Time for Backup / Image for Windows

On one of my systems I have used Image for Windows in the past and don't remember that it was particular slow. It worked reliable and while I did not have to use it often, I was quite happy. I have to admit though that I did not use it that often.

I now installed Version 2.85 on a different PC and noted the time for backup was excessive. I do think the problem is not with the program but something not correctly configured and any advice would be great.
The system is Win 7 32 bit. The OS drive is 150 GB with about half as used space. I am using Phylock and back up to a mapped drive (today) or external drive (last week). Does 2 hours seem ok for a full backup with validation ticked?

On my main pc (win7 64 bit) I am using Shadowprotect and this only takes approx 14 minutes for a 250GB drive with 74gb used. Even doubling this for validation, the time difference is huge. There must be something else that causes this difference.

 

beethoven,

Backing up to a second internal HD is by far the fastest. Network and USB2 backups can be slow.

I backup 23 GB of data in the OS partition in two and a half minutes (without validation and to a second internal HD) so your 75 GB might take me 8 minutes. I use Enhanced Speed - A compression as it's faster than Standard compression. High compression can be very slow. In fact compression levels make a huge difference. Avoid high compression levels as they take ages for very little image size reduction. Also non-compressible files in the partition can extend the backup time. (Music and Video)

 

i find Image for Linux has always given me better times than IFW or IFD

 

thanks guys - I have a look next week when I am back in that office to see how I configured the compression - don't think I changed that from the default but may look for the Enhanced Speed option and see if I can put in an internal drive.

Btw, how do you run an OS with 23 GB, Brian? When I rebuilt my pc recently, just the windows component (plus office) with all the updates came to more than double this. I already have all my data elsewhere but kept programs on the OS.

 

WinXP or Linux, I guess...

Cheers

 

Win7 (32-bit) + Office 2010 consume only 13GB on my laptop.

Cruise

 

SP is very fast, that's for sure! .....using IFW it takes me (on average) a minute for every GB being backed up (and validated) from my internal HDD to an external USB drive. I should add, that's with default settings.

I would agree that IFL completes the job somewhat faster than IFW but not if the time to boot the IFL disk is taken into account (at least that's true in my situation).

TS

 

beethoven,

It is Win8.1. I have 16 GB of RAM so the hibernation file was 16 GB. I don't use hibernation so I turn it off and that's a 16 GB saving. In the old days the pagefile would have been 24 GB. I was surprised to see Win8 set the pagefile on the SSD to around 3 GB and after a few months reduced it to around 2 GB.

When you upgrade Win8 to Win8.1 you gain, not lose, about 4 GB of free space.

I move most User folders to my D: drive. Desktop, Pictures, Video, Music, Documents, Downloads, Contacts, Searches.

All programs are installed to the C: drive. Backups can get messy if you install programs to other partitions but I would do it if the installed app took up several GB. My son has a game that takes up about 40 GB so I installed that in another Win8.1 partition on this computer. His Win8.1 is games only. No standard programs.

 

interesting - don't think I am ready for win 8 yet but I will have a look at the hibernation and page file references you made. Never touched these before, so will have to be careful not to mess up things too much.

 

I used much the same method with Win7 and WinXP.

If you have plenty of RAM a pagefile larger than 1 GB isn't necessary.

I've never used hibernation and with reports of data corruption, particularly with Win8 Fast Startup, I'm glad I haven't.

 

Same results (with beethoven) here.
All versions IFD/IFL/IFW 2.8x (except 2.80) are much slower (20-30%) than the versions 2.7x; at least on my machines...

Panagiotis

 

Hi Panagiotis,

Good to see you back. Not only that PHYLock.sys don't work after many configurations and wasting many hours. It is like after 40 minutes of imaging on local target drive (not network), it will stop working.

Have now moved to VSS.sys.

This is just for information only.

Best regards,

Mohamed