A Strange Ghost vs. Acronis Question

[Arthur Shapiro]

I'm a bit uncomfortable posting this in windowsxp.general, but the group has
received similar categories of question in the past and I don't see any more
appopriate group. So apologies if warranted!

I backup my computer daily to a Maxtor external drive using the Retrospect
Express product. It had been working fine for well over a year, but had
suddenly started having software failures, making it unusable. Similar
reports are trickling into the appropriate Retrospect web site's forum, and
there is anecdotal evidence that it has to do with changes introduced to the
Windows environment by the installation of IE 7. That's just background info,
not relevant to the query to follow:

Therefore, I've started using Acronis v. 8 (I realize it's not the latest;
it's what I have) to backup the entire partition to another homebrew external
drive on demand. That's a 7200 RPM Hitachi drive via USB2, of course, and for
what it's worth the machine in question is fairly high-powered - striped Raid,
dual processor, etc, etc. It is taking roughly an hour to back up the
partition at max compression - I'm only using about 25 gigs of my 600 gig
disks. I realize that the max compression is costing me some time.

I just was chatting with a coworker about backup, and he showed me his Western
Digital external drive connected to his Dell laptop (D610) that he uses as his
main machine at work. He has a 40 gig disk which is just about full, so he
actually has more data than my 25 gigs on the home desktop.

He uses Ghost 10 to backup his partition. You should have seen my jaw drop
when he said that he does it automatically every hour, because it only takes
four minutes!

So here is this rather ordinary laptop, far less powerful and fast than my
home desktop, backing up roughly 50% more data via similar USB2 interface in
roughly 1/15th the time that it's taking me.

Both products are well-regarded, I'd opine.

Can anyone pound some sense into my head as to what's going on here. I am
unable to fathom this huge apparent discrepancy in backup times for the two
similar products.

Art

[Anna]

"Arthur Shapiro" > wrote in message
...
> I'm a bit uncomfortable posting this in windowsxp.general, but the group
> has
> received similar categories of question in the past and I don't see any
> more
> appopriate group. So apologies if warranted!
>
> I backup my computer daily to a Maxtor external drive using the Retrospect
> Express product. It had been working fine for well over a year, but had
> suddenly started having software failures, making it unusable. Similar
> reports are trickling into the appropriate Retrospect web site's forum,
> and
> there is anecdotal evidence that it has to do with changes introduced to
> the
> Windows environment by the installation of IE 7. That's just background
> info,
> not relevant to the query to follow:
>
> Therefore, I've started using Acronis v. 8 (I realize it's not the latest;
> it's what I have) to backup the entire partition to another homebrew
> external
> drive on demand. That's a 7200 RPM Hitachi drive via USB2, of course, and
> for
> what it's worth the machine in question is fairly high-powered - striped
> Raid,
> dual processor, etc, etc. It is taking roughly an hour to back up the
> partition at max compression - I'm only using about 25 gigs of my 600 gig
> disks. I realize that the max compression is costing me some time.
>
> I just was chatting with a coworker about backup, and he showed me his
> Western
> Digital external drive connected to his Dell laptop (D610) that he uses as
> his
> main machine at work. He has a 40 gig disk which is just about full, so
> he
> actually has more data than my 25 gigs on the home desktop.
>
> He uses Ghost 10 to backup his partition. You should have seen my jaw
> drop
> when he said that he does it automatically every hour, because it only
> takes
> four minutes!
>
> So here is this rather ordinary laptop, far less powerful and fast than my
> home desktop, backing up roughly 50% more data via similar USB2 interface
> in
> roughly 1/15th the time that it's taking me.
>
> Both products are well-regarded, I'd opine.
>
> Can anyone pound some sense into my head as to what's going on here. I am
> unable to fathom this huge apparent discrepancy in backup times for the
> two
> similar products.
>
> Art


Art:
First of all let me say that we did encounter some problems with ATI version
8 when we first used it. As I recall those problems primarily centered about
HDD recognition involving SATA HDDs or a mix of PATA-SATA HDDs. So it wasn't
the type of problem you're now experience re disk imaging time.

Anyway, when we switched to the version 9 program we didn't experience
further problems along those lines. As you probably know there's a new
version 10 that Acronis has recently released. Based on our preliminary use
of that program we haven't found any significant differences between the 9 &
10 versions re basic disk-to-disk cloning or disk imaging.

So at the outset I would recommend you "upgrade" to either version 9 or 10
if you plan to continue using the ATI program.

Since you mention "compression" re your use of the ATI program, I assume
you're using the program for disk imaging rather than disk-to-disk cloning
operations.

I don't know why it takes you about an hour to back up (disk image) approx.
25 GB of data. Based on our experience it shouldn't take you more than 30
minutes or so - and probably considerably less time - to back up (disk
image) that amount of data to a USB external HDD. This is based on what
Acronis calls "Normal" compression. (I can't recall if version 8 had the
same kind of compression designations listed in the 9 & 10 programs).

Assuming you subsequently prepare incremental disk images on a more-or-less
daily basis, these incremental backups should take about five minutes or
so - the time, of course, dependent upon the changes made to the data.

You mention your co:worker telling you that he uses Ghost 10 and can backup
nearly 40 GB of data to a USBEHD in four minutes. That's breakneck speed all
right. It would be interesting if you would obtain details from him just how
he accomplishes this feat and report back to this newsgroup.
Anna

[Alan Biddle]

Art,

Is one a full backup, and the other an incremental? I use Acronis,
and while a full backup requires several minutes, an incremental for a
days work seldom takes more than 1-3 minutes?


--
Alan

[Arthur Shapiro]

In article >, wrote:
>Art,
>
>Is one a full backup, and the other an incremental?

The other gentleman wasn't sure, but upon questioning observed that his
original backup took longer - ~an hour. So that would seem to suggest that
these are incremental backups, so I feel a little better. On the other hand,
due to an application we run, at least one and possibly multiple 3-Gig files
will change over the course of an hour, so even the incremental backups are
non-trivial.

I'll note for my own Acronis case that it (Acronis) initially estimates two
hours for a full compression backup, and takes about one. It estimates one
hour for a minimal-compression backup, which I haven't tried yet. These are
SATA drives.

Art

[Jaymon]

I'm sill using ATI 8 (build 937) and am very pleased with the reliability of
the software to date.. When the time comes to upgrade I will without
hesitation choose another ATI version that fits my needs.. If you registered
your version you should be entitled to the last update for ATI 8 (build
937).. I can't remember any details or what changes were made in the last
build, if you don't have it installed you may want to get it..
Cheers
j;-j

"Arthur Shapiro" wrote:

> In article >, wrote:
> >Art,
> >
> >Is one a full backup, and the other an incremental?
>
> The other gentleman wasn't sure, but upon questioning observed that his
> original backup took longer - ~an hour. So that would seem to suggest that
> these are incremental backups, so I feel a little better. On the other hand,
> due to an application we run, at least one and possibly multiple 3-Gig files
> will change over the course of an hour, so even the incremental backups are
> non-trivial.
>
> I'll note for my own Acronis case that it (Acronis) initially estimates two
> hours for a full compression backup, and takes about one. It estimates one
> hour for a minimal-compression backup, which I haven't tried yet. These are
> SATA drives.
>
> Art
>