Long time to backup

We have a Windows SBS 2003 server and have been running Acronis TI on it for about 6 months.

About a month ago I started to realize that our backups were taking a lot longer to complete for both the full and incremental backups.

Last week I downloaded and installed the latest update and things were wonderful again.

Then over the weekend we are back to VERY long backup times. I've looked at the logs and don't see any errors.

There is a huge difference between when it appears to be working correctly and when it's not. When it finishes quickly it can finish in a couple of hours. When it takes a long time it can run for 8+ hours.

There haven't been any huge changes to the data between updates. The only thing I have noticed that might cause a performance issue would be the backup drive should be defragmented, but that wouldn't explain a fast backup one day and a slow one the next.

Any thoughts? I'd love help troubleshooting this.

 

1. Do you defrag the disk? If you defrag the disk between incremental/differential backups that will increase the time of the next incremental/differential considerably. You should always take a full backup after a defrag.

2. Do you run TI from within Windows or from the Linux shell?

3. If you run from within Windows have you checked that nothing else is running at the time of the backup. TI is a very memory-intensive process. If your AV or Spyware scanners start running at the same time TI will almost grind to a halt because both of these processes are also memory-intensive.

4. Do you run any other disk-intensive process automatically e.g. an indexing service?

 

1. Do you defrag the disk? If you defrag the disk between incremental/differential backups that will increase the time of the next incremental/differential considerably. You should always take a full backup after a defrag.


I haven't been, but will start. That doesn't seem to explain why a week ago it was taking for ever...ran fine a few days ago...and took forever again.

2. Do you run TI from within Windows or from the Linux shell?

Windows. It's scheduled to run automatically over night.

3. If you run from within Windows have you checked that nothing else is running at the time of the backup. TI is a very memory-intensive process. If your AV or Spyware scanners start running at the same time TI will almost grind to a halt because both of these processes are also memory-intensive.


Not to my knowledge, but I'll check on that.

4. Do you run any other disk-intensive process automatically e.g. an indexing service?

Nope

 

The best way to check for background processes is to use the Windows Task Manager.

Open Task Manager > click on the Performance tag > double-click on the column CPU. System Idle Process should be at the top of the list and will show 99 if the system is doing nothing.

Now start up TI9 and start the backup. Monitor which processes are taking most of the CPU cycles. For example, you may find that your AntiVirus is checking every piece of data that TI9 is backing up. Something simple like disableing your AV during backups could solve the problem.

 

I'm still having issues with this if anyone has any ideas. Some nights it takes a few hours. Other days it just crawls along.

It's running now and the CPU cycles for True Image sits at 0 or 1 while the memory is at about 126 MB. The CPU cycles for the whole system is maxing out at 3 or 4 and has over 2 GB free.

 

I am having the same issue but have not as yet been able to resolve it. Post a response in my thread if you have any success, and I promise to do the same for you.

My thread is "TI9 Workstation imaging VERY slowly to server computer".

Thanks.

 

Tuesday night I started a full backup and it announced it would take 22 hours.

I canceled the backup, restarted the server, and started a full backup again. It took about 6 hours to do a backup and verification.

Last night it ran it's scheduled incremental backup and it finished about 14 hours later.

I have trouble believing it's a drive problem since it will run fine once after a restart.

 

Hello lschaef,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Server Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

Could you please provide us with the following information?

- What exact Acronis True Image version and build number do you use?

You can find the full version name and build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window.

- Create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post;

- What is the exact size of the backed up data?

- How much time does it take exactly to create a backup?

- Where do you save the resulting backups to?

- Are you able to achieve a better backup speed by saving your backups to any other storage devices?

- Does the problem appear when you create both disk\partition images and file-based backups?

- Try to create a backup under the same conditions (i.e. using the same backup options, saving it to the same location, etc.) but using the Bootable Rescue CD and inform us about the result.

Then please submit a request for technical support. Provide the files and information collected in your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov