Acronis True Image Home 2009 2.5 slower than TI v11

(I could not find discussion on the following problem)

I just upgraded to True Image home 2009 which is considerably slower than my old True Image home 11.

My Setup:

Hardware: HP Desktop with AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core processor 3800+ 1.99GHz 1GB RAM
Operating System: Windows XP Home edition
Backup source: External WD "MyBook" USB 500GB hard drive with 212GB of data (video and pictures).
Backup Target: Buffalo NAS RAID cube connected via home network of 10mb/100mb bandwith.

Previously, a full backup would take about 16 hours. I just did a full backup of 212 GB and it took 39 hours. This is 2.4 times (16h->39h) slower than before. Even though I do incremental backups between fulls, I don't think it's reasonable to expect system+network to be up 39 hours for the "full". Right?

Please advise if this is normal and what I can do to speed up the backup to the performance of the previous version (as slow as it was).

Acronis and Windows system information files are available on request.

Thanks in advance

 

Are you doing the backup from Windows or from the TI CD?

What build of TI 2009 are you using?

What build of TI 11 were you using?

Are you doing an image backup (partition) or a files & folders (data) type backup?

How large is the Full backup file?

 

Thanks for the response. Here is the information you requested:

Are you doing the backup from Windows or from the TI CD?
I am doing this from Windows as part of a regularly scheduled incremental backup plan

What build of TI 2009 are you using?
Just downloaded 3 days ago, Build 9,709

What build of TI 11 were you using?
I am sorry, I didn't write that information down before the upgrade

Are you doing an image backup (partition) or a files & folders (data) type backup?
I am doing image backup of external data disk. (I also have a system disk "C:" image backup on another task) I elected to do Image because of the flexibility to restore either a whole disk or individual files

How large is the Full backup file?
202 GB (217,329,594,880 bytes)

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

TxBacker, please perform the following operations:

1) Please check in default backup options Network connection speed, set it to the maximum value.

2) I have sent a file to you via PM, please install it, this can increase the performance.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

Thanks to MudCrab and Oleg for the replies.

* The network speed was already set to the maximum
* I downloaded and installed the Acronis drivers + restarted system
* I found an error in the scheduling (the task ran 10 hours later than I had thought, so it ran 29 hours and not 39)
* FYI, I am scheduled for incremental backups with one full backup after 4 incrementals. This has been very successful for me in the prev version.

Let's consider the thread resolved since you have given me the standard approach to improving performance. I will try to return in a few days and post result of a full test (I currently am out of pocket).

Thanks again

 

Hello to all again

My test backup is now complete. 208 gb have been image-backed up at 32 hours. By the way if you notice, I wasn't complaining that this is too long, only asking if this is a reasonable performance.

So here is the calculation (from USB drive to a Network drive. my setup is detailed at the top of the thread).

208 GB(*) in 32 Hours ~ 6.5GB per hour ~ 108 MB per minute.

If this is reasonable, I am happy... Acronis runs flawlessly.

Thanks to All

 

It depends on the connections, but I wouldn't consider it good performance.

Are all the network devices running in full-duplex mode?

Are they all connecting at 100mbps?

Are some or most of your devices capable of 1000mbps? If so, you might want to consider upgrading the lower speed devices.

Are you using a router or a switch?

What kind of transfer rate do you get in Windows when you copy a large file to the NAS device?

 

Even a 100Mbps network should run faster than this as you have noted. In theory, it would transfer at about 40 GB / hour.

Your idea of trying a large file, perhaps a backup, from the internal hard drive to the NAS would be very helpful in determining whether the slow point is the NAS target drive or the USB source drive.

With some of what I've read about NAS drive speeds, my bet is that it's the NAS that can't handle the speed.

 

All:
I hope there's no confusion here. All the numbers I was quoting were working via Acronis backup operation, not a direct copy.

As far as my network speed, I have just completed a test of a smaller file using direct Windows copying:

4,886,020,032 bytes (a single file) completed at 14 minutes
~5,816,690 bytes per second
~46,533,524 BITS per second

That's what my network can deliver - about 7 times faster than Acronis.

As far as I know all connections are at the 100mbs (the PC, the Linksys router WRT54G-TM and the Buffalo NAS I haven't found any bottleneck).
The WRT54G is acting as a router
I don't know about the duplex mode, but if the data flows via USB and then on via the Ethernet, there should not be cross traffic. Also - whatever is true for Acronis duplex-wise should be true for direct copy

On a happy note... my weekly incrementals are of course quick and clean... Every month or so I have 2 full backups (C: system and usb-external K:video+pictures) All I have to do is separate C and K by 2-days so they won't step on each other.

 

A few minor points and suggestions:

1. From your figures I get 349MB/minute or roughly 3x faster than Acronis rather than 7.

2. I have noticed similar performance differences between plain Windows copies and Acronis file backups. I haven't actually calculated the difference, but it was a fairly noticable advantage in favor of the Windows option. After seeing that I have never used Acronis for simple file copies since.

3. I understand the automated backup scheduling makes things easier, but for simple file copying why not just use the Windows environment instead of Acronis?

4. I suspect a lot of the data contained in the 200+GB database doesn't change between backups, but I could be wrong. That seems like a lot of new data between backups. If the data isn't changing try to re-organize it so that you aren't re-copying a lot of static data every time.

 

i have TI home v 11 & ti echo workstation 9.5 licenses

the home version is wayyyyy slower at restoreing than Echo workstation (tested same image on same hardware... 20minutes difference)

 

1) You are correct (so many confusing numbers it's like the federal budget)
Acronis home 2009 backup is only 3x slower than a Windows copy.

3) I don't use Acronis for simple file copying. The file copy was just a test to to meter my network performance. The incremental scheme works for me (one full backup after 4 incremental backups... with periodical consolidation to avoid overflowing the NAS backup target).

4) I use weekly incremental backups that do not back-up static data. Until I fully understand the "consolidation" feature, I prefer to perform a full backup after every 4 incrementals. This a is left over from Acronis TI home v.11 and may or may not change.

Again thanks so much to all for sharing thoughts. You greatly supplement the standard language in the manual. I am glad I upgraded.

 

Was the ~4GB file copied from the USB drive to the NAS?

How fast is the processor on this system, and what level of compression are you using? If the CPU isn't fast enough with enough RAM to use, the compression will definitely be the slow point as you are seeing here. The higheer the compression level, the slower TI will run in such a case.

The 44Mbits/sec actual speed for the 100Mbps network sounds about right for a real life large file copy procedure. Clearly the NAS is able to handle the speed.

 

The specs of the system are detailed in the first posting (top of the thread)
The compression I used is "Normal" (in Acronis terms) This is an interesting tip for another experiment, thanks!

Yes. The 4GB file was copied between the same source and target as the backup would go. (USB drive to the NAS)