Backup very slow

I tried running backup to a USB drive. Backup runs very slowly. I've searched and found that many people have this problem with Win7 backup (and some problems with Acronis), but no good solutions. The one solution I tried didn't help - in device manager to prefer performance over quick removal for USB drives.

In XP I could backup with Acronis in about 2 hours. In Win7, windows backup got to about 45% in 5 hours on two tries, at which point I gave up.

Any suggestions?

 

other backup programs, try cobian.se

Also, be very selective on what you actually backup, most people don't have to backup anything other than the user directories.

On no account should you be trying to backup /windows. There are so many files in there that are process-locked that any backup program will be looping in endless retries attempting to get a clean copy of a locked file.

 

I use the free Paragon Backup & Recovery

Paragon Backup & Recovery Free Edition - Free Download

 

Does windows backup include this by default?

A big reason to backup is that if my system has a major problem, such as disk failure, I can easily restore. If I'm just backing up selected files, then restore is much harder.

I'll try other programs.

 

Not trying to talk you out of backups, just trying to give you an understanding of what can and cannot be done with conventional and/or free tools.

Unless you are prepping for a bare metal restore with tools that are intended to do that, you will never do a partial restore of /windows (AND /Program Files) from a backup. That is a sure way to corrupt, ruin, and make unbootable a fresh/rebuilt/repaired system.

'Easily restore' isn't as easy as you might think using conventional tools. That's why bare metal restore-capable tools cost Real Money.

The way to recover from a full disk failure with conventional tools is to reload the OS and applications from original disks and then restore user files from backups.

And you should test your backups from time to time. No sense running what you might think are good backups for 2 or 3 years only to find out (probably at 3 PM Sunday Morning) that some obscure setting prevented meaningful data from being written to the DVDs or tapes. Everyone forgets to test and practice their restores.

I don't even backup my music and videos. I already have backups, the original CD/DVD disks. Compared to the hassles and time chewed up by backing up ripped media files, re-ripping them for a recovery is childs play.

 

I've actually used the Backup utility that comes with Windows 7 and it worked fairly well for what its worth, but it gets picky and can screw itself over if you have more than one physical hard drive and don't pay attention to what you're doing. I rather just have a full image backup if I really do need to restore a system though, less of a hassle to just totally wipe and restore from that.

 

In a perfect world, we would all be able to create full image/bootable backups that would let us recover our machines in minutes.

The tech for that exists and costs large companies lots of $$$. Lots and lots of $$$.

For The Average Joe, selective backups of essential user files are the more practical route.

 

I use Acronis to do full hard drive backups and store the image file on a large removable hard drive. The image can either be mounted for quick access or used to restore the entire drive. In preparation to this, I move unnecessary directories off the drive to be imaged.

 

I use Windows 7 Backup & Restore to keep copies of all the files in My Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos to a separate hard drive.

 

What a lot of people think of as 'backups' can be more easily (and faster) met by using file/directory sync software.

Backups are only backups if you keep multiple generations of files around. If you are keeping only the most current, then you are file/directory syncing to external (well, hopefully) media. No sense using a full-featured backup program to do something that a layer of automation over the top of Xcopy can accomplish.

 

I have used both programs to create backup images, Windows 7 backup is slightly faster but I usually use Acronis as one of my systems is XP.

I am curious as to how much data you are backing up / imaging? I backup to an external USB (WD Passport series) HD. A laptop with 45GB of data takes about 25 minutes to backup with either software.

Music files, pictures, program archives, are stored on an external drive with a copy on a secondary external drive so the data that doesn't change that often doesn't have to be backed up / imaged every time.

 

I tend to do a system image at a stable time. All software and updates in intact that way. From that point I know data needs to be backed up as well. I'll usually do this to a USB stick or some other device.

Windows 7 imaging works great but I hadn't much success with it once grub and linux were on the primary drive so I went back to Windows 7 only..........