Slow backup usb drive

Hello,

I have an Intel 3.2ghz XP Sp1 system with 2gb ram.

I backup about 30gb (compressed data) to an external USB 2.0, 250gb hardrive.

I have upgraded to TI9, build 3.633 and tried to backup from a boot CD (not windows).

Note: the following times are approxomate and based on memory.
Since using TI9, I found the time to backup starts with an estimated time of 6 or 7 hours, drops rapidly to 3 hours, then to about 2 hours. After more than 2 hours it still has 2 hours to go. So far I have not completed a sucessful backup using TI9.

However, using the old TI8, build 937, boot cd and the same system, the backup is completed in about 1.75 hours, like it did in the past.

I made no changes between the two backup attempts, except used a different boot cd.

Do you have any idea why this is happening and/or pointers to fix it?

TIA

 

The estimated tim is a fiction.
Let the task run to completion.

 

The time appears to be based on the number of files copied/imaged over time. I don't know if that's true but it would explain why, if you have one very large file and a few small files, then the estimated time at first will be presented as a long time and remain. But once past the huge file, the estimated time and the task can complete quickly.

 

Hello Zumwalt
I suggest you at least try to make your backups while booted in Windows. You may be pleasantly surprised just how much faster they run. It is after all how True Image was designed to work and the quality of the backup is exactly the same as booting from the CD.
Set the task to run when the computer will not be busy to give it a fair test. On a machine far slower than yours I can backup to a USB drive some 16 GB in 30 minutes so, with your extra power, even with the constraints of USB 2 you should see much faster backups.
Of course if you could fit an internal slave drive for your first line backups and run them in Windows you would probably get even better speeds.
A final thought if you have a spare for your hard drive your could do a test restore and try out SP2 !

Xpilot

 

For those that has used TI for a while, and by that i mean from v8 and
onwards, it is fairly common knowledge that TI 9 is slower than it's predecessor.
Lots slower.
You could experiment by running it from an BartPE disk instead, with some luck the windows drivers could make the task go faster.
However, it'll never beat TI8 in regard to speed.

 

That is a comment I have seen before but although I also started with V8 and now V9 I find that the backup times are virtually the same. This is because I always backup within Windows and never from the Recovery CD. I have recently changed my recovery method which now takes less than half the imaging time. Briefly the images are on an internal slave drive and the restore is to an exchangable main hard drive. This HD to HD recovery seems to be the fastest and most reliable method available.

Xpilot

 

I agree with dobbleina. I have found version 9 to be much slower (at least while creating the backup) than version 8. There are those here that swear by version 9 being faster than 8 but this contradicts my experience with them on several different setups. I am talking only about image creation and not restore time. I have tested it disk to disk, disk to USB drive, disk to network share over a gigabit LAN and by far version 8 wins in the speed department hands down. This is especially true using the recovery CD to do the backup. The only reason I am using version 9 now is because it restores at about the same speed as version 8 now. I have no idea why a backup job takes one and a half hours to complete and it only takes a half hour to restore (disk to USB drive). Doesn't make much sense but thats the results I am getting.

 

Thanks for the replies and suggestions.

I have XP SP2, but had so many problems I had to reformat and go back to SP1. I don't know if it was me or XP, but it was easier to just go back.

I will try backing up in widows to see if that works, but not being too geeky, I don't see how TI can do a timely backup when windows is modifying files constantly.

I have downloaded the latest TI9 and got the same results, except it kept finding errors on the target USB drive.
I did a thorough scan of the drive and it found no bad sectors.


Anyway, tou all Have a great 4th.

 

There are a couple of posts from Acronis on how it does the backup in WIndows. It basically takes a snapshot of the disk and captures I/O requests until the sectors of interest are backed up (something like that anyway). It does work!

Problems with poor performance on the rescue CD version are usually the result of a poor driver for your device. The rescue environment is a version of memory-resident Linux and a good driver may not be present. What's worse one gets the idea that a driver that worked well in a previous version/build is removed or replaced with one that isn't as good in later versions.

This is why some favor the BartPE approach which uses Windows drivers with the TI plug-in.

 

A backup is just a snapshot at a point in time.
Image backups avoid having to deal with te open file issue, however, they are still taking a snapshot at a point in time.

If you look at the TI log, you will see that TI locks certain drives during the backup. However, once the lock is released, things change.

If you wish to see what files are affected. you can use the Content program to compare the actual logical drive to the backed up mounted volumes. The Content program will identify those files that could not ber opened/shared by th Content program, and the associated error message.

The Content program is at http://www.standards.com/index.html?CompareDrives

 

Speaking of drivers, does anyone know what the Acronis Drivers contain?

Acronis Support suggested I use them to help with my problems with an external USB drive:

http://download.acronis.com/support/SnapAPI_l_s_e.exe

I haven't tried them yet...I'm not keen on testing drivers I don't know specifics of... Do the Acronis drivers only work in Boot mode? Do they stay resident on the Acronis programs, and not change any drivers loaded on my system? Would help to have more details provided, on this, and other Acronis support offerings.

I heard from Menorcaman that he makes backups to an external HD formatted as FAT 32, which limits the files sizes to 4 GB. Helps when burning those archives to DVD later, in the 2 step method.

