True Image 2021 much slower than 2020. Migrated backup settings perform differently
So, I did some backup performance tests with my TI2019 (licensed) and TI2021 (trial).
My test was backing up my Adata SX8200 Pro 1TB NVMe boot drive, with about 150GB in use only; onto a local disk 8TB array, made out of 8 x Samsung 860 SATA SSDs. The peak sequential read performance of the source drive is 3500 MB/s. Peak sequential write of the destination array is 4300MB/s.
I tested full backup only - single version scheme. I tried with and without compression.
I first did backups with ATI 2019. I then upgraded to ATI 2021 trial. I did not reboot the machine after the ugprade.
I cloned the 2 profiles I had made with ATI 2019, and repeated the tests.
I then created 2 brand new backup profiles in ATI 2021, with identical settings, and repeated the tests.
I made some screen captures recording the whole process with Cyberlink screen recorder, showing the progress of the backup in ATI, and the status in task manager.
The data is here :
Analysis
a) When creating a new backup profile in ATI 2021, it always uses compression, regardless of being instructed not to ("Compression" set to "None"). See line 8 and columns E/H/I . This is a really major bug. Until this is fixed, data from line 8 should be ignored.
b) The reason there is no data in I4/I5 is that the TIB files for my 2019 backups were deleted from the disk. I believe this might have happened after I cloned the TI 2019 profiles, and executed the cloned profiles. If so, that's a major bug.
c) ATI 2021 performs vastly differently if cloning an existing profile from ATI 2019, vs creating a brand new profile with identical settings. For example, if you compare lines 7 and 9, column G, the cloned profile takes only 163 seconds to execute, whereas the new profile takes 290 seconds - 78% longer. The compression ratio is better in TI 2021, however. Only 77.4GB vs 93.9GB if you compare column I. So, clearly, different compression algorithms are being used if you clone the TI 2019 profile, vs creating a brand new profile. I didn't see a choice of compression algorithm in the advanced settings, though.
d) Overall, the backup speed is greatly reduced in TI 2021 vs 2019. In TI 2019, I could achieve in TI2019 was 10785 Mbps for the uncompressed backup, and 10428.6 Mbps for a compressed backup.
In TI 2021, the best I could achieve was with the cloned profiles, and was 8092 Mbps for uncompressed, and 7794 Mbps for compressed, about 35% slower than in TI 2019.
When created new profiles in TI 2021, the performance dropped to just 4380.9 Mbps for compressed. Uncompressed case didn't work - TI still compressed the backup , so there is no data to compare for that case.
Going from 10428.6 Mbps in TI 2019 down to 4380.9 Mbps in TI 2021 is a spectacularly awful slowdown.
G. Uphoff wrote:To a: Tibx backup archives are always maximally compressed, regardless of what is set (has always been that way, maybe this will be changed).Regarding b: I have nothing to say, I rarely clone backup tasks and then change the backup destination folder.
Re c, d: Since you can change the compression rate in ATI 2019 and create .tib backup archives, ATI 2019 has a clear advantage ("Normal" compression rate is good for NVMe SSDs).
With uncompressed backup archives you can achieve higher read- and write rates, but since you have to copy more data, you have no time advantage.
ATI 2021 should be as fast as ATI 2019 when creating .tib backup archives. With the .tibx backup format, ATI 2021 has a disadvantage because the maximum compression that cannot be changed (which is bad for NVMe SSDs), the larger the amount of data to be backed up, the greater the disadvantage.
It can also play a role where the NVMe SSDs are installed (PCIe lanes of the CPU or chipset) and in which direction you copy data, from chipset to CPU is faster for me.
Thanks for your repsonse.
a. is there a way to force TIH2021 to create a TIB archive rather than TIBX, other than cloning a profile created with a previous version (TIH2019 is what I have) ?
And why is there an option in the GUI for "compression : none" if it's not honored for TIBX ?
b. ah, yes. I didn't change the destination folder. Maybe it's working as designed, then. Still unfortunate that I lost my TIH2019 backup files . The cloned profile has a different name than the original profile it was cloned from, though. So, TIH2021 should have backed up to new files with different filenames when I clicked "Backup now". It did that. However, the backup files from the original profile should have been left untouched. They were instead deleted, because the backup scheme was "single version", and somehow, the backup history was shared between the original profile and the cloned profile. It shouldn't have been. Only the settings. Another migration bug. Huge one if you ask me, to delete a backup from another profile without the user's knowledge. This is why I was surprised to see it gone. I couldn't reproduce this bug. So, I just don't know why the 2019 backup files disappeared at this point.
c. actually, the compression algorithm is very much the bottleneck in TIH2021 on my system, not the I/O, even though I'm using an AMD 5950X CPU, which is rather powerful. After it's done "calculating", with TIBX files (compression always on), task manager shows overall disk I/O between 600 - 1000 MB/s. With TIB files and compression off, it shows over 3000MB/s. I'm only saving up a relatively small amount of data for my test, though, about 145GB. The difference would show up much more clearly if I was backing up 1TB, say, a full sector by sector disk image.
