TIH 10 not compressing; very slow

I just got TIH 10. My plan is to do full backup monthly with weekly differential. I did the initial full backup but ran into what appear to be 2 problems:
1) Full backup file (compression is set to normal) is same size as original data size. Compression seems not to be working. Only about 25GB of 100GB on drive are mp3/jpegs and manual backup readings indicated at normal compression, full backup should have been roughly 65GB.
2) Took over 16 hours to backup about 100GB. I did NOT select validation option in the ",backup additional settings" screen when starting the backup. 16 hours for 100 GB seems about twice as fast as I'd expect from reading other threads on this subject in the forum.
DETAILS:
I have a 160GB HDD as my primary with a little over 100GB used. I have a secondary internal 160GB HDD for my backups. I did a full system backup (selected "My Computer" in the scheduler). Compression was set to normal and I did not select the additional setting to validate. The backup file created was the same size (over 100GB) as the data backed up and it took over 16 hours to complete! I started it at 6:30PM and didn't use the computer until it finished.
I understand that total size of a whole group of backup files (full + diffs or incs) will grow backup size to exceed original. However, all I've done is a single full backup and it is the same size as the original data.
1- Why is the full backup not compressed?
2- Why is backup taking so long?
I'd appreciate any help anyone can give,
SBB

 

If you selected My Computer is there a chance you backed up both HDs and the backup of the first again when it did the second drive? I wouldn't have thought this possible but...

Doing an image to an internal HD should take very roughly 1 GB of compressed tib file / minute.

Is your system W98, XP or ? If TI can't understand the partition type it will revert to an entire disk partition backup rather than just the in-use sectors.

Are you using the boot rescue CD version or doing it from within Windows or ?

 

I'm running Windows XP and running from within Windows. I was very careful to check only the "C" drive to be backed up. C Drive has a tiny 55MB FAT16 partition (from Dell apparently) and the rest is a single NTFS partition. It is the NTFS partition that I backed up and that has about 100GB used.

FYI, I just got the following (pretty useless) answer from Acronis Support:
"Please be aware that estimated time and image archive size are quite approximate as different types of data allow different levels of compression and require different amounts of time to be compressed. So there is no need to worry about the discrepancy that appeared.
The compression level is set to Normal by default, but in case you need to create an image as fast as possible, you can select Minimal compression. If you need to burn an image to removable media, you can select Maximum compression."

I pointed out (again) that at normal compression, nothing seemed compressed. Unfortunately, I don't think I can expect much help from them is that is the best they can reply.

 

Do a backup of your NTFS partition with No compression and see what you get. There was a problem several months ago from a person having very large archives when trying to compress already compressed files - this problem is not common! Compressed files can result in a slightly larger file when compressed again but it shouldn't be very much. Anyway, try No Compression.

Your backup will be bigger than 65%. If you have a 100GB partition with 25GB MP3/jpegs you should end up at around 75GB.

If you are doing the backup within Windows check the Windows event logger, system log for a record of problems reading your HD.

You might try running chkdsk c: /r to check your Windows partition for good measure.

 

Thanks for your continued help. Here's where I stand now:

-Could see no disk access glitches in Windows event logger.
-Ran Chkdsk /r on C Drive; no apparent problems
-I don't think that beyond the 25GB of mp3/jpeg files I have much that would be compressed on the drive as I have not manually selected to archive anything (e.g., in Outlook) and the drive is not set to compress files to save space.
-Am running full backup again with no compression. It's been running 11111 hour, progress shows 5% complete, and hours remaining estimate is 15. If that holds true, then running with no compression produces same size file as with normal compression and time would be the same at over 16 hours.
-So let's say the file can't compress at all. It would be nice to figure out why, but I can live with the situation. However, should it take 16+ hours to backup 100GB? From other posts I've read, seems like that quantity of data should backup in the 8-10 hour range. Any thoughts on that? Part of the reason I bought Acronis TIH was because it was touted to work more efficiently than the Windows XP bakcup program. If TIH can't compress anything and takes as long as it does, it doesn't seem to offer much more than the XP program, at least in the size and backup time departments.

 

Just to confirm: You are making an image of your C partition not a Files and Folders backup?

Within Windows, for an image resulting in a 75GB archive file (.tib) created from an internal HD to another internal HD, I would expect the time to be roughly 75 minutes without validation for a Normal Compression backup. In other words, about 1GB/min based on the archive file size as a rough estimate of time.

