I love this backup application. It automates so well. But why does it take a lot longer to copy files and folders to another driver than for me to copy and paste them manually?
I've always found the opposite in my use of the application. Maybe you should stop over in their FORUM... I'm sure Alex (@angstrom ), the developer, will offer some help with that explanation.
I can't say anything intelligent without knowing details. But generally speaking, if you see any abnormal slow-downs the first thing to do is to disable the antivirus and anything else that might be policing the disk and file system access.
I don't use an antivirus, or any other malware application, Alex. I haven't done in years. The slow down is especially noticeable when backing up big files such as my system images. It's not a big deal to me, but it would be nice to know why. Otherwise, I can live with it.
Have you tried copy-pasting these file as well and saw them copy faster all the way through? Larger files will always copy fast at first and then slow down dramatically due to Windows' caching the writes. It would also be helpful to know what "a lot longer" means in exact numbers and what you setup is like (devices used, etc.) If you are up for experimenting, you can try a couple of things : 1. Menu > Options > Preferences, set the program to run on "Lower disk priority". This will throttle down the IO. Perhaps your disks cope less well with continuous stream of R/W requests (though that'd be strange) 2. Switch the program to use Windows' native copying routine. This is done by adding "conf.copying.use_system_copier 1" override to the backup settings. See here for how to do this. PS. To undo this, you will need to put a reverse override in place (".... 0").
Bvckup 2 v80.7 Released (November 20, 2019) Website / Download: https://bvckup2.com/update Release Notes Spoiler: Changelog v80.7 80.7 ⦁ Revised the logic used to detect out-of-sync snapshots - that is, when the program runs into an error that can only mean that its cached file index of destination is invalid, e.g. a folder that should be empty is not empty, a file that shouldn't exist is already there, etc. When this happens, the backup is cancelled and immediately re-run, but with destination re-scanned afresh. This release merely tightens up the list of exact errors and conditions that are used to detect these cases. ⦁ Fixed an issue with the UI startup in service mode - this has to do with starting the UI under a _different_ user account for the _second_ time. More specifically - install the program, switch to the service mode, login under a different desktop user (or alternatively nuke the UI-side config folder), start the UI, exit it, start it again. At this point it used to start in the desktop mode instead of connecting to the service. No more of that now. ⦁ Fixed a smaller issue with the 2-stage file copier. Two-stage copying is used when _updating_ files and the delta copying is off. The file will first be copied into a temp file, which will then renamed into its properly name backup copy. The issue was with detecting if the source file was actively changing during the copy and issuing a warning to that effect. More specifically, this warning was never issued and now it is.
Bvckup 2 v80.8 Released (December 16, 2019) Website / Download: https://bvckup2.com/update Release Notes Spoiler: Changelog v80.8 80.8 ⦁ Revised file attribute handling logic a bit - starting with this release, if the program sees a file system volume that supports the Archive attribute ONLY, then it will act as if this attribute is NOT supported either. This is a workaround for QNAP devices that will report Archive attributes set on files, but refuse to clear them. ⦁ Fixed an issue with destination snapshot management. It has to do with handling of files that get renamed _and_ updated between the backup runs when the backup is aborted between these two actions. The problem was file's current timestamp was recorded in the snapshot after the rename and then again after the update. So the rename went through, but the update didn't, the file ended up looking like is was still in sync with the original. Kudos to Aram for not only managing to trigger this issue, but also for noticing and reporting it.
