HDM 2011 Suite - Takes hours to restore

I'm using the recovery CD of HDM 2011 Suite. I have Windows 7 SP1.

I recently did an image backup. I booted into the CD, selected smart backup-->partition and selected all default settings, except I chose to not split the image. I chose my backup partition to save the backup in. The total size of the backup was 5GB (full backup).

when I restored the backup to test how fast it would be (I first formatted the C drive), it literally took 4 hours to complete (3 hours, 58 minutes to be exact). Is this speed normal or am I doing something wrong?

 

Totally abnormal. The time to restore should be similar or less than the time used to create the image. Using the WinPE disk, a 5 GB image should be restored in less than 5 min.

It is not necessary to format the drive before the restore, but this shouldn´t affect the restore time.

 

When I restored the image, I selected the folder of the image. Am I supposed to select an individual file within the folder? Would it make a difference if I selected no or fast compression? I normally selected normal compression

edit: i checked my backup image and it seems the "winsxs" folder contains many small individual files. maybe the number of files are slowing down the process?

edit2: I integrated chipset and massstorage drivers into my win7 install disc before I installed Windows 7. Maybe the number of files from these drivers are affecting the restore time?

and it seems it restores the image by restoring individual files. maybe the number of small files are slowing things down. right now, i'm 24 minutes in on restoring and it says 2 hours 56 min remaining. its copying the files in the SYSWOW64 folder (and its a lot of files).

 

I was implicitly referring to partition backup or "sector-based" backup. In this method, you backup a partition, you restore a partition. The image contains a file with .PBF extension. To restore, you select this file and restore it to an existing partition or to free non-allocated space. This method must always be used to backup the system partition.

It seems you are using "file-based" backup, which is different. I haven´t used HDM to perform this type of backup, so I don´t know what is "normal". Remember that file-based backup should´t be used to backup the system partition.

There is a comparison of these methods in the PDF manual of HDM.

 

I've used the sector based backup from the start. the folder i'm referring to has 3 files, with one of them a 5GB .PBF file. maybe I backed it up as an image, but somehow restoring it file-based? anyway, i'm 1 hour 20 min into restoring, and its still restoring files form the /windows/winsxs/amd64 folder (lots of files here).

I'll read the manual again and see if i'm restoring it correctly. but I'm 99% I did a sector backup.

EDIT: i think I know what you're referring to. After I selected the .PBF file to restore, it took me to a page to include/exclude which individual FILES I want to select. hmm...what in the world??


EDIT2: PROBLEM RESOLVED. I canceled the restore process (it took way too long). After carefully analyzing my steps, I realized that I expanded the C drive and mistakenly chose to do a file restore. What I SHOULD have done was highlight the C drive. thanks robin for helping out.