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Backup with ATI 2021 ridiculously slow

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I have serious problems with my current backups with ATI: currently it is so slow, that it is not usable anymore.

I have the following setup:

A SSD as drive C:

A HDD as drive D:

An internal HDD as backup drives where the ATI backups are stored.

An external HDD to where the history of ATI backup files is kept

 

When I used ATI 2020 everything was fine. I do regular backups once a week and they usually were about 10 GB when incremental and took about 30 min and about 1 hr when doing a full backup of about 140 GB. You can see this in the log here:

(it is in german, but I hope that you get the important content).

Now, after upgrading to ATI2021 the same processes (with roughly the same amount of data) took considerably longer: Saving the same amount of data now takes a few hours, as you can see here:

So the time rose from 27 mins to 3:15h for about the same amount of data.

But now it seems that everything has becoming worse. The system had to do a full backup again, and now the times were incredibly bad:

To backup these 138,2 GB of data it took 1 day and 8 hours! Compare this to the "not even 1 hour" it used to take under ATI 2020! And, please bear this in mind, the system did not change a lot. Some windows updates, but nothing really exotic.

 

I had the idea that maybe one of my disks was corrupt so that reading or writing data might take longer than usual, but I tried all possible scenarios:

  • Backup from internal SSD to internal backup drive
  • Backup from internal HDD to internal backup drive
  • Backup from internal HDD to external HDD (When I manually copy backup files to the external drive I get a speed of up to 100MB/s, so it is not that slow)

But the results are all the same: It is so slow that it takes more than a day to complete a backup, independend of the drives involved. So I think that the disks are not the problem: It should take longer when the corrupt disk is not involved. Also: all of the disks show normal behaviour when I access them in the explorer and chkdsk does not report errors, and the S.M.A.R.T values are ok.

Following a hint from Steve Smith (https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2021-forum/backup-very-slow-compared-ti-2020) I also created a new backup task with ATI 2021, but the result was the same.

I doubt that any virus protection or so it the problem, because even if ATI 2021 does more checks than 2020, it should not slow the process down by a factor of 32.

 

So, can anyone help? Any advice? It would be really great if I could go on backupping my files again...

 

For the record: My system is Windows 10 home with V. 20H2 and the latest updates.

 

Kind regards, Thorsten

 

 

1 Users found this helpful

Hallo Thorsten Koch,

Man könnte das alte .tib Format probieren (gleichmäßige Backup / Validierungsdauer, egal wie viele Backupketten vorhanden sind).

Wenn Laufwerksbackups von größeren Datenmengen gemacht werden sollen und mehrere Backupketten/ Backupversionen erstellt werden sollen, ist das alte .tib Format die bessere Wahl (Gleichmäßigere Backup- und Validierungsdauer).

Backupscript bearbeiten.

Zuerst in den "Explorer-Optionen" (Ordner-Optionen) "Ausgeblendete Dateien, Ordner und Laufwerke anzeigen" anhaken, um später den "Scripts" Ordner finden zu können.

Um ein .tib Format zu erzwingen, erstellt man einen neuen Backuptask mit den gewünschten Einstellungen und speichert den Backuptask mit "Später". (Bei SSDs mit Komprimierungsgrad "Normal".)

Da man bei ATI 2021 das Acronis Active Protection nicht wirklich abschalten kann, startet man den Rechner im "abgesicherten Modus".

Als nächstes den Dateipfad "C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts" öffnen und anhand des Änderungsdatums das richtige Backupscript auswählen. Man kann das Backupscript mit dem Editor öffnen und oben nach dem Backupnamen schauen.

Hat man das Backupscript gefunden, dann das Backupscript bearbeiten und bei ".tibx" das "x" löschen und speichern.

Danach den Rechner neu starten.

Anschließend das Backup starten und später schauen, ob jetzt wieder die normale Dateiendung vorhanden ist (full_b1_s1_v1.tib).

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588735-294009.pdf 1.2 MB
588735-294012.pdf 2.2 MB

Thorsten, your backup times do look to be very slow from the limited information given!

I have a similar system with a 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD used for the OS & applications plus basic user data such as documents, plus a 2TB SATA HDD second internal drive divided into 2 partitions (one partition for larger user data such as music, videos, photos and the second partition for local internal backups).

My full backup of the SSD of around 105GB to the 2TB internal HDD is taking about 1 hour 15 mins, with daily incrementals taking between 10 - 20 minutes depending on how much changed data is involved.

I do not include any validation in the task, nor change any of the default exclusions, compression or performance settings etc.

If I then look at a second backup task of the same source SSD to an external USB 3.0 2TB HDD (same make as the internal HDD), then I am seeing about 90GB data backed up in around 40 - 45 minutes for a full backup, and 20GB data in under 20 minutes for an incremental.  That task only runs weekly so the data volumes for incrementals is higher.

All the above is from Windows 10 Pro 21H1 running on a HP Omen gaming laptop with Intel i7 8th Gen CPU and 32GB RAM performing scheduled backup tasks when the system has been woken up from sleep with no other active tasks.