Anyway, there are multiple problems here :
1) in TIH 2021, compression can't be turned off for TIBX files
2) in TIH 2021, compression is a CPU bottleneck for TIBX files on my system with a 16 core/32 threads CPU, and very fast I/O of over 3GB on read side and over 4GB/s on write side
3) in TIH 2021, TIB backups are much slower to start than in TIH 2021, whether with or without compression
4) in TIH 2021, it's not possible to create backup profiles for TIB files, unless one has a profile migrated from TIH 2019 available to clone and modify
FYI, this is the performance data for my PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe drive, Adata SX8200Pro. Using the "Settings / NVMe" and "Default" . This is the drive I have been using as the source in my tests in OP.
Same test CDM settings on my 8 x SATA-3 Samsung 860 1TB SSD array on a single LSI 9207-8i PCIe 3.0 x8 SAS card. This is the drive I have been using as destination in my OP.
The NVMe does better on random read/writes. Disk array does better on sequential.
Unfortunately, all that I/O performance seems to be wasted on TIH 2021 with the TIBX file compression.
I'll repeat tests with a larger data set now to show the difference.
See 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.
Oder (es ist nicht nötig änderungen an Acronis Active Protection vorzunehmen):
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".
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).
----------------
Or (there is no need to make any changes to Acronis Active Protection)
If you want to backup larger amounts of data, or you are want to create several backup chains / backup versions, the old .tib format is the better choice (more even backup and validation time).
Edit backup script.
First check in the "Explorer options" (folder options) "Show hidden files, folders and drives" in order to be able to find the "Scripts" folder later.
To force a .tib format, create a new backup task with the desired settings and save the backup task with "Later". Since you cannot really switch off Acronis Active Protection with ATI 2021, you start the computer in "safe mode".
Next, open the file path "C: \ ProgramData \ Acronis \ TrueImageHome \ Scripts" and select the correct backup script based on the change date. You can open the backup script with the editor and look for the backup name at the top.
If you have found the backup script, then edit the backup script, delete the "x" from ".tibx" and save.
Then restart the computer.
Then start the backup and see later whether the normal file extension is available again (full_b1_s1_v1.tib).
Julien Pierre wrote:I'll repeat tests with a larger data set now to show the difference.
I repeated the tests with a larger data set. Here are the results.
See the last 5 lines.
The NVMe boot drive (source drive) was filled with random, incompressible data using the h2testw tool. I left only 4GB free. The reason the data sets are slightly different sizes (947 vs 927GB) is that I uninstalled TIH2021 and reinstalled TIH2019 (again, without rebooting). This seems to have freed about 20GB of space (!!!).
The results still show a big difference in performance, but not as big as with the smaller data set.
ATI 2021 TIBX : 9362.8 Mbps
ATI 2021 TIB uncompressed : 14602 Mbps
ATI 2021 TIB compressed : 14697 Mbps
ATI 2019 TIB uncompressed : 15642.5 Mbps
ATI 2019 TIB compressed : 15225.4 Mbps
Conclusion :
1) TIBX still takes over 50% longer than TIB to backup in ATI 2021
2) TIB backups in ATI 2021 backup at about 0.5 - 1 Gbps slower speed than in ATI 2019 depending on whether compression is used. This difference probably wouldn't show on a large backup to NAS with "just" 10 Gbps networking I/O.
G. Uphoff wrote:----------------Or (there is no need to make any changes to Acronis Active Protection)
If you want to backup larger amounts of data, or you are want to create several backup chains / backup versions, the old .tib format is the better choice (more even backup and validation time).
Edit backup script.
First check in the "Explorer options" (folder options) "Show hidden files, folders and drives" in order to be able to find the "Scripts" folder later.
To force a .tib format, create a new backup task with the desired settings and save the backup task with "Later". Since you cannot really switch off Acronis Active Protection with ATI 2021, you start the computer in "safe mode".
Next, open the file path "C: \ ProgramData \ Acronis \ TrueImageHome \ Scripts" and select the correct backup script based on the change date. You can open the backup script with the editor and look for the backup name at the top.
If you have found the backup script, then edit the backup script, delete the "x" from ".tibx" and save.
Then restart the computer.
Then start the backup and see later whether the normal file extension is available again (full_b1_s1_v1.tib).
Thanks. I do not like to reboot my computer unless I am forced to. I have a ton of startup programs. Even on a 5950x, it takes about 45 seconds of boot before I can do anything, in addition to the 25 seconds or so of BIOS (SAS controller BIOS adds time). And the machine doesn't really go idle until over 2 minutes. The way I use my computer is to put it to sleep and wake it up, and normally don't reboot it.
I don't think I should have to reboot to safe mode to do something like this. It really should be an option in the GUI. I think cloning a migrated ATI 2019 profile is easier than that, but of course won't work for those who don't have previous versions of the program.
The performance issue is still there, though, even when forcing a TIB backup. TIB backups in ATI 2021 are slower to backup than TIB in ATI 2019. See my previous post.
I have compared with Macrium 8 home edition also. It is slower than both ATI 2021 and ATI 2019.
Macrium achieved Just 3657 Mbps for 1TB uncompressed and 4263 Mbps for 1TB compressed data set.A lot slower than the 9362 to 15642 Mbps achieved by TIH2019 and 2021.