Disk Image Backups Still Slow
TI 2013 is my 4th version of Acronis Backup and I still can't seem to get faster backups. The sales pitch for TI 2013 said faster backups but that's not what I'm experiencing. I have seen this question asked in the Forum for years and I haven't seen a solid fix for it yet. I have Vista on an HP desktop with an Intel Quad Core Q660 CPU at 2.4 ghz with 4 gigs of RAM. Backup is set for high priority with normal compression. I am backing up from one internal Western Digital 500gb SATA drive to another identical internal drive. Both drives have been error checked. Task Manager shows CPU time bouncing between 0 and 2% during backup. It is taking about 50 hours to get an image of 96 gigabytes. Do you have any suggestions or is slow backups just a systemic problem that I have to live with? Acronis is still the only full-featured backup system out there and I need the flexibility it provides. Thanks.
Do you have the same performance when backing up with the recovery CD?
If yes, we are looking at some hardware issue: memory, connectors, etc.
If no, if the CD is faster, you are looking at some driver issue in Windows.
I tried copying the .tib to the other drive. The average speed is about 40MB/sec. This seems slow. Shouldn't it be somewhere around 150MB/sec? I think my motherboard has SATA-2 ports. CPU utilization still under 3% and memory (4gB) utilization is about 86%.
Windows says my drivers are up to date. Don't know where to go from here. Thanks
Kenneth,
The transfer rate of 40MB/s is not bad (but not great), and is typical performance for many SATA 2 drive/controller combinations in legacy IDE mode. (I get a 40MB/s rate between two SATA 2 drives connected to an ICH6 SATA 1 controller in one of my systems.) If Acronis could back up at that rate, you could theoretically back up 140GB in an hour. If your backups are taking as long as your have indicated, there is something else going on with Acronis running on your system. Are you running a file/folder backup task, or a disk/partition backup task? Is your motherboard BIOS set to use legacy IDE mode or AHCI mode for the hard disk controller? (You can switch the controller mode after installing Windows following these guidelines http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976, but be sure to have a full backup of your system just in case this fails).
Please try the backup while booted to the Acronis Rescue Media as MVP Pat L has suggested and see if your results are different. This will eliminate Windows completely from the backup procedure and provide a comparision for you.
James
I did try a transfer while in SAFE mode and the rate went up to an average of 50MB/sec so there is obviously a little overhead when Windows is running in full mode. I am running a disk/partition backup without validation. A full backup once a week with incremental backups scheduled every night. My SATA controller is set for RAID. According to HP, that also enables AHCI mode as well, although I can select AHCI as well. I will try booting with the Rescue Media and backing up my drive. I'll report my results as soon as possible. Thanks again for the guidance.
Ken Lyon
I also looked at the Microsoft procedure for changing the controller type. It said to change the registry value to 0. I checked my registry and value there is 4. So maybe the AHCI driver isn't loading after all. HP says the RAID setting enables AHCI as well. Perhaps the BIOS is being configured for AHCI but maybe Windows isn't. Windows may not be reading the BIOS settings correctly or at all. Just a thought and a little more info for you. Thanks again. Ken
If your system is in RAID mode, it is using AHCI but using a RAID driver (Intel's RST or AMD's RAID for instance). I would not suggest making any changes to the registry at this time. On my HP system, I can choose IDE mode, AHCI mode and RAID mode. There is no difference between RAID mode and AHCI on my system, other than the RAID mode enables the RAID BIOS configuration utility.
Are you running the two disks in RAID mode (with logical volumes (partitions), or do you just have the RAID mode set in the BIOS (with the two disks as individual volumes)? On my system, I can safely change between RAID mode (when the disks are not set up as RAID) and AHCI, but not between RAID and IDE modes.
Since you can get 40 - 50 MB/s transfer rates when copying files, something else is probably causing the very slow backup times with/in Acronis.
On the system I have that has an older SATA 1 controller (non-AHCI) that gets 40MB/s average transfer rates, I did a test backup using 2013, at the default settings, backing up three partitions (System Reserved, the OS, and a data partition) with a total of 128GB of data. The resulting .tib file was 117GB (Many of the files on the data partition are already compressed) and the backup job took about 59 minutes, and the validation took about 30 minutes. 40 megabytes / second = 140.625 gigabytes / hour, so this seems consistent considering the system overhead.
Can you provide a screen shot of the drivers details screen from the disk properties page in Windows device manger?
