Long Full Back Up Duration
My backup configuration is 1 full back up after every 7 incremental back ups. I'm backing up about 3.5 tb. The first full back up takes about 6 hours. Subsequent full back ups take > 36 hours. I don't want to run the back up for that long. Why do the subsequent full back ups take so long? Is there a configuration that would shorten the duration?
I use the full disk scheme that backs up two disks attached to one PC to an external disk drive over USB.
One disk that is backed up is internal and the other is external. One TIBX file is created.
Only one full back up is kept so the previous full back up is automatically deleted right after. Validation options are disabled.
I know that two disks in one scheme is not preferred. However, like I wrote, I have no problem creating the first full back up. Do subsequent back ups scan the previous back up during the back up process?
I also have an issue in which I cannot deactivate Active Protection so I can't run a back up without it on.
Just looking through my logs, my first full back up had an average speed of 1,072.4 Mbps. The second full back up had an average speed of 198.3 Mbps which is similar to the incremental back up speeds.
William, I suspect that there is additional processing being done by ATI 2021 when creating subsequent full backup files that may be associated with the way that even all backups are now interdependent due to metadata usage with .tibx files.
I can only recommend opening a Support Case with Acronis Support for this performance issue and let them investigate why there should be such a large difference in backup speed between the first and then subsequent backup operations!
I'm going to try the files type of back up. Do I need a snapshot enabled?
William, one suggestion for you to try before changing to a files backup!
Open an Administrator level Command prompt and use the following command:
vssadmin delete shadows /all /quiet
This will clear all existing VSS shadow storage on your PC and you should see an improvement in performance.
I have been testing this using a Windows batch file as a Pre Command for one of my own backups and have seen a difference in performance reducing the time from over 22 minutes down to an average of 16 minutes (for a 79GB backup to a USB 3 external drive) when starting with a clean shadow storage for the task.
William,
The purpose of a snapshot is to allow you the user to continue using your computer while the backup is running. If you disable snapshots then you might not be able to use your PC during backups due to high resource utilization.
You mention USB as your destination for backup. I suspect you are using a large (8TB) or more disk for this? A files and folders backup is likely to make matters worse in your case as that backup process uses a byte method for backup whereas whole disk backups use a block method.
During your incremental backups after an initial Full the entire amount of data of the backup is scanned and compared to the backup. From that a calculation is made to determine what data is new and what data has changed. Once that has taken place then the backup begins to actually create a file.
3.5TB taking 36 hours is a long time certainly. Have you ever timed the processing cycle of the backup task? I would think that the actual file creation to USB 3.0 drive would run about 115MBps which would get you 0.414TB per hour so that works out to about 9 hours of actual time to create the backup file meaning that scanning and processing are taking roughly 27 hours.
Have you considered trimming your backup scheme in half in an effort to speed things up? What I mean by that is, have you considered reducing the number of incremental files between full backups to say 3 or 4? This could reduce your time considerably however, I agree that 1 and 1/2 days is way to long for the process. Keep in mind though that you are working with a very large amount of data so slowness is going to be part of the process.
William,
I gave up on allowing ATI to manage large backups on its own due to the same problem you are seeing. Instead, I create a backup scheme that is incremental only after the first full backup. Every week thereafter I create another new backup job and so on. In the case of my wife's large 4.5TB backup, this keeps the backup time repeatable for every full backup. Incremental backups are not a problem as they complete very quickly even on this large backup.
For myself and many other people, ATI cannot handle multiple backup streams without second and subsequent backups dramatically increasing in time as you described. Acronis support was unable to help me identify the cause last year so I've just been using this workaround.
This behavior began with ATI 2019 and the move to tibx files. Maybe it will be fixed one day. Based on my testing I'm pretty sure splitting your backup into two smaller backups will not solve the problem of much longer subsequent backups. The only thing I've found that works is creating a new backup job each week.
If you're dealing with 3, 4, 5 TB backups, perhaps you should think about the frequency of data updating as it pertains to backup needs. My guess is there many be a lot of media stuff (e.g. photos) which are not files that get updated much.
In my case, I run three backup tasks.
1. System backup... the C: drive. I don't run this often because the updates are infrequent and reproducible. This backup task is Full only and run every two weeks to the NAS. I also run the C: drive SSD backup to my large HDD once a week.
2. Frequent data backup... this includes the C:\users, ProgramData, Documents, etc... the kind of data from which there may be a lot of updates. This is done nightly as Incremental with a full about once every 8 days. The incremental generally runs very quickly.
3. Infrequent data... my media folders (photos, music, videos, etc) and other archives that just don't get updated often. This is the bulk of the data on my machine. This is run every two weeks as in incremental with a full after four or so increments. If I'm doing a lot of changes there, I may run the task manually if I feel it's needed.
As a result of this breakdown, I'm never running massive backups but rather more manageable and spaced out tasks. The only exception is when I have a new OS Version and then I boot to rescue media and do a full disk/partition backup of each drive to an external drive.
+ 1 to @BrunoC. I take a similar approach.
Ian
Thanks everyone. The advice overall indicates that the issue is with TIBX and that I need to better manage the backups and try clearing VSS shadow storage. I will also experiment with different back up types.