Wipe partition first?

I have performed recovery on this partition about 4 or 5 times now and it now takes about 20 min for a 8G backup on a 23G partition, whereas it used to take about 10.

I was wondering if it was because i was applying the backup without thoroughly wiping the partition or could there be some other reason?
(Paragon Backup & Recovery™, version 10.1, build 9169 (01.12.09 ) Free Edition)

Also, i see there are updates available for the free version

New versions:
Version: 10.0.10.10569_001
File: Paragon-134-FRE_WinInstallSN_10.0.10.10569_001.msi

Version: 10.0.10.10569_001
File: Paragon-134-FRE_WinInstallSNx64_10.0.10.10569_001.msi

Are these much improved?

 

drhu22
Backup time depends on several parameters:
* Data amount to backup
* Healthy File system
(please run CHKDSK with /f key enabled to find and fix errors in file system of the partition you want to backup before operation).
* Healthy Hard Disk (without bad blocks)
* Fragmentation
(run Windows Disk Defragmenter to defrag partition you want to backup: right-click My Computer, select Manage, go to Storage section, choose Disk Defragmenter and run operation)
* Backup Setting (available in Tools - Settings - Copy and Backup options)
- Compression level (Best compression requires more time)
- Raw mode enabled (takes more time)
- Not enabled 'Skip OS auxiliary files' (takes more time)

Check if it helps.

As of update available: I would recommend you to install the latest build. It should have bug fixing.

 

Thanks very much for that, i appreciate the help...
Data amount is the same, no settings changed, but ill have to check fragmentation, and disk integrity

 

You should wipe the drive.
Windows write errors can create bad sectors, some bits of the address of a sector missing, cause the sector to be called bad. S.M.A.R.T will copy the data and remap to a new sector.
That sector is not physically bad and is a usable sector, but has been remapped and taken offline.
1 sector is 512 bytes, 2 sectors make one kilobyte or 1024 bytes.
If you were to lose a thousand sectors marked as bad but still usable, that's .5mb you can't access because it is as if they don't exist.

Some nasty programs can create their own file system on the hard drive, ntfs is not required, writing directly to disk.

You use Paragon to install 23gb's on how big of a drive?
If the drive is 80gb's you have 57gb's of free space.
Have you ever made that extra space into a partition to store data?
If you have then some of that data can still be present.
To verify use a hex editor from live cd, UBCD4Win is good with Tiny Hexer on board.
Head to the end of the drive and look for data, anything but zero's.

Paragon will not restore Windows to a drive that has Linux on the whole drive.
So in this case wiping is necessary.

Give wiping a try, only 88 minutes for 250gb 5400rpm drive and you will feel better.
using Linux LiveCD and hdparm to wipe with Secure Erase command
Also, UBCD (not 4Win) has HDDErase.exe, to access the Secure Erase function.

 

Thanks for the tip, 80gb ide 7200rpm drive took 35 minutes and 53 seconds.

 

It is cool.

And for you a complete wipe and restore will take less than 1 hour with a Paragon back up image.

Sweet aye.