Long time to backup

I am using the following script to backup my system drive using the Windows scheduler.

"C:\Program Files\Runtime Software\DriveImage XML\dixml.exe" /bc /tD:\Driveimage\%date%_Backup /r- /s- /c- /v

Although the HELP instructions state that the size of the backup file will be reduced by about 40% and that the backup will take a little longer. My experience is that the file is smaller and it takes about 15 times longer to backup. 10 hours is way too long for me so I am using the above script although the files are larger than I like.
Also I found that using the log file was next to useless because there were no times associated with the various events.
Can anybody offer any help to speed up the backups?
Bill :cry:cry

 

I haven't used DriveImage XML before so I can't offer any specifics, but data backup can be a very time consuming process, especially if you're performing full image back ups of a large hard drive. If you have a 250gb drive that's half full, that entails moving 125gb of data to another location (usually an external drive), and if DriveImage compresses the data, it will take even longer.

 

Yeah! you buy a new 750gig drive for 100 bucks and yell HOORAY!!, then you go to back it up, or clean the free space 6 months later and, DOH!.
I have mentioned in other posts that I use nullfile (nullfile_1.02.exe) to clear the free space of my C drive prior to backing up, and it makes the process go faster and makes a smaller image, but just like the backup it takes a long time to write zeros to all the free space on a large drive.

What happens is your recycle bin doesn't really delete anything and your free space is not really empty. When a backup utility tries to image the entire drive it wants to image the free space too. Which means if you restored that image to a new drive you could actually recover files from the free space that were not apparent. Although in some cases this could be an advantage it also means time and space.

Read section 5.10 on this page (or all of it if you want):

Code:

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

And you can download the pascal version .exe (its what I use):

Code:

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/nullfile-1.02.exe

To use it, just place it in the root of the drive you want to clean, and run it in the evening and overnight. It opens a command window and will create a DUMMY file that will grow until it writes zeros to all the free space, then when it deletes the DUMMY file at the end your clean. Ignore any out of space errors you might see for that drive.

Using nullfile and stopping and restarting System Restore (if your sure your system is cool at that time) are two of the most space saving things you can do before backing up your drive. System Restore because the restore files are often multiple gigabytes in size, and nullfile because your backup program can compress a bunch of zeros smaller than a bunch of junk.

Also consider getting Acronis True Image (v11.5 in the stores now), its well worth the price and fairly simple to use, and almost never takes more than a few hours to backup even a large drive.

 

I am making an image of he data only(50GB) on an 80 GB HDD . I am doing this in the "raw" mode therefore only backing up the data (50GB).
If I do this interactively it takes under an hour. But if I do it with compression ON it takes upward of 10 hours.

 

Obviously it's the archival compression of the data that is slowing things down. Compression works great for small files and for larger files under about 2gb in size. It's been my experience with compressions apps (like WinRAR as an example) that when you hit about 2gb or 3gb, the compression really slows down. However, I also noticed that when I went from a single core CPU to a dual core CPU and added more RAM, things sped up dramatically. I'm not sure if compression apps are multi-core aware, or if it was mainly the extra RAM helping out, but I noticed an increase of up to 30%+ in compression speeds of large files/folders.