Skip to main content

Backup speed has slowed down to USB 2 speeds

Thread solved

I have been using Acronis TrueImage for many years now without problem and have TrueImage 2018 installed on a fully updated Windows 10 Home v1909 desktop and make backups up to a Buffalo HD-LBU3 disk using a USB3 connection.

Until August 2019 the backup and validation of around 290GB used to take around 1 hour, but since August the time has extended to around 5hours 45 minutes, with data transfer taking place at around 12.5MB/s when viewed in the Performance tab of Task Manager which is about USB2 speeds. Looking at Device Manager there are no issues showing on the USB 3.0 Root Hub or Host Controller.

If a try to copy a file from one of the PC hard drives to the Buffalo disk then I get transfer speeds of around 80 MB/s which is what I would expect of a USB 3 disk. Also if I use the Buffalo disk on my laptop using Acronis 2020 I get transfer speeds of around 80MB/s so the Buffalo disk appears to be working OK and the USB 3.0 ports are working OK on the desktop.

It seems that the installation of Acronis 2018 on my desktop is for some reason only using USB 2.0 for these backups. Are there any suggestions as to how I can restore my previous backup speed to USB 3.0 speeds?

0 Users found this helpful

David, welcome to these public User Forums.

There are no settings in any version of ATI that directly influence the speed that data is transferred to / from USB drives - these are all controlled by the Windows OS and hardware components involved.

If your backup task settings remain unchanged from before this performance issue arose, i.e. you have not changed the Source data selection, not changed the image creation mode to use such as sector-by-sector method etc.  Then there has to be another factor causing this problem.

If you are sure that ATI 2018 is involved, then please see KB 60915: Acronis True Image: repairing program settings - and try the steps given there.

I have finally found the solution to this problem.  The Removal Policy for the USB Drive had been set to Quick Removal in the Windows 10 v1809 update which does not require the Safely Remove Hardware process to be followed before disconnecting the drive.  This disables drive caching and significantly reduces write performance.  Changing the policy back to "Better Performance" restored write speeds back to around 90 MB/s and reduced backup time down to 1 hour again from 6 hours.

To change this setting 

  • Go to Start Menu > Disk Management.
  • Select your disk, right click on it, and go to Properties > Hardware > Properties > Policies.
  • Select Better Performance option to enable it.