The above may not be too helpful in determining why your backups are so slow with ATI 2021 but give some information for comparison to show your case is not typical of all users.

Some suggestions:

  • Check how long your system has been up since it was last fully shutdown and restarted?   Open Windows Task Manager to the Performance tab where this is shown towards the lower left corner.  If the system has been up for an extended period, then do a full shutdown / restart then confirm that the up time has been reset.
  • Fragmentation should not be an issue for your SSD but may need to be checked for your HDD to ensure your backup files can be stored contiguously without needing to be spread around different parts of the drive.
  • Check that you have the final build version of ATI 2021 #39216 and not an earlier build.  Consider doing a Repair Install of ATI 2021 in case of there being any program issues or corruption. See KB 60915: Acronis True Image: repairing program settings - for details.
  • Try an alternative backup application such as Macrium Reflect Free (version 7) to see if that shows the same extended backup times as ATI 2021 or not?  If MR also takes very long times, then a common hardware issue or issue with the OS would be suggested?
  • Windows 10 20H2 is nearly a year down-level - the most recent update version is 21H1 from around May 2021 with Windows 11 anticipated to start being deployed sometime from October 2021. 
G. Uphoff wrote:

Man könnte das alte .tib Format probieren (gleichmäßige Backup / Validierungsdauer, egal wie viele Backupketten vorhanden sind).

Habe gerade nachgeschaut: Das .tib-Format wird bereits verwendet. Vermutlich deshalb, weil ich die alten Backup-Jobs immer von den Vorgängerversionen übernommen habe... 

Bei mir ist die Backupdauer bei .tib Backup-Archiven immer eher gleichmäßig, bis die HDD vollgelaufen ist.

Welche Hardware wird verwendet? Eventuell genaue Bezeichnung der SSD und der verwendeten HDD.

Welche Backupeinstellungen werden verwendet? (auch Kompressionsrate und Priorität)

 

Eventuell mal diesen Post verfolgt, wegen ständigen Zugriffen auf eine bestimmte Partition, wenn die Acronis Benutzeroberfläche geöffnet ist.

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/deutsches-acronis-forum-fur-privatanwen…

 

Bild: .tib Vollbackup Kompression normal, Priorität normal, von WD SN850 1TB NVMe SSD nach Toshiba MG07ACA14TE 14GB HDD.

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Steve Smith wrote:

I have a similar system with a 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD used for the OS & applications plus basic user data such as documents, plus a 2TB SATA HDD second internal drive divided into 2 partitions (one partition for larger user data such as music, videos, photos and the second partition for local internal backups).

Hello Steve,

thats about the speed that I had before switching to ATI 2021 (with ATI 2020) and the speed that I would like to have back...

I found your suggestion to try a different backup software very useful, because it rules out a lot of problems. I tried AOMEI Backupper and did a backup of my data disk to the backup disk (the task that took 1 day 8 hours with ATI 2021), and the program performed the task in about 20 mins (writing a file of about 140 GB)! This means: there doesn't seem to be a hardware issue (loose cables, corrupt disks) because this should affect the other program as well. 

Regarding the version: I have the lastest ATI version running. 

Regaring uptime: It is possible that my system is running for quite a while (because I always put it to standby mode), but in search of debugging this problem I also rebooted the system and did a defragmentation of my data hdd (which should not have been necessary, because it volume is only one third full, so new files can be placed without fragmentation. I think it had a fragmentation of 7%, if I remember correctly...)

Any further ideas what I can do?

Thorsten Koch wrote:

Any further ideas what I can do?

Only really the remaining items I suggested earlier, trying a Repair Install and upgrading Windows 10 to 21H1 (though the latter shouldn't make any difference given your test with AOMEI backupper being significantly faster!).

I am making the assumption that ATI 2021 was installed using Administrator and running with the same authorities and that you have no security software / antivirus that is competing with ATI or blocking it?

See the following KB documents related to the latter aspect:

KB 36429: Acronis Software: exclude program folders and executables from antivirus and other security programs

KB 46430: Acronis Software: Making Acronis Products Compatible with Antivirus Software

Ok, the situation is much better now.  What did I do?

First - a repair install. Second - creating a new backup task. 

 

Now a full backup of the data disk using tibx format takes 35 - 45 mins (depending on encryption level) and no longer 1day and 8 hours :)

But as tibx files incorporate all incremental files inside the backup file I decided to switch back to tib (as decribed above in german). This also takes slightly longer, but its in the same range as before with ATI 2020 (maybe a little longer). 

 

Thank you for the input which finally helped to solve the problem!

Thorsten, glad that you have resolved this issue, thanks for the feedback.

(See English forum topic: How to create a Disk backup as .tib (not .tibx) which will create a new backup task using the older .tib format in the Windows ATI 2020 or 2021 GUI.)

I had the same problem.  By sheer chance I looked at Options, Advanced, Performance and saw that the data upload speed was limited (no idea how that happened).  I set it to Optimal and all is fine.  This is ATI 2018 - the menu may be different in later versions. Worth checking!