Time remaining Way Off

Michael, welcome to these user forums.

Unfortunately the calculation of time remaining does not appear to be an exact science and can be influenced by other factors than just the amount of data involved, i.e. how are you two external drives connected? USB 2.0 or 3.0 - are they going through a hub or connected directly the the computer, if a hub is it powered or are the drives powered without needing to be powered from the USB port, what other activies are happening on the computer etc etc.

Ok, thanks Steve. I guess I can live with that kind of inaccuracy. As long as the backups are safe. I switched from Novastor after that program catastrophically deleted my last 10 years worth of (professional) photographs. Fortunately I had redundancy. Anyway, I'm sure I'll have other questions as I get to know this program. 

Mike, make sure you look at the help links in the left column of the forums, plus visit the Knowledgebase and check out the User Guide for the product as there is a whole lot of good information available, not to mention looking in the forums too, as most questions will have been asked by someone else before you.

Hi Steve, I also have a problem with "TIME" but presently it has to do with Acronis Scheduler changing the time on my computer, I have done a clean boot and have narrowed the problem to the last two Acronis Services "Acronis Scheduler2 Service"  and "Acronis Nonstop Backup Service"    right now I am running all my services except the Acronis Scheduler2 Service and my computer has not changed it's date for about 3 1/2 hours now.   Do you think I have a trojan in my Aconis Program?  

Kurt, I have not heard any other users reporting a problem with the Acronis Scheduler changing the time on the computer and certainly have never experienced the same myself despite using Acronis for over 10 years.

If you have isolated this to the Acronis Scheduler2 or NonStop Backup services, then I would recommend first trying a Repair install of the product and see if that fixes the problem, but if not, then do a clean install.

For a Repair install, just download the latest full installer from your Acronis Account then install this over the top of what you already have and let it repair by replacing the existing programs etc.

For a Clean install, uninstall ATIH via the Control Pane, then download / run as Administrator the Acronis Cleanup Tool (link in my signature below) and follow the instructions in the KB document for this tool, then restart the computer to complete the action.  Then reinstall the product again.

Note: with a clean install you will lose all your backup tasks and task history, so if you want to protect your task configuration, make a copy of the C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts folder contents where that configuration data is held in the .TIS files found there.  You can copy these files back after doing the clean install.

Kurt, that's a different "time" issue.  How can you be cerain the scheduler is changing the time - never heard of this or seen it.  Anything is possible, but what is the definitive smoking gun as you'd be the first to have this happen (that I've seen in all my posts).  Are you sure you don't have automatic time zones enabled or a bad NTP server that you're getting your time from.

MNP500,

As for the reported amount of time when backups are running (or a restore in progress), take it with a grain of salt.  It's an estimate.  

1) different file types take different amounts of time.  a single 4.7gb .iso can be backed up in seconds.  A 4.7Gb folder with many files/folders in it can be minutes or more because large files are handled different by disk read/writes than small files (look up 4K tranfer rate).  As such, Acronis may be chugging along with large chunks of data in your media folders, and calculate time to complete as XXXX at that current speed.  But, when it gets to teh OS and program file directories where there are lots of 4K files/folders, it has to recalculate when things start to slow down.  This will go back and forth the entire backup.

2) Hard drives are not all equal.  What is written on the box is best case using syntheic benmarks.  those are the speeds you're likely to see for those large file types.  Real performance is based on the IOPS of the drive when handling the 4K files.  Drives fluctuate all over in this area (even good ones).  Run crystal diskmark and look at the 4K speed vs the top seq speed as that is more along the lines of what you should expect for backup speed of an OS drive.

3) Backups in Windows can get bogged down by AV programs with realtime scanning that want to scan every single file being written.  Whitelisting Acronis in yoru AV program may help.  You should also white list any backup locations so those are not scanned by AV when the backup is being written as well.

4) Steve already mentioned things like different connectivity.  Perforance can fluctuate when sharing resources with other USB devices or SATA devices - really depends on the motherboard and how old the processor is (along with the speed of the drive of course).

I've seen a 7 minute backup in Acronis take 30 minutes and I've also seen it take 3 minutes - this was going from a USB 3.0 7200Rpm drive to an internal SATA connected SSD (a good one).  Huge differences in both scenarios, but neither took the reported 7 minutes. 

Thanks Guys,   I realize it is a different "TIME" issue and have started a new thread.  Acronis Scheduler2 changing date on computer ,  anyway Steve, I will be trying the "REPAIR" and CLEAN INSTALL if necessary.  And I basically have documented my narrowing this down to Acronis. it may actually not be an Acronis issue as such but some kind of Bug using an opening in the program.  The time change is not the only problem I have had.  Since installing on a brand new computer I ran into a ransomware hacker right off the bat, who took control of my computer and I had to start over completely.  Actually Acronis has saved me several times as I tried to get one step ahead hoping Malwarebytes and Norton would eventually get control of the problem and so far stopping the intrusion, only the date change has Malwarebytes having problems ..(reporting updates not current)  At this point for the last three days I have had no problem since I have turned Acronis Scheduler2 service Off  ..that is .. except not being able to back-up due to Acronis reporting that the Scheduler had to be ON,.  So instead I have used a Acronis from a DVD to back-up my computer temporarily, so I can at least restore from a current back-up as I have done several times.   I have used Acronis for several years and it has been a lifesaver in more than one instance so this situation is a pain but not totally foreign as I have felt in the past that hackers were using a backdoor in Acronis to mess with my computer.  Nevertheless, it may not be Acronis at all, but I am putting it out there to see if anyone else is experiencing this same issue. 

Thank you for your help,  Kurt

Kurt, thanks for starting the new topic thread for your different time issue.