Extremely long backup times w/ Paragon Free for W8

[glennc]

Hello,
I have used Paragon Free version for Windows 8 once before. Don't recall anything special... I am using the USB to my WD External drive. It took over 6 hours, and I don't know how much longer, as I went to sleep, to backup 26GB.
Is this normal? The drive is used on other computers with Paragon and Macrium and W7.
Thanks for any insight!
Glenn

 

[my2cents]

I don't do backups. I only do system images so I can't say for sure; however, it also depends greatly on the hardware speeds involved so let me give you an example of a how long it takes for me to create a system image on two different rigs and you can decide for yourself:

Rig1: creating a 17-18Gb image:
Using SATA III SSD to SATA II SSD, create System Image process takes about 5 minutes using inherent Win 7 imaging.

Rig2: creating a 16-17GB image:
Using SATA II SSD to SATA II hard drive, create System Image process takes 8-9 minutes using Macrium Reflect Free.

Now, you have to evaluate your own hardware and the best way to do that is compare my apples to your apples otherwise you can wait for someone else to respond that does true backups. Good luck.

 

[glennc]

Hello my2cents,
Thanks for the response. It is an old machine, but IIRC the previous backup certainly didn't take 3 hours. And like you I do System Images not backups as I erroneously stated. Trying EaseUS Free and it looks to be half way done 53 GB in under 10 minutes, two drives.
Cheers
Glenn

 

[my2cents]

Hello my2cents,
Thanks for the response. It is an old machine, but IIRC the previous backup certainly didn't take 3 hours. And like you I do System Images not backups as I erroneously stated. Trying EaseUS Free and it looks to be half way done 53 GB in under 10 minutes, two drives.
Cheers
Glenn

Wow! That's pretty quick too! I think you found a nice solution and thank you for that acknowledgement. Cheers!

 

[glennc]

It turns out that that timing was deceptive and did change. It changed to 14 hours estimated for 53 GBs. It appears that it doesn't display as accurate. Tried Macrium Reflect for the same backup, about 14 hours, but at least it told you so within a minute or two. Going to give Windows Backup for a system image a try.
This is horrid. The hardware is so old as to make me pull out my hair, if I had enough...
Glenn

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Like the others I only do system images -- using external SSD with USB3 port 256GB (have some VM's on it too) backup with Acronis True image -- 7 Mins.

With acronis you can also Mount the image so if you want to recover specific files it's possible too - just browse the image with file explorer.

There's no need to DATA backup - backup as image -- far faster even for DATA drives. (Of course you should back your DATA up as well but that can be managed separately -- e.g backing up music - back up parts at a time - this stuff doesn't change too much. The OS though should be backed up VERY REGULARY - you can't have TOO MUCH backup.

Paragon does have issues I believe but 6 hours sounds like you were backing up to old floppy disks!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[topgundcp]

Like the others I only do system images -- using external SSD with USB3 port 256GB (have some VM's on it too) backup with Acronis True image -- 7 Mins.

With Macrium, Using an External OCZ SSD 256GB on USB3. It took 3.50 Minutes to backup ~40GB Windows OS

With acronis you can also Mount the image so if you want to recover specific files it's possible too - just browse the image with file explorer.

So does Macrium.

See Screen shot:

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
All these are fine -- my backup included of course 120 GB of VM backup 2 Virtual machines - (W7 with SAP GUI and test DB system, and W2K3 server) as well as the W8.1 OS.

What it DOES show is that the 6 hrs for paragon is definitely TOO MUCH -- something definitely wrong - even if using a USB 2 device.

I'd almost bet that even backing up to a slew of read / write DVD's would be faster than the 6 hrs (you'd have to be there though to manually swap the DVD's as they fill up !!).

Cheers
jimbo

 

[glennc]

Hi there
Like the others I only do system images -- using external SSD with USB3 port 256GB (have some VM's on it too) backup with Acronis True image -- 7 Mins.

With acronis you can also Mount the image so if you want to recover specific files it's possible too - just browse the image with file explorer.

There's no need to DATA backup - backup as image -- far faster even for DATA drives. (Of course you should back your DATA up as well but that can be managed separately -- e.g backing up music - back up parts at a time - this stuff doesn't change too much. The OS though should be backed up VERY REGULARY - you can't have TOO MUCH backup.

Paragon does have issues I believe but 6 hours sounds like you were backing up to old floppy disks!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