Bvckup 2 v80.9 Released (January 20, 2020) Website / Download: https://bvckup2.com/update Release Notes Spoiler: Changelog v80.9 80.9 ⦁ Added new time/speed estimator for longer file copies. Read all about it here - https://bvckup2.com/wip/14012020 ⦁ Added detailed logging around modified file archiving. When the archiving of _modified_ files is enabled, the program will now log timestamps and sizes of source and backup copies so that it'd be possible to understand why the file was deemed modified. This is the exact same information that is already logged for files being updated with regular (non-archiving) backups. ⦁ Added an option for not retaining downloaded updates. When the program is updated using built-in Check For Updates function, all downloaded update packages are retained in its configuration directory. With this release it is now possible to tell the program to dispose of the updates once they are installed by by adding the following override to the engine settings: updates.conf.keep_downloads 0 ⦁ Cleaned up and re-balanced the logo a bit. The B in "Bvckup 2" was too heavy and "2" was off its proper pixel boundary. https://bvckup2.com/wip/r80-9-logo-tweaks.gif ⦁ Fixed an issue with retrying the backup of new files - that is, if the backup of a brand new file failed on the first try, but succeeded on second, the program would panic (due to a wrong self-consistency check). ⦁ Fixed a typo in a logging message. "Rebuild" => "rebuilt".
Bvckup 2 v80.11 Released (February 16, 2020) Website / Download: https://bvckup2.com/update Release Notes Spoiler: previous Changelog 80.10 Release 80.10 ⦁ Added new adaptive %-age display for longer file copies - the UI will now automatically increase the number of decimals in the completed %-age value if the copying is going slow. The goal is to ensure that we _always_ show progress regardless of how slow it goes, but without it spinning _too_ fast - https://bvckup2.com/wip/r80-10-adaptive-percentage.gif ⦁ Increased refresh rate of the progress reporting to 20 Hz - a smaller change that bumps up the number of progress bar updates from 4 to 20 times a second. Make the animation look a bit nicer and smoother. ⦁ Added display of the name of an AD stream being copied - https://bvckup2.com/wip/r80-10-stream-copying.gif ⦁ Added an option for ending all lines in email alerts with a space. This has to do with a bizarre case when a text in email alerts had every line split into two parts with a split point steadily crawling from the back of the line to its beginning. First line will have only one symbol clipped, second - two, etc. The person who reported this didn't manage to find the exact cause, but they reported a workaround - adding a space at the end of each line. It's a fix transparent to normal use, so this is what the program will do from now on. It is however possible to switch this off if needed. ⦁ Added "Finishing up" section to the log of a backup run - https://bvckup2.com/wip/r80-10-finishing-up.png It groups together VSS snapshot disposal, device/media ejection, email alert dispatch and post-backup command details. Just to make things a bit more organized compared to how it was before. Fixes ⦁ Fixed an issue with copying AD (alternate data) streams - this was introduced in 80.9 with addition of the new time/speed estimator. It basically didn't know AD streams existed so it panicked when it started to get progress updates on them. ⦁ Fixed handling of running out of disk space in the planner - this has to do with the swap file used by the planning module breaking due to running out of disk space. There was one part in the planning code that assumed that retrieving certain data from the swapped storage always succeeded... whereby it did not, not always. Fixed. The backup is still aborted, of course, but now in a far more classy fashion. ⦁ Fixed handling of certain mid-file write errors - another issue rooted in the new estimator. Mid-file write errors may, under certain circumstances, cause the copying progress to jump back. The estimator quite correctly assumed that this shouldn't be happening, so the copying code has been hammered in place to conform. The progress now always goes forward. ⦁ Several cosmetic fixes in the logs and in the UI. There was one place where it could log "1 bytes", the tabbing order on More Settings page was wrong, etc.
Bvckup 2 v80.12 Released (March 19, 2020) Website / Download: https://bvckup2.com/update Release Notes
Release 81 Bvckup 2 v81 Released (May 8, 2020) Website / Download: https://bvckup2.com/update Release Notes and more information about v81
It depends on the backup composition (file sizes and counts) and disposition (source/backup device combo), but ~1.5x speed-ups are common. It can also be quite a bit higher. If you have few minutes to kill, I summed up my observations here - https://bvckup2.com/kb/parallel-exec
@angstrom I notice since this update, when backing up incremental or differential image backups ... 0 of 1 instead of 1 of 1 - maybe a small bug there?
Ah, good catch. What it shows is a number of completed steps, but "Step 0 of 1" doesn't make much sense indeed. I'll have this hammered in place, thanks.
And an Easter egg has been added Bvckup 2 v81.2 Released (May 15, 2020) Website / Download: https://bvckup2.com/update Release Notes