I wonder, does anyone understand the inner workings enough to tell me/us if writing from an XP internal NTFS drive to a FAT 32 external USB HD also runs better under TI, either in Windows or Boot modes?

Seems to me, since FAT 32 is quite a universal format, that TI might work better under USB. Or, perhaps just limiting the file size to 4 GB runs better in XP SP2 -- I had errors in large (8GB) file copies to USB under XP and TI 9.0.3633.

And infinite restore times under 3666, but, that may have been due to some driver errors. A new SATA card seems to have helped, but, I have yet to test all modes.

 

NTFS is best for external drives.

 

Do you mind saying why? Best in general, for the reasons NTFS is sound, or, best under TI?

In all situations? I do like to understand what goes on "under the hood."

 

Hello Zumwalt,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please boot your computer from the Acronis True Image rescue disc and press F11 key when the selection screen appears. After you get the "Linux kernel command line" prompt, please modify it in the following way:

quiet acpi=off noapic, click on the OK button and choose "Full Version".

If the problem still persists, please create Acronis Report and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

Hello Christopher_NC,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Acronis SnapAPI driver is in charge of all I/O operations on the hard disk of Acronis software working in Windows. It also allows to create backups under running Windows with a lot of files being open for reading and writing without any necessity to reboot the computer in DOS or any other special mode.

We usually recommend to update Acronis drivers if Acronis True Image can find any hard drives in Windows, for example.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

I downloaded and installed the drivers. Even though I did not wait for the backup to run to completion, the estimated time to finished dropped rapidly to 2 hours, then counted from there. Just like TI8.

Thanks to all for comments and suggestions.
I'm now a happy camper.

 

I updated the Snap drivers and the backup appears to be running at the same speed as TI8 (perfectly OK with meI.

I then tried the command line you suggested, but Acronis stopped at the "Loading, please wait" screen and I had to power down to reset.
Since TI9 works now, I assume I can forgo this step.
Thanks you

 

So what was the average imaging speed of TI9? Most imaging proggies should be able to deliver between 1100 and 1500MB/min.

 

To internal SATA drive, 2.8Ghz P4 2300MB/min based on in-use size of C. This isn't totally accurate since the pagefile isn't backed up.

Looking at created image size (normal compression) the resulting compressed image is produced at 1390MB/min.

To USB 2 IDE drive, Normal compression.

Total in-use size of C: 1550MB/min
Created compressed image size: 934MB/min

Good enough for me.

 

Speed depends on speed of CPU, speed of disk drive acccess, type of disk drives, programs running, version of Windows.

With earlier builds of TI 9, TI took about 10 minutes more than Ghost 10.
With recent builds (I'm using 3633). TI has taken about an hour more than TI.
That's not very good.

 

One off-topic post removed. Let's stay on topic here in the Acronis Support forum and discuss other software in that section I keep pointing out for such purposes.

 

with build 2323 I had no speed problems ( creation or restore) with 3633 Ihad one machine which took 5 times normal to restore. using quiet acpi=off noapicBuild and now build 3666 has solved the problem. 9 is just as fast as 8 for me.

 

I'm stoked again about this product. Downloading the acronis drivers fixed my major slow backup times disk to disk. Hopefully the USB times will prove to be faster after I test it, but what a difference in image creation time. Before the drivers, a system drive with 9.2 gig of total data on it took 35 minutes to image (no verify). After the drivers I did a disk to disk image of the same data in 12.5 minutes . That seems faster (to me) than version 8.

One thing I don't get though, why aren't these drivers just part of the build??

Edit: Almost forgot. My PC is fairly outdated at 1.3Ghz P4 with just 128MB of ram.

 

Thanks for explaining this. Can you tell me if the Acronis SnapAPI drivers need to be reinstalled after a hardware change (eg: adding an external USB drive, moving a controller card to a new PCI slot, adding a new internal hard drive, or optical drive)? SInce Windows does need frequent driver updates, does Acronis TI also?

Or, once the Acronis drivers are installed, do they recognize and install drivers for new hardware?

These forums have been invaluable, but I would welcome having this information available on your Support Web Site, or, included with each build. Specific changes made to updates (including TI builds & to Acronis SnapAPI drivers), known issues, details on when to update and what modes they serve, etc. Readme's serve a valuable purpose.

Knowing the specific drivers being used might help, since some controller cards run better with non-proprietary drivers (as in the case of my Adaptec SATA controller -- that I added a Sil Image driver to and it runs better now than with the Adaptec latest driver). Should TI drivers be rolled back, if conflicts occur?

Since you specified while running in Windows, does this mean that the drivers have no effect on TI Linux Boot Mode? Hence, no need to re-create a new Boot Disc after a hardware change? When should I create a new Boot Disc? How do changes made on my system, to hardware and software, effect the Boot Disc? I've been making Boot Discs almost daily as I try to get my hardware configuration sorted out & update TI to new builds -- is this neccessary?

I'd also welcome a list of devices known to work with Acronis -- HD enclosures, controller cards...

Thank you.

 

I've seen folkes mention acpi before.
What is it?

Where is it documented?