Acronis True Image Home automatic backup software very slow

[andrewanimation]

Hello,

I want to back up all of my data to my external hard drive at the end of every day, and I started using the Acronis True Image Home software to do so. I made the first backup yesterday, which understandably took a long time. But now I'm running the first daily backup, as a test, and it says it'll take 4 hours to finish! And this is with it set at the highest priority. I imagined that automatic backup software would simply search the files for any that were created or modified since the last backup and then back up those files where they belong in the folder locations. If there were simply an 'Overwrite Older Files Only' option in the regular Windows explorer, I would just do this kind of backup myself. It shouldn't take 4 hours for this to happen.

Can anyone tell me of a better backup software, or a reason that I should stay with Acronis anyway, when compared to the other options?

Thank you

 

[PC Hobbyist]

Three questions:
1. what kind of a backup are you doing daily - a differential or an incremental backup?
2. what are your settings for compressing the back up? If you set it to high compression in order to end up with a smaller file - that takes a lot more time to do. I recommend the normal setting.
3. What is the size of the data you initially backed up? Was it an entire disk - or a partition - or a folder?

 

[andrewanimation]

Hello,
1. I chose differential, but I wasn't too sure which one I wanted, even after checking Help. I'd like whichever one--if any--that simply replaces backed-up files with any newer versions, and adds any newly-created files, and doesn't waste time overwriting files that haven't been changed.

2. I chose Normal. It said Normal would be 8hrs, whereas the other 3 options would've been 10, 10, and 16.

3. It was an entire disk, of 290 GB. (of a 500 GB drive)

Thank you

 

[PC Hobbyist]

Hm, my understanding in terms of differential vs. incremental is this:
Differential looks at the original backup and compares it to the current state. Any differences are saved as a backup.
Incremental: The first incremental backup looks at the original backup then looks to see what has been added to it and saves that as a back up (in this case it would be the same as a differential). Then, the second incremental looks at the original backup and at the first incremental, compares all that to current state and saves any changes. The third incremental looks at the second incremental... and so forth.
That means that if you have been doing differential backups every day of the month, then on the 30th of the month, if you wanted to restore things to how they were on the 20th, you would only need the original backup, plus the differential backup of the 20th.
On the other hand, if you have been doing incremental backups and you want to restore things to how they were on the 20th, you would need the original backup plus every single incremental thereafter until the 20th.

I could be totally wrong (and so maybe you should ask Acronis directly), but if you are doing differential backups, it might take a longer time. I would think that if you do incremental backups, then after the second one it should be become faster to backup. Like I said, I'm just assuming that and I could be wrong. And even if I'm right, I don't know how much of a difference you would notice. You should go to the Acronis website and send tech support a message with your question. I've done it before and they responded within a day. Try going here. If you can, please post what they tell you so we all can learn.

EDIT: Also, what are your computer specs? I'm assuming you have a decently fast computer with a good amount of RAM. And, are you still working on your computer while the backup is in progress?