
4. Turn off indexing for the target volume (right-click Properties of a drive in Explorer, uncheck Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties from the General tab).
5. Establish high-performance caching policies for your target drive.
a. For USB: (Device Manager > Disk drives > <your disk drive> ), right-click to select Properties, select Better performance).
b. For SATA/eSATA: (Device Manager > Disk drives > <your disk drive> ), right-click to select Properties, select Enable write caching on the device and Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device).
c. These policies do put write operations at risk (a minor risk in my opinion), but the effect on performance is amazing. This is backup data after all, so a power-fail that can partially corrupt media isn’t all that serious.
6. Switch from USB 2.0 to SATA/eSATA for target media drive.
7. Format the target media to the maximum clustersize of 64KB.
The first 3 items establish reliable fast transport medium for backups. The next two optimize Windows treatment of disk drive for maximum write performance. Item #6 changed performance for my USB 2.0/eSATA external drive to almost double speed. Item #7 will never hurt performance, but can make a significant improvement once the target drive starts to become fragmented by extensive use.
The last recommendation is a curious one. My previous backup software, PowerQuest v2i, always pre-allocated its segment files thus avoiding a lot of allocation overhead; once it completed the last segment, the last file was truncated to its proper size. Acronis appears to allocate the output TIB files in as small an allocation as possible, creating lots of allocation overhead. This overhead is especially significant after the target drive has been in use for a while, and its free space has become quite fragmented. Such a fragmented target drive “chatters” a lot (for the allocation overhead) and slows down by a factor of 10 or more. I’m hoping that my use of the large clustersize slows this fragmentation down, and forces Acronis to use a better (if not the best) allocation method.
My reformatted 64KB clustersize target drive can handle backup of a 482GB (allocated) C-drive in 170 minutes, with compression reducing that size down to 260GB in the process.
Victor;
Thanks very much for your thorough discussion of the performance considerations and options. I will keep your comments for future reference.
With the help of Acronis technical support, I determined that my USB drive was the issue. I wasn't receiving Windows error messages, and chkdsk didn't show any errors either. However, even a straight Windows copy of a small 10 - 20 MB file was very, very slow. A new USB drive solved the problem. My full C: drive backups now run in about 90 minutes.