Some Time Measurements on my particular PC for Full Backup Jobs of ATI Home 2010
The times that I have measured on my PC will therefore not be the same as the times, that you will observe on your PC. But, since I have not found ATI performance measurements, I think that some ATI users might think "better to have available a description of these non-professional performance measurements than no measurement descriptions at all".
Size of a compressed ATI Full Backup File: approximately 15 GB.
Size of a compressed ATI Full Backup File: approximately 6 GB .
Current size of an ATI Full Backup File: approximately 115 GB.
I expect that over the years, the total size of my Photo Files will increase substantially.
The timings that I report below are for the initial Full-Backups (not for the much shorter Incremental backup runs).
Description of Backup
|
Backup Options
|
Size of Backup File
|
Time of Backup-Phase
|
Time of Verification Phase
|
#1) Partition Backup of "C:" to an external USB 2.0 disk
|
"Normal" Compression + "AES 128" Encryption
|
15.5 GB
|
11 minutes
|
11 minutes
|
#2) Partition Backup of "C:" to an internal disk
|
"Normal" Compression + "AES 128 Encryption"
|
15.5 GB
|
Not measured
|
Not measured
|
#3) Same as above
|
"Normal" Compression
No Encryption |
15.5 GB
|
4 minutes
|
3 minutes
|
#4) Same as above
|
No Compression
No Encryption |
27.6 GB
|
6 minutes
|
5 minutes
|
|
|
|
|
|
#5) File Backup of my Photo Files to external USB 2.0 disk
|
No Compression
No Encryption |
115 GB
|
77 minutes
|
67 minutes
|
#6) File Backup of my Photo Files to an internal disk
|
No Compression
No Encryption
|
115 GB
|
28 minutes
|
27 minutes
|
#7) Disk Backup of F Disk containing my Photo Files to an internal disk.
|
No Compression
No Encryption |
121 GB
|
29 minutes
|
28 minutes
|
|
|
|
|
|
#8) File Backup of "My Documents" to an external USB 2.0 disk
|
"Normal Compression"
"AES 128" Encryption |
6 GB
|
7 minutes
|
3 minutes
|
- Compare run #1 (where I Was backing to an external USB 2.0 Disk) with runs #3 and #4 (where I was backing up to an internal disk)
- Compare also run #5 (where I was backing-up to an external USB 2.0 Disk) with runs #6 and #7 (where I was backing up to an internal disk)
- Compare run #6 with run #7
- Compare run #3 with run #4.
I do not know whether use of compression with much slower processors result in slower or faster Backups.
Notice that for the backup of my Photo Files, I did not use any compression for the Backup (because most of my photo files are in a compressed .jpg format and can not be compressed further by a Backup-Process).
According to what I read on the Internet, I have the impression that ATI belongs to the category of the faster Backup products. For me, ATI is fast enough.
Notice however, that I am deeply concerned about the effect of running a disk defragmentation on the disk-space requirements (and on the performance) of ATI Home Incremental Backups. I believe to understand, that some of the other Backup software do not have similar problems for incremental File Backups performed after a disk defragmentation. I believe, that Acronis should fix this problem; at least by providing an option for those users who depend (because of disk-space requirements) on creating small Incremental Backup Files. Without a solution, the ATI incremental backup option is unfortunately often not much worth.

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Thanks for the time to post this. It's interesting to see the relative performance of the different methods...and good observations on your part.
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Hello Robert and Groucho,
Let me comment this situation.
First of all, I would like to thank Robert for such deep investigation, it's very useful!
Generally, the product behavior is normal in most cases you described. And I found it's very useful for approximate backup time calculation, so I will send this information to the responsible person, probably we will publish it on our common resources.
Once again, thank you for your cooperation!
Best regards,
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Robert,
Nice presentation. In addition to your testing time, getting the information ready for posting also took a lot of time and effort. Very nice and useful.
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I haven't bench tested restores, but in the course of my job I've made plenty of images and restorations. Off hand it seems like it takes 2/3 the time to restore as it does to image, via a USB 2 link someplace in the chain.
Also, for all the USB 2 tests, the latest build of TI 2010 supports USB 3, but Acronis won't admit to it as it doesn't "officially" support it yet. Backup on my machine is about 2x faster on USB 3 than it is on USB 2 even though the USB 3 standard with a SATA 300 drive is roughly 6x faster. The reason I get only a 2x speed increase is because of CPU power. When writing to USB 2 the system is waiting on the USB channel, when writing to USB 3 the wait is on the CPU.
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Opa
Thank You very much for your sharing your experience.
Myself have not done any test with USB 3. Also, I am not a PC specialist and therefore this feedback is not the feedback of a reliable specialist. But ...it surprised me, that your backup via USB 3 was not as fast as a backup via a SATA-attached disk. Is this because (as you write) USB 3 is not yet officially supported?
Myself did recently a backup test (with Windows backup - not with ATI) with an eSATA attached external disk drive, and (as expected) it was as fast as a backup to an internal SATA-attached disk. As a non-specialist, I was therefore somehow expecting/hoping that a backup to a USB3-attached disk would also be approximately as fast as a backup to an internal disk.
Sorry to ask this dumb question: In your case, was your external disk officially supporting USB 3 and was it attached through a USB 3 port?
Also, I read somewhere (without knowing whether this information was reliable), that USB 3 is not yet supported by Windows 7. Does somebody know someting about this?
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Robert,
This is getting a little off track but I'm game. I did some speed measurements with 4 files totaling about 4 gig. Also, my PC has two hardware boot modes, in one the system drive is an ATA 100, flip a switch and I boot with a RAID 0 made with two SATA 300 drives. The files transfer to / from USB 2 <> ATA in about 4 minutes either way. Switch to USB 3 and the transfer is about 2-1/4 minutes either way. Reboot with the RAID running and try the test again, RAID <> USB 2 remains about 4 min while <> USB 3 drops to 45 seconds. This is about the 6x speed increase over the 4 min of USB 2 and suggests the transfer to the USB 3 device is saturating the SATA 300 transfer speed (3 gig/sec vs 5 gig rating of USB 3). The enclosure I have is capable of the full 5 Gig speed, so when the SATA 600 drives become common place I can get the full speed benefit of USB 3.
Yes, it is connected to a USB 3 card or USB 2 depending on my specific needs. Speed with Acronis has a lot to do with drivers, media, source drive (SATA / PATA) type of data being saved (jpg files are already compressed, most data is not), the compression level chosen in the backup method and a few other issues. Backing up my RAID C: drive (15 gig) to the RAID D: drive takes about 3 minuets, to the USB 3/SATA 300 external drive takes about 4 min. Same to USB 2 drive is about 10 minutes. Restoration from the RAID is around 2:40. I usually use "Normal" compression and no file splitting.
No operating system (ie: Win 7) supports USB 3 in native mode yet as the standard is too new. Also, Windows support usually comes from hardware manufactures giving or licensing their drivers to MS for inclusion in a Windows release. Hence if you get a PCI-E / USB 3 interface card the drivers come with it. If you get one of the new mother boards with USB 3 on board, the system drivers will come with it. In either of those situations they will run in Win 7. I'm using XP Pro SP3.
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Opa, Thanks a lot for your descriptions!
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