Slow back up on TI 2016

These are hard to troubleshoot because there can be a number of reasons why the backup is so slow.  As an example though, I'm currently recovering 850GB of data from another backup software solution to a local server that is using relatively fast ISCSI attached storage and it has taken nearly 16 hours to decompress from the native backup file type to the original files structure.  

What kind of disks are in the Raid Array (5400RPM, 7200RPM, SSDs, etc).

How old is your RAID hardware?   The disks inside (especially spinning ones) will degrade overtime. 

What is the ratio of free space to total available space - when you get closer to 20% or less all drive performance begins to degrade considerably because of fragmentation, availability of available cluster blocks, etc.  

Are you using the original cables or the correct ones (sometimes people use older USB 2.0 cables or extenders on USB 3.0 drives which slows them down to USB 2.0). You can try running the free "lanspeedtest" application - it's desinged to test network speeds but can give you an idea of the speeds you're really getting on your local drive transfers as well (test a 10GB file since you're trying to backup 1TB - 10GB is nothing in comparison, but should stress the backup device enough to give an OK comparison of actual data transfer speed).

How much data are you initially backing up (full backups will take much longer than incrementals or differentials).  

In my experience, not all RAID drives are created equal.  Many consumer based (low end vs enterprise) storage devices lack the proper cache and I/O to handle long data transfers and throughput speed.  Performance can really suffer with long and large data transfers, especially as the available storage space on the drive becomes less and less. 

Do you run Antivirus?  If so, is it set to scan your external device?  If so, each file in the backup is getting scanned in realtime as it is being added to the drive.

Are you backing up to a single .TIB or did you break it into smaller chunks?   If you are making a single .TIB for a 1TB backup, I think that may be one of the largest performance hits.  I always recommend backing up into 2-3GB .TIB files because a single very large .TIB file requires a lot of cache, memory, etc.  It's less resource intensive on the system to break the file up into smaller chunks and move onto the next one.  In your case - 1TB of data would result in several of these .TIB files though, so maybe consider breaking them up into say 20GB .TIB files.

What priority did you set in Acronis for your backup - low or medium will take longer.  However, if you have given it high priority and are still doing CPU or memory intensive processes on the system, Acronis and the system will contend for resources making everything seem slower.

What compression did you select in Acronis for your backup?  The greater the compression, the less space the resulting image will take, but compression slows down the process.

Joe,

Bobbo_3COX1 has provided a lot of good information.  Especially the suggestion to break the .tib files into smaller chunks. I have bookmarked this page for future reference.

The link below describes a situation similar to yours.  Based on the information in the link, he is getting the same performance as you.  From the link:

"Using ATI 2015 last night (latest build), a full backup took approximately 7.5 hours. The resulting .tib file was about 595 GB." 

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/75548

The blog has a pretty good search function, so you may be able to find some additional suggestions on how to speed up the full backup.  The good news is that once the full backup is complete, the incremental or differential backups go really fast.

Regards,

FtrPilot

Great feedback!  Thank you very much.

My RAId drive is brand new, but it is a consumer WD drive.  I believe it is 7200, but the computer is 5400.  The drive was empty prior to starting.  8TB RAID set up as RAID 1, which I know will slow it down some. 

I will try setting up smaller TIBs.  I had set it to no compression and low priority  I had it set to select the TIB size as automatic, but going back to look at the completed files, they range anywhere from 22GB at the smallest to 491GB as the largest.  There are 5 files.  Total backup was just under .9TB.

The drive, cables and computer are all on USB 3.0.  I am using the original cabe and routing it through a powered USB 3 hub.

The crazy part of it was that I transferred about 700 GB to a local network drive and it transferred in about 2.5 hours.  It was a simple copy though.

Again, thanks for the great responses.  I am going to try your suggestions.

If possible, try taking the powered hub out of the equation - you just never know and every piece of equipment adds another layer of complexity.  I have used a usb 3.0 hub which cut my data transfer speeds (crystaldiskmark so take it with a grain of salt) nearly in half just because of low grade components in it.

Low priority will definitley slow things down too - slower than a regular copy.  Unless I'm doing something intensive, I usually leave it at the default priority and PC performance is acceptable.  I set it to high if I'm really not doing anything (like watching a movie or going to sleep) - it will speed things up.  

A single 700GB file is crazy big too, yeah, try breaking it into the smaller chuncks - 20GB is probably good in this case.  The break point is up to you, but consider how big any other single file is on your PC and there's probably not a single file close to 20GB unless you zipped something up that large (even a blu-ray backup typically doesn't have a single file that large).  It's cleaner (visually) to have only a few .TIB files, but performance wise, smaller chunks make more sense on large backup jobs.