I am running the 2 drives as individual volumes C: and E:, with C: being the boot drive and E: a logical drive, and not using RAID mode. The BIOS for both disks is set to RAID. I clicked on the "update driver" buttons for both drives, they are identical by the way, and Windows said I had the current drivers. The driver detail screens are attached. Haven't had a chance yet to try backing up with rescue CD. Thanks.
Ken
I tried running a disk backup from the Rescue CD as suggested. Just about the same results as running in Windows. Using the CD cut about an hour off the the backup time (46 hrs vs. 48 hrs). So I am still getting about 2Gig per hour backup rate. Still really slow. I have been through my hardware setup and can't find anything out of the ordinary. The only thing still in question is the registry value for the AHCI drivers. As per James F's suggestion, I have not made any registry changes. The value is set at 4, and the Microsoft support forum says it should be 0 to enable AHCI drivers. If anyone has experience with this, please feel free to share. Otherwise I won't touch it for now. Thanks again. Me thinks I should be prepared to resign myself to having ugly kids and slow backups for the foreseeable future since there doesn't seem to be a clear answer for either problem. Thanks
Ken
Kenneth,
If you have an external USB drive, could you try and run a backup with the USB drive as the destination just to compare rates?
This whole quest for faster backups actually STARTED with an external USB drive. I used a WD 500 gig external drive, identical to the 2 internals I am trying to backup between, for the last 3 years, starting with Acronis Home 10. Backup to the USB drive is the same as between the 2 internals. I even switched to the external IEEE 1394 port with very little improvement. That's why I went to internals, thinking it would be faster. As evidenced by this thread; new hardware, new configurations, and updated software, it just ain't cuttin' it. Thanks for trying. I really do appreciate it.
Ken
Kenneth,
The fact that the performance of the backup on the CD is about the same as in Windows definitely points to hardware issue:
- errors on disk (you can run your disk manufacturer's diagnosis tool),
- issues with bad disk connectors/connectors (internal, disconnecting/reconnecting disks, changing disks ports, trying new disks connectors)
- memory issues (check with Memtest86)
- motherboard issues (static exposure, bad component). Hard to diagnose.
As a last resort, I went through the procedure to enable the AHCI drivers in the registry. After confirming that they did load correctly, I tried another backup. Went from 2 gigs an hour to about 2.2 gigs an hour. Very slight improvement but nothing to write home about. Also did a 24 hour memory test with no errors. Only thing to do next is change SATA ports on the MB but something tells me that will be a futile effort as well. Like I said before, ugly kids and slow backups are apparently just my destiny. Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
One more test if you have time. Can you create a task that backups up the 2nd internal hard disk to the external drive and give that a try?
memory (4gB) utilization is about 86%.
That's huge. The computer might spend a lot of time paging to the hard disk and that could slow down the backup. What (other) processes are eating so much memory during a backup?
Although it doesn't explain why the backups are still slow from the recovery CD...
Vista reports memory utilization differently than Windows 7, and that number (86%) should not be an issue. In Windows Vista, many processes are using the system RAM even at idle (Superfetch, indexing, etc.) When an an application(s) needs the RAM that is in use by these processes, they "release" the RAM to the application that needs it. This is well documented, and is not need for concern, if the system is operationg properly without being sluggish. Many services in Vista can be turned off and this number will decrease, but is not usually necessary. Windows 7 improved on how the "in use" memory is being reported, and streamlined the amount of RAM needed by the background services.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/09/why-does-vista-use-all-my-memo…
James F, I tried a backup from the 2nd drive, no difference. I canceled after an hour. The source drive is only 1 month old replaced an identical drive that was starting to accumulate bad sectors and causing problems. The new drive took care of all the persistent problems. The backup drive is the drive that was orginally in the external USB case. It has worked great for 2 years. I ran diagnostics on both drives with no reported problems. SMART values are well below thresholds. Thanks for the input on the memory use.
UPDATE
Acronis now working as advertised. Don't quite know what I did other than shotgunning the system. Replaced the backup destination drive although I didn't think it was bad. Using generic SATA 1 driver, no AHCI. I re-installed Vista from scratch. Re-installed Acronis 2013. Now I get a 38 gig backup in 15 minutes instead of 2 gigs an hour. So----what has been stuck in Vista's craw for the last year that has caused me so much headache and heartache with Acronis? I ran every available diagnostic known on Vista and nothing ever indicated any problems. Is this why people by Macs? I really wish I had a concrete fix that everyone could use but I'm at a loss as to why it works now and didn't work before the Vista reload. Thanks to all for the assistance and suggestions.
Ken