If you are doing this from the TI bootable recovery CD then the times could be much, much longer if it does not contain an adequate Linux driver set for your PC.

What is the make and model of your motherboard?


Things to try:

Run chkdsk /r on the partition where you are storing the archive.

Remove TI and do a re-installation.

 

-Yes, am making image, not files, backup of C partition.
-1 GB per min!! I wish... I am doing this from TI on the HDD under Windows XP, not from removable media.
-Don't know the answer to the motherboard question at this time. I have a Dell Dimension 8400 without any motherboard/cpu mods. It's a couple of years old, but not so old it shouldn't be able to handle the task in question at a more reasonable speed.
-Will try the chkdsk /r on destination drive, but am not holding much hope for that as resolution as that drive is only about a month old and has not held much data. It is set up as data only, not a bootable drive.
-I will also try reinstallation of TI10.
Thx

 

-Did a chkdsk /r on destination drive (no apparent problems)
-Uninstalled and reinstalled TIH 10 (note: I did a restart after uninstall, prior to reinstalling, but when I went to set options in the new program, the old options were still there so uninstall left something behind. Any clues as to what or where that might be? My guess would be the Acronis folder was left behind in Program Files folder).
-After reinstall, program was somewhat faster, but still quite slow. It is currently 30 minutes into imaging C drive, indicatings 2% completed, estimates 10 hours remaining. So we've gone from 16+ hours to about 11 hours.
-I may try another uninstall followed by deletion of any acronis folder in program files folder in windows.

 

ATI uninstall leaves behind stuff under Program files\Acronis
Program files\Common Files\Acronis
Documents and settings\Allusers\Application data\Acronis

Plus lots of stuff in the registry wirh either "Trueimage" or "Acronis" in it.

I think Acronis has a scrubber that can be used after an uninstall but I haven't seen or tried it, only scrubbed by hand, so to speak.

 

OK, Here is summary of where I stand:
1-Full Disk Image Backup speed: about 0.1GB/min (100GB data takes about 15 hrs with no compression or with normal compression; with WinXP restore on or off).
2-Full Disk Image Backup compression: whether I turn off compression or use normal compression, full backup is hardly compressed at all (100GB goes to 98GB). I have 1.7GB of photos and 22GB of music. I did a normal compression file backup on these files to test compression: 1.7GB went to 1.6BG (no surprise) and 22GB of music went to a little over 10GB. Don't have any other appreciable amount of files that should compress some. Disk is not set to compress files to save space. So my 100GB of data should drop to below 90GB, not to 98GB.
3-Tried to uninstall and reinstall to see if that helps. It doesn't seem to, but I haven't been able to get a clean, 100% uninstall. When I reinstall after restarting my system, all my options and log files from previous installation are still there. I uninstalled again and restarted. Then I went into REGEDIT and deleted Acronis folder in Software registry. I went into the local and application data folders and deleted any Acronis folders there. There was no Acronis folder left in Program Files. Despite all this, when I reinstalled, the old options settings and log files showed up. True Image is obviously stashing files somewhere else and not deleting them. Note that when I install, I don't change any of the default file location options. Any thoughts on where else Acronis is stashing files?
-SYSTEM: Dell Dimension 8400, Pent 4 @ 3 GHz; 512MB RAM; Win XPPro SP2; 160GB SATA (C backing up to second internal 160GB ATA drive (E both single partitioned using NTFS; C: has 100GB of data; WinXP restore turned off; running TIH 10 from in Windows, not from media; have defragged drives before Full backup and run chkdsk /r on both (FYI, no errors showed up anywhere).
-I read a post that if Acronis can't read disk partition correctly it copies all of drive, even unused area. Could that be happening? If so, how do I prevent it?
Thanks for any additional thoughts anyone has.

 

Hello atnbirdie,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please download the latest version of Acronis drivers, unpack the archive, install unpacked MSI package and see if the issue persists.

If the issue persists, please do the following:

- Replace C:\WINDOWS\system32\snapapi.dll with the one from the downloaded SnapAPI archive;

- Reproduce the issue and collect the log file;

- Get the log file without closing any application windows (including the error message windows if there are any). The log file will be created at C:\ . The name of the log file will be snapapi [date-time].log

Please make a screen shot of the Device Tree application the way described in this previous post of mine.

Please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post. This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disk partition structure.

Please also make a screen shot of Windows Disk Management by following Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management.

Then 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 a solution.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov