Backup Speed
Hello,
I want to backup an entire drive (1,5 TB) sector to sector to an external USB drive (2 TB). Source: ST31500341AS (I don't know exactly what drive this is), dest: Seagate GoFlex Desk. I plugged the dest drive to a front USB hub.
Acronis True Image tells me that the backup process will take 2 days non stop to finish. Is this normal?
You can figure that, with an USB connection, you will get about 20-25MB/s when transferring a single large file. At this speed, transferring 1.5TB would take you 18-22h.
Additionally, don't read too much into the time estimates from the software. These estimates are simply all over the place.
Finally, I am wondering about the terminology you use. If you need to backup, a regular image (sector based) will do this fine, you don't need to go sector-by-sector in terms of image creation mode. If you need to clone, this is done sector by sector, but the process is much trickier if the data contains the operating system.
Ok, thanks for the info! Just two last questions:
- I've done the normal sector based backup of entire drive (not sector by sector). Does it mean I can restore everything like it was before, even if I format the drive first? (Windows 7, 64-bit; ATI Home 2009 (bootable))
- Does the restore procedure goes faster or will it take the same time?
Thank you very much.
Yes, you can restore everything you need. Make sure you selected the entire disk box rather than checked every partition. This wil make sure the MBR and track 0 are in the backup.
When you restore, if you select MBR and track 0, all existing partitions on the disk will be replaced by what is in the image. YOu reformat the disk before of course but it is not necessary.