Horribly slow backup
In the past on my now dead Win7 computer, I used Norton Ghost 15 to do hourly backups of my primary data disk, where I do my work and make my living.
Now on my new unfortunately Win10 computer, I am trying Acronis True Image 2016. However, the incremental backup for my primary data disk is taking 2 to 3 HOURS per backup. Why is this?
Specifically, all backups are to a different disk. The full backup is 464GB. Each incremental backup is between 70MB and 150MB.
- I can manually test copy the 70MB files back and forth, from and to the backup disk, in seconds or minutes. So this can't be purely about disk speed.
- I've configured to do 160 or so incrementals in a week, per full backup. Is it because there are so many incrementals? Number 81 is currently an hour into backing up. But I believe the slow backups were happening even on the very fist incremental.
- The full backup is 464GB. Is the "incremental" nature doing something inefficient in reading the full to figure out the incremental? Ghost 15 didn't have this problem (old Win7 computer).
- I still have some of those backups in a different folder on the same backup disk. A full backup is 362GB but incrementals are between 258KB and 280MB. Interesting, I see no good reason for Acronis to always have 70MB+ incrementals when Ghost had 258KB incrementals. Checking idle overnight, I see 258KB incrementals in the Ghost folder. Yep, for Acronis those fewer (cuz slower) overnight backups are 73MB. Nothing was changing. What's up with that?
- Note I have two such primary data disks. I've described my J: drive. I have an M: drive that's also being backed up very slowly. 383GB full, 45MB minimum incremental even during inactive overnight.
Totally separate from the above, I'm also having some issues with the backup drive itself. It has used as eSATA in the past, connected to the old Win7 computer. Now it's USB connected to the new Win10 computer. While it has a USB 3.0 type B connector, I was using a USB 2.0 cable. But note I did file copies and they were plenty fast. So again, Acronis True Image 2016 must be doing something very inefficient if it's about the USB speed. Here's the extra question. I bought a USB 3.0 cable, hoping that might speed things up nevertheless. But the external drive keeps disappearing from the drive list. It's like the brand new USB 3.0 cable is not reliable, or the new computer USB 3.0 is not reliable, or something. Any suggestions about this? Finally, if you really think the USB cable is the reason for the slowness, please posit a reason.
Thanks very much.
Between then and now, I redid everything and now the backups take under 2 minutes each. In order of probability:
1) I changed from verify every hour backup to only verify once each night
2) Changed compression from high to normal
3) Change priority from low to normal
4) Changed to a different, new disk that connects reliably via USB 3.0 with USB 3.0 cable
Also, the 168 incrementals is 24 hours times 7 days, with a full backup expected once per week. Were I to do a full backup once per day with only 24 incrementals, then there would be 7 full backups per week. This is too many for my backup disk to hold, I suspect, and saving less than a week's worth is not acceptable.
I wonder about the following. I wonder about a totally separate backup scheme, that backs up fully only once per month, with an incremental once per day. That would be at most 30 incrementals per full monthly backup. I could save, for example, 3 full backups and be able to hunt backward up to 3 months to restore an old corruption that I didn't notice for a while. At the same time, I could change my hourly backup to do a full backup every day, and thus only 24 incrementals in one of those, and only keep two days of hourly backups. This combination, overall, would give me hourly incremental backups with historical search for two days, plus daily incremental backups with historical search for 30 days, plus monthly full backups for 3 months. The total space consumption would only be 5 full backups plus 54 incrementals. That should fit on my backup disk.
What do you think of this? Can I run two different backup schemes on the same partition?
Otherwise, can you think of another way to simultaneously get hourly backups and a few months of history, albeit with different granularity? (Note, I've lost very important work that occurred in less than an hour, so hourly backups are important. And I've not discovered such problems until the next day. And I've also gone back weeks, on a daily basis, to find the last good copy of something.
Your best choice is frequent full backup and not too many incrementals between each full. 'Read GH25 and understand the risks involved should an existing incremental backup become corrupt such as a bad sector or bad disk read. If one of the incrementals gets corrupt, ALL newer incrementals are worthless for recovery. This risk is why you want to keep the incrementals to a reasonable number with frequent fulls. You may never have corruption but it pays to have reduncdancy and more than one set of backups--just in case needed. YOU may want to consider using a variety of tasks with different type backups such as Full only for some tasks; Full with incrementals for other tasks: and full with differential for other tasks. Some backups should be disk image backups which are capable of creating a new replacement disk; while other tasks could be files/folder tasks just for data protection.
GH25. Understanding differences between Incremental and Differential backups for data recovery.
Each backup storage disk in use needs its own backup task. You can have many tasks to backup the same or different data but only one task can run at the same time. . When planning storage space meeds, TrueImage does NOT delete the old backups until after the new replacment has been created which means your available storage space is smaller by one full backup for each active backup task. Here are some links that would help
Depending upon the type of backup scheme you wish to create, GH11, GH12, & GH13 is an example of each type. These can be set up for Disk image, or Partiton, or Files-folders backups. These example show how to set up automatic cleanup so the program will do the deletion after it reaches your set goal of how many chains to retain. Editing an existing task is not recommended. Rarely does an edited task perform to user expectations. It is usually better to start with a new task using a new non-identical task name and point to a new storage sub-folder so each task has it own storage folder/sub-folder. Old task can be stopped or deleted from the task listings.
