True Image Backup on Windows 7 terribly slow, under 1MB/s, 20 days for 1.2TB
I just downloaded the trial from True Image Premium, main reason was trying out whether it is a good replacement of Windows Backup and to move from MBR to GPT to be able to use 4TB unused space.
I've setup a backup of two partitions (together they are 2TB in size, 1.5TB of data, of which 0.4TB excluded on a 6TB RAID-0, MBR, so 4TB inaccessible). I originally set compression to High and priority to Normal. Knowing that Windows takes about 6 hours for a full backup, I estimated that the next morning the first full backup would be ready. Alas, it wasn't, it showed what's in the screenshot: still 20 days to go!
So I googled around and found two articles on slow Acronis True Image in the KB. One suggested changing from PIO to DMA, but this is SATA and it is RAID-0 (so SCSI driver), no DMA settings are not available. However, I canceled the backup and started again with Low compression (still normal priority). This seemed to have helped a little. The write speed is now 1MB + 1MB (when I look into Resource Monitor) and read speed is 1.1MB.
My drives can go to 3Gb/s. Even though that is a theoretical limit, from experience and running speedtests I know it can make write speeds of about 100MB/s (bytes, not bits), esp when doing linear read/write (which is what backup software does). Also, it's astonishing that it is a factor 80x slower than Windows' internal backup system.
Before I rush off and buy Acronis TI, I would like to solve this. Everybody is raving about the speed of this software, but so far it's the opposite for me.
Note: my Windows 7 is up to date with latest patches. I downloaded Acronis TI 2014 yesterday. My system is 2.5 years old, 48GB internal memory, 2 hexacore 3.33GHz Intel Xeon X5680 processors, 4x2TB Western Digital WD20EARS hard drives of which three in hardware RAID-0, MBR, 2TB available. Backup goes to the fourth drive, which is almost empty.
Hi Pat,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I understand that estimates can be off, but I've already let it run two days, which was when I gave up. Also, see the resource monitor screenshot, it is running at 1MB/s speed. When I run Windows Backup, it runs at >100MB/s speed. When I do a drive scan (I scanned for drive errors, other posts suggested that broken sectors may slow ATI down), it reached >200MB/s (when scanning two disks at the same time). My internet connection is faster than the disk-to-disk backup speed of Acronis TI :(.
My worries are not only the backup speed, but also, if it's ever needed, the restore speed. I can live with 4 or 6 hour downtime, but not with 20 days downtime just for restoring a backup. And please note, the lousiest of all backup programs, Windows Backup, is an order of magnitude faster. There must be something else wrong here.
During backup I've monitored the system: Total processor occupancy is around 1-2% typical, of which 0.4% for Acronis TI. Total disk usage is 3-6MB/s, of which 0.5-1MB/s for Acronis TI.
Hello
How can I tell if my existing (system) back up, made with Acronis 2011 premium with plus pack will restore to a different hardware set up. Does Acronis back up automatically to "universal backup/restore" when you have the "Plus Pack"? I do not see any settings or boxes to check.
I have Alienware M17X 3 1/2 yrs old. 1tb HD 2x500gb RAID 0. The graphic card overheated and damaged the motherboard. Dell is replacing my computer with either an identical machine (or better). I am running OS Win 7 Ultimate 64.
I have a complete system (disc) back up done with Acronis 2011 with Plus Pack saved to an external HD. Can I do a complete system restore to my new machine when it arrives? What does Recover Absolute Path do when box is checked?
What kind of issues should I prepare for in order to prevent problems in restoring especially if Dell replaces my OS with Win 8.1?
I plan to upgrade to Acronis 2014 Premium but I am not sure if I should do that now and try my restore using 2014 instead of 2011 version.
Also, would it be possible to use the Acronis Migrate software to migrate from one computer to another?...If so, is there a way to do this when I can not get my old computer to boot up?
Any advice would be so much appreciated.
Tnx
Kathy
@Abel,
When you run the backup from the recoveryCD, is it faster?
@Kathy,
Would be great if you opened a new thread for your question...
@Abel,
Going for standard compression will speed things up especially if you have many already compressed files such as MP3, DVD files etc, as these won't compress much more but TI will spend an awful amount of time trying to.
@Kathy,
As Pat asked, a new thread with your problem would be helpful, but very quickly, don't both with Migrate Easy, True Image contains the latest version (Called Clone under utilities) whereas ME standalone hasn't been updated for yonks!
Thank you for your comments Pat and Colin. As instructed, I started a new thread
46761: Recover full system to a new computer using Acronis 2011 Premium with plus pack
@Colin: thanks for the replies.
I have tried both with and without compression, no change in performance. I tried other backup programs (Genie and Paragon). Genie finished in about 10 hours and Paragon in about 6 hours. Other programs I haven't (yet) tried, because they don't have the exclude files feature. Paragon turns out to have dramatic performance on incremental backups though (taking longer than a full backup), so I'm still hoping to fix the issue with Acronis.
I found out that my target disk was NTFS-compressed, which is useless, obviously, as NTFS compression is bad on large files, plus most backup programs work through VSS, which means that the files need to be moved, which causes an extra decompress/compression cycle (found this on Technet). However, it doesn't explain why Acronis is so much slower than the competition (even far below my internet transfer rates when R/W on local disks).
Abel,
If you decompress the disk, does True Image improve dramatically.
Hi Abel, unfortunately ATI is extremely slow with everything it does and it always was (well, since 2012 version). It isn't only about files - I can copy my .pst bellow a minute, but ATI takes like 20 hours to do incremental email backup. And don't even try to backup to shared folder on same LAN switch (1Gps ports, file transfers no less than 60MB/sec), your grandchildren would retire before it's done :( Often it just doesn't do anything - in process explorer you can see it's idle - but application is frozen with rotating cursor.
This isn't some minor 2014 version issue - afer years of patience I lost hope that company would do fundamental change and redesign code of the application and expect only cosmetical changes.
Simple query https://www.google.cz/search?q=acronis+slow gives like 680k results to me... looks more like a common feature, than a bug.