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Backups slowing way down

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I backup to an external drive connected with USB 3.  Until the middle of last week I was getting data transfer rates in excess of 450Mbps.  Then it went down to only 40Mbps.  At times the program just stops for a half hour or so  as shown by task manger.  Supposed to be doing backup right now but task manager shows no transfers going on.  Is it time for a full uninstall and reinstall?  Or anybody have any other ideas?

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Gary, I would doubt that doing a full uninstall and reinstall of ATI will make any difference for the problem you are describing.  This sounds more like an issue with either the external drive or the USB 3 connection / interface or cable.

I would suggest trying a different USB 3 port then trying a different cable and if that makes no difference, check the drive itself for errors.  You can run CHKDSK against the drive to start off but would suggest going to the drive manufacturers support web site and downloading any diagnostic tools that they provide for this purpose.

Also download the MVP Log Viewer tool from the Community Tools link in my signature and check for any error messages being posted in the backup task log files.

How much free space is on the external drive as well and how big is the backup going to be?  As you run out of disk space, the drive will get slower.  As the drive becomes fragmented and "large blocks" become less an less, it will be harder to squeeze large files into space that is not contiguous (one big section).  You may find that defragging your backup drive and/or running wincontig on the drive where the backups are held may help (although it will likely take some time).  Another option to try is to make smaller backup "chunks" by setting the maximum .tib size to say 10GB instead of the default which creates one large backup file.  

As Steve mentioned, external drives can slow down depending on the usb port (on either or both ends) and/or cable.  Some people have found that simply moving the drive to another USB port (for instance a back PC port if you have a desktop) may be all you need.  Others have found that their external enclosure was the issue, or even the cable.  My guess is the contiguous space on the drive and using a single large backup file where there isn't enough room to write it all together so Windows has to move bits all around to try and make it fit, which is slowing things way down.