Excruciatingly slow disk backup
I am trying to create my first full disk backup just for my C: drive, which has both Win8.1 and user data on it. My target is a large (3TB) drive installed in the same PC, so they are both connected directly to the MOBO.
This is the second time I ran it--I stopped the first one after 2 hours and only about 2GB had been backed up (and was still "Calculating time remaining..."), then I set the priority to High and ran it again. All the other settings are defaults for "disk and partition" backup.
Despite the warning that CPU would be used at 100%, I am seeing Acronis using less than 1% of the CPU (looking at all Acronis processes), and my total CPU usage is typically 6-7% as I'm watching, sometimes spiking to 11%.
I have about 115GB to back up. It has been running about half an hour and shows 91MB and is still "Calculating time remaining...." It looks like it is going to take many days to complete. Actually, it has been sitting at 91MB for at least 10 minutes.
I admit this is a slow PC (2.3GHz with 4GB RAM), but this is ridiculous. There is hardly anything else running, and the backup is not really moving.
EDIT: I now see that the target HD shows 100% disk usage. I don't know why it would be doing that.


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Thanks for the advice. It turns out my source drive has "weak" sectors. After checking here, I installed HD Sentinel and got a full report.
I tried to create a backup using ATI recovery media, but it stopped eventually with a read error that would not go away. I also ran CHKDSK /F /R, but so far I haven't looked at the log. HD Sentinel says I now have more weak sectors than before.
This is not the correct forum, but in case someone knows: I noticed at one point during a reboot, Win8.1 said it was replacing data in bad sectors (or something like that). If Windows can do that, and the drive shows sectors about to fail, is there any way to replace/fix the weak sectors before they go completely bad? I have a good data backup, but I'd like to have a system image before the drive becomes useless.
Also not the right venue, but I'm very confused that the SMART info for the drive shows it as being okay, but it clearly isn't okay. What use is the SMART system if it doesn't indicate a problem and permit isolation and substitution of sectors?
???
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Hi Van,
SMART basically just shows the physical health of the disk based upon the manufacturer related specs provided in the firmwre (as I understand it). Basically, after a certain period of time (hours in use, number of power on/off cycles, etc) it will then show different information. Unfortunately, if certain parts of the disk are going bad, I don't think SMART is very accurate at identifying that.
If definitely sounds like your disk is on it's way out though. If Windows has already tried to repair itself, that's a good sign of corruption, now you're showing even more with HD Sentinel.
I would try to do a full backup using your offlne bootable recovery media and "ignore errors" in the advanced options. Hopefully, that will allow you to complete a backup. Unfortunately, if it is successful, that won't guarantee that restoring it to a new drive will fix everything - backup will contain the same corruption already on the source drive. If the corruption is minimal though, when you restore to a new drive, if the files themselves aren't bad, you should be OK.
If Acronis can't work through the bad sectors - the last alternative to try and save your data and/or end up with working copy of your data would be to try a hardware cloning device (roughly $40 on amazon). These do sector by sector backups and are strictly 1's and 0's. If it can't create a clone at the hardware level, the disk is too far gone. I'd recommend getting one of these for these types of situations anyway. Plus, they work well as an external dual hard drive dock too, but the cloning is nice "bonus" and it can be done completely in the dock without a computer.
http://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Dual-Bay-Docking-Function-Tool-free/dp/B0…
These don't replace backups though so do keep using Acronis!!! Never hurts to have a mulitutde of options to try though and for less than $40 it's a good tool to have availble.
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Thanks for all the advice.
After running CHKDSK /F /R a couple of times, it stopped finding bad clusters. I ran ATI from recovery media and was able to create a system image in about an hour. (Hooray!) But it looks like the drive is still trying to fail, so it obviously was just a matter of luck....
I hope this works for someone else, too.
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Glad you got a backup before the whole thing tanked on you! Hopefully, all of the data is in good shape too. If Acronis was able to complete, it's a good sign that it's all going to be OK, but it's not a guarantee. Definitely get a new disk though and recover to it and then see how the system behaves. Worse case... you have to rebuild the OS and reinstall apps, but hopefully can recover all of your data. Best case, restoring will be 100% success and you'll be chugging along like usual with a new disk.
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