Extremely slow?

Using Acronis Trueimage 8.0 build 764 - and trying to backup a 6GB partition - with NO compression - it says 14 hours remaining. I also cancelled a 120MB backup when it said it would take 50 min. to complete. Is this duration normal? It seems extremely slow, and much slower than when I used Acronis 6 (although that was a while ago).

 

I tried a few more experiments - it seems that one thing causing the slow-down was that I was specifying a custom file size for each backup volume (about 4300MB so it would fit on a DVD) but when I switched to the stock 700MB option (CD) the backup only took about 20min. The next thing I'm going to try is a similar backup with minimal compression enabled.

 

Ok, it worked just fine with min. compression.

I guess my question is - should I burn several of these little 700MB archives to a DVD or should I try to UDF format my DVD discs and burn directly to the removable media? What would the restore time be like and would I have to be present to direct Acronis to each archive or will it be smart enough to search the DVD for each archive as it needs them?

 

Did some more research on this forum -... (maybe should have started this way ;P) apparently there is difference between standard GB's and what Acronis considers a GB (Gib) so the recommended procedure is to split your file chunks into 1.9 Gib chunks ? Is that right?

but also
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=258857&postcount=5

this user reports doing something to what I envisioned in my previous post (burning about 7 chunks of 635MB per DVD)- and it worked fine for them.

Did anyone ever follow through and create a definitive guide to backing up using DVD+/- R's with TI?

 

The maximum size file that an ISO9660 DVD can hold is 2GB. But yes, ATI8 now uses GiB, so set that to 1.9 and you'll be fine. The UDF filesystem can store files over 2GB in size, but I haven't played around with making a DVD that is pure UDF. Going over 2GB for file sizes can cause headaches when transferring to other filesystems, or sometimes even across the network. I remember running into trouble transferring a file over 2GB over samba when booting from a Knoppix CD a while ago.

1.9GiB is fine if your backups don't go over 1 DVD in size. If they do, you'll not have the most efficient use of space. (Since all you will be able to fit on a disc is the two 1.9GiB files, and the rest of the space is wasted)

When I put together the revised instructions on how to create bootable TrueImage DVDs, I discovered that 635MB makes a great split size for this purpose. It would give you the ability to burn the images to CD as a last resort if you needed. It is a much more efficient use of space compared to 1.9GiB. And it still leaves just enough space for the data required to make the DVD bootable.

If you don't care for making your DVDs bootable, just have your images split at 635MB anyway. Image to HD first, then burn to DVD using your favorite authoring software. While imaging directly to DVD is supposedly possible, I've seen way too many posts from people having trouble doing it. The problems seem to be related to, but not limited to, those using Roxio software.

 

Thank you wdormann, I am going to follow your advice. Since I don't have any blank CD-R's lying around I will make a bootable DVD for the first one and store my other archives on the rest (should take about 3 DVDs all together with min. compression). And yes, it seems that burning directly to DVD is not worth the trouble it is causing people (Roxio, UDF, DVD-RW vs. DVD+RW - it's all a mess, and with conflicting opinions).

I am now having a different problem - TI is stalled at 60% completion on one of my partitions. Since it seems to be unrelated to this discussion I'll post about it in another thread.