Hello jimbo45,
Thank you for responding and for your information. I generally do a system image with everything, Boot and Data Drive, complex archive. Don't know why, you are the first that has mentioned an alternate scheme. In reference to the Window 8 backup onto a WD 1TB External, I tried Paragon Free, I use Paragon 12 purchased on my W7 Main computer. Paragon Free reboots the computer and during startup, begins the backup operation. It is constantly recalculating the estimated finish time, so IMHO you never know how long it is going to take. I cancelled out ouf that because I wasn't sure if it was locked up. The time running was updating... I have not backed up the W8 System since last year, so I can't recall the time of the backup, but I think I don't recall it being so long?!!
I downloaded and tried Easeus, I have used their recovery software before, I installed it and in 15 minutes it said it was 50% done. Again the estimated time kept updating as it chugged along, until it got to IIRC 14 hours to finish the second 50%.
This being too long I stopped and deleted it and installed an old favorite Macrium Reflect Free. It began normally and within a minute or so of running, displayed a seemingly accurate finish time of 14 hours. Stopped that as I was becoming concerned and tried W8's system image, it ran for 5 hours and wasn't 3/4 or so done.
Now this is on an old machine and I was using the USB connection (as before), and it is probably USB 1 or whatever. Concerned that I had a drive issue, I put the drive on my newer W7 machine and using the USB connection for the first time, ran a chkdsk on it. This took over 7 hours, but completed without any indication of problem. Having just reinstalled the W7 box, I wonder if using the default settings for drivers, that newer faster drivers or updates for the board may be available, and honestly I may have used them previously and forgot, it's been a while since I reinstalled the W7. Updating drivers, is I believe one of the reasons that caused unsolvable problems, for which I did the latest reinstall and they are now gone. So I don't know what to do about that.
I will try to backup my W7 machine, this morning, I have an external SATA port and cable I usually use with the Paragon 10 and now Paragon 12 purchased.
Thanks you for any insight or ideas that might help me understand the issues of the missing speed.
Cheers to you!
Glenn

 

[glennc]

Continuing issues!

Well it took 7 hours to chkdsk the 1 TB WD external, via a External SATA Cable. Took IIRC 4 hours to do a Paragon 12 complex system image of about 190 GBs on two drives on the W7 Machine.
So I did Reflect Free again on the W8 machine only imaging one drive of about 80 GBs and it took over 9 hours, through a usb cable to the external drive.
Now here is the stranger part. I have the reflect backup in the reflect folder, but I have an icon in the drives explorer display of a backup looking thing (CD and Hardrive with arrow) with the name of the W8 computer. This is blocked to admin access but does contain many folders marked with a .zip extension and they total about 2.11 GBs of information. Where did that come from. To the best of my knowledge it wasn't from the Reflect backup!!!!?????
Is it possible without initiating, that Windows backup did so during the Reflect backup?
Confused!!
glennc

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
I would suggest that you ONLY have the OS and applications on ONE partition / Disk and all the other data (user data / multi-media / documents etc etc) over other partitions / disks

Then your OS partition should only be about 45 or 50 GB at the most - even for largish windows installations - then your backup image of the OS will run CONSIDERABLY quicker.

Your DATA backups - such as music etc you can do at any time in bits and pieces and as these don't change all that much you don't need to back them up all that often -- but backup the OS before making any changes (and afterwards too if the changes all work).

Use something like GPARTED for dynamically re-sizing partitions - copy the Non OS stuff on to another disk / partition, then delete that data (not the OS stuff though). re-size the "C" partition to say 60 GB at the most and you can copy your data back to the space you've made by reducing the "C" or Windows partition.

Backup the C partition after you've done this.

Cheers

jimbo

 

[glennc]

Good day jimbo45,
Thanks again for your time! The separation of data and system, I do use on my Window 7 machine. Although I do it to two individual hard drives.
On the Window 8 machine, and older MSI board with a dual core and two drives, I only backed up the one drive as I don't actually have a use for the second drive. I keep no data on this machine. I have been using it to get online and to play with the Windows 8 OS.
As to the imaging scheme, I will consider and adopt it. I use the smart settings in the program (default)! Do you know if old usb is faster or slower than old sata? As I have much more data on the W7 machine and it didn't take half as long as the usb connection on the W8 machine....
glennc

 

[4wd]

This topic = a good reminder do do some backing'up. For your information, some timings.

Destination: WD 1,5 TB USB 2

laptop1 w8 64bit C: 28,5 GB, Easeus: 13 mn, Macrium 11 mn
laptop2 w7 32bit C: 20,5 GB, Easeus: 9 mn, Macrium: 12 mn

All times close to estimated.

edit: added Macrium snip W8.

 

[glennc]

Hello 4wd,
Wow, those are good times. I noted that on the Window 8 machine I didn't have write caching on. I do not know how much that would have helped. Thanks for the comparison!
glennc

 

[4wd]

Hello, the posted times are nothing special, and should be very achievable on most equipment (the laptop shown in the w8 snip is Celeron\5400 hd, but the slowest link is the USB2).
Am hoping you will sort out the problem, good luck with the research.

 

[glennc]

Hello, the posted times are nothing special, and should be very achievable on most equipment (the laptop shown in the w8 snip is Celeron\5400 hd, but the slowest link is the USB2).
Am hoping you will sort out the problem, good luck with the research.

Howdy again 4wd,
I am perplexed. This is a cobbled together computer. Don't know why it is so abysmally slow!
glenn

 

[4wd]

Sorry can't help at this stage, you got to do lots of testing > disk, motherboard, software\OS, drivers etc and see if you can find something. It may even turn out to be just a tiny detail, but finding it can be time consuming.

 

[glennc]

Thanks for the insight, 4wd. I did do an upgrade to my W7 drivers. Will look up the MSI updates. I know the disks are quite old, but still SATA. The USB is on a multi-memory card reader I installed. Many thing to examine!!!
glennc