A tale of very slow backups
I run nightly data backups to the NAS on my and my wife's computers. Full backup, then 7 incrementals, keeping four chains. Same process has been working for years.
So last night I was looking at the folders on the NAS and found that for my wife's backup, there were a whole load of files named Daily_full_b77_s1_v1... .tib. (multiple versions) I found this starting on April 9th and going on for 13 days. Each file was about 80GB of what should have been a 90GB file. Normally, the full takes about half an hour. I have the NAS set to turn off at 8:00 so what was happening is that the backups were running extremely slow and the NAS was shutting down before they completed. Good thing I spotted it as it was filling up the NAS and I forgot to change the email SMTP setting in the NAS when my ISP changed it so I would have missed a notification.
Thinking an Acronis database issue, I deleted all the partial .tib files on the NAS and tried the backup again. Very slow.
I was also bothered as the trouble started the day I had the last Windows update. But my machine was basically the same config and was running fine.
I created a new backup task and tried that. Same problem... very slow. I tried rebooting the router. Still, very slow. Turned off the firewall, AV to see if that was interfering. No change. Sleep time was approaching so I gave up and just let the backup run.
This morning I found it had successfully backed up but had taken many times longer to run than usual.
Was it Acronis? Was it the NAS? Was it Windows? Was it network?
I ran a simple speed test copying a 3.5GB file from my PC to the NAS. That copy ran at about 96MB/s. Copying back to my PC ran at about 65MB/s. Seemed reasonable. But from my wife's PC copying both directions was a flat 11MB/s.
Unplugged the network cable on my wife's PC and plugged it back in. Voila! The speed was back to normal.
The PC powers down every night so obviously the problem maintained across that. I didn't power down the router when I rebooted so no telling if that would have cured it. But I'm thinking that I'd really like to figure out how to get a notification when the LAN drops down the speed from 1Gb to 100Mb.
Responding to BrunoC
I have seen similar issues on my home computers,LAN, and NAS -- Infuriatingly slow backups.
I have some suggestions ...
1. Until you have this issue 100% solved, could you leave the PC's, router, and NAS running 24X7?
2. You could use Windows Task Manager to monitor LAN speed both during normal usage and during backups
3. Bandwidth speed tests are also useful: speedtest.net; fast.com, your ISP speed test will probably show a higher speed -- in this case that is a useful assessment ... Running the speed tests before/after the advice in (4), below is advised
4. I have seen discussions that indicate some of the available bandwidth is reserved (also some hints this may be an Urban Legend) In any case this article will get rid of any 'reserved' bandwidth issues ...
How to Change the Limit Reservable Bandwidth in Windows https://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-xp-tips/increase-windows-network-speed-qos/
Please let us know your results ... OK?
Martin Diehl wrote:Responding to BrunoC
I have seen similar issues on my home computers,LAN, and NAS -- Infuriatingly slow backups.
I have some suggestions ...
1. Until you have this issue 100% solved, could you leave the PC's, router, and NAS running 24X7?
As mentioned in the original post, the problem is solved. The LAN connection from my wife's PC had been dropped from 1Gb to 100Mb. Unplugging it and plugging it in again caused the speed to be renegotiated and it was immediately back to 1Gb speed.
2. You could use Windows Task Manager to monitor LAN speed both during normal usage and during backups
What I really want to do is have the system pop up a message if something has happened to drop the speed on a LAN port. I don't want to keep looking for it.
3. Bandwidth speed tests are also useful: speedtest.net; fast.com, your ISP speed test will probably show a higher speed -- in this case that is a useful assessment ... Running the speed tests before/after the advice in (4), below is advised
I run these periodically, but that is a test to the ISP and in my case it was an issue for the local LAN connection only. I did run a speed test when the problem was occurring but since my ISP download speed is about 100Mb/s I didn't detect anything amiss there.
4. I have seen discussions that indicate some of the available bandwidth is reserved (also some hints this may be an Urban Legend) In any case this article will get rid of any 'reserved' bandwidth issues ...
How to Change the Limit Reservable Bandwidth in Windows https://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-xp-tips/increase-windows-network-speed-qos/I just did some looking into this post and others on the setting you mention. I think it's a non-starter. The bandwidth is not limited wholesale.
Please let us know your results ... OK?
BrunoC,
Run the PS command below to see what each connections bandwidth is set at:
Get-NetAdapter | select interfaceDescription, name, status, linkSpeed
Your router can probably display the link speed too.
You can set up a PS script that would check the link speed every minute or so. I haven't used it extensively enough to know if there's a way to get it to pop a message up in a new window, but you could certainly have it show one in the command window.
If anyone is interested in a PS script to check network speed every 30 seconds (user modifiable) then the attached file has one that I have been playing with. Screen image showing results below when running against my WiFi network adapter:
Disappointed here to find that the Get-NetAdapter module is on in W8 and above, and not my W7Pro.
Tom, you may be able to install a later version of Powershell on Win 7. You can confirm your current PS value by using:
Write-Host "PowerShell"($PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Major)
This shows as 5 on my Win 10 system.
See webpage: How to install PowerShell 5 on Windows 7 - for more help.
Ha. Mine is only v2.
I will look at the link. Thank you Steve!