How long should a full-image backup take?

I just installed ATI 10 Home on a new pc and did a full-image backup to a network storage drive. It took more than 12 hours. That seems way too long. Can anyone suggest why it would take so long?

TIA -
David

 

David:

That certainly does seem like a long time unless you are backing up a huge amount of data. To calibrate, if I back up over a 100 Mbps LAN using TI Home 10, I get speeds of 750 MB/min. At this rate a backup operation that creates a 10 GB .tib file takes about 13 minutes. Backing up to an internal hard drive is faster; about 1 GB/min.

To diagnose your slow speed problem it would help to have additional information:
How large is your image file?
Did you back up in Windows or from the Rescue CD?
If from the Rescue CD, which mode (full or safe)?
Which build of TI 10 are you using? The latest, as of today, is 4942.
How are you connecting to the network; wired or wireless?

Most importantly, if you use Windows to transfer a large file from your same PC to the network storage drive, and time the transfer, what file transfer rate do you achieve?

 

Mark,

Thanks for you response. I was able to do a full backup to a USB harddisk with no problem in less than an hour, so I think it's the connection to the network storage disk which is slowing things down.

One more question ... do you think running virus protection at the same time as the backup slows it down?

Thanks again,
David

 

David:

To be honest, I've never tested that. The times mentioned in my previous post were with virus scanning enabled. I'm using Symantec Corporate Edition and it is set to scan files on open, create, move, copy or run. I'm not sure if ATI needs to actually open files when it's creating an image; I suspect not. So my hunch is that having your virus scanner enabled does not matter.

You could try turning it off as a test to see if that makes a difference.

 

Thanks again

 

hi there,

Could you please explain the difference between 'full or safe' installation of Acronis? I've always chosen 'full' intuitively, and it takes around 1.5 hours to backup and validate about 20 GB.

Thanks.

 

The TI Recovery CD can be created as Full, SAFE or Both. When you boot from the CD with both, you get a screen where you can select Full or Safe mode of TI.

Full mode runs in Linux with all the Linux drivers. If the Linux drivers are a good match for your hardware, this is almost as fast as working in Windows. If they are not a good match, speeds can be much slower or some devices may not even be seen.

Safe mode is a version of DOS and has no drivers. Instead, it uses the functions built into your computer's BIOS. That includes support for internal hard drives and sometimes also external USB drives. Usually the network is not available.

It's important to test the Recovery CD since if your hard drive fails, you need to boot from the Recovery CD to restore your image.

 

The Full Mode is Linux-based and includes Linux drivers for USB, NIC's, RAID, etc.

The Safe Mode is DOS-based and accesses the drives through the computer's BIOS. Some newer computers will allow USB drives to be accessed, but they'll usually be at USB 1 speeds. Also there is no network support.

 

Thank you both for your answers. I've always restored from the recovery CD, as I don't trust the Window's environment. It's slow though compared to Windows: Backingup + Validation within Windows 20 minutes, 1.5 hours with the recovery CD.

 

Hello jdnewhous,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

The long time of backing up to the network drive is most likely caused by the connection, as you guessed. However, it's also possible that there is an interference from firewall, if any. You can try temporarily disabling firewall and seeing if it affects the backup time.

The activity of antivirus software generally doesn't affect the backup creation time much, as during the creation of an image Acronis True Image operates on a partition level rather than filesystem level.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Hello Osaban,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

In addition to jmk94903's and MudCrab's explanations, you can find some details about full and safe variants of the standalone version of Acronis True Image in this FAQ article.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

I am interested in the thread question also for an older machine.

If the processor is 550 MH and TI v9 is used to do a full system backup of 20 gigs to a dedicated, non-partitioned, 120G external hard drive should it take 18 hours?

Thanks

 

Is the external drive USB 1 or USB 2?
Also, it must be partitioned, otherwise you couldn't save a backup image to it.

Does the computer support USB 2? That old, I'm guessing not. You may want to get a USB 2 PCI card or a PCMICA card if it's a laptop. Just make sure it's one that is supported well by Linux.

Assuming USB 2, then 18 hours is way too long even for a computer that slow. If you're using USB 1 then it may take that long. If you have a network share you can backup to, it will be a lot faster than USB 1 (assuming you have at least a 100Mbps connection).