imaging

Is it possible that the fewer backups that exist on the exterior hardrive result in a faster backup time? I seem to image to my usb drive 50% faster when one or two backups reside there instead of 4 or 5. This applies to Acronis as well as Macrium.

Is it possible that the fewer backups that exist on the exterior hardrive result in a faster backup time?
I seem to image to my usb drive 50% faster when one or two backups reside there instead of 4 or 5.
This applies to Acronis as well as Macrium.

I would want to say yes to that, my thoughts to this is, the size of the back up files, more files means more time to back up, less files of saved backup files will result in faster backup times to the USB drive. If this is the response your looking for. This is what I see on my machine, I use to have multi copies of backed up files but now I only keep like 3 and delete the rest.

Jimbo1

I've not noticed any difference when I backup to my external USB 250GB drive. I backup two computers there so each has it's own folder structure, like this:

• Dell-P370
• Backup1
• Backup2

• Webserver
• Backup1
• Backup2

I rotate between Backup1 and Backup 2 so I always have at least one good backup for each. Not sure what backup folder structure you use.

I image my laptop to a 1T USB drive and my desktop to a 2T usb drive. I used to name folders in 'Computer' but now I let default place the images. I was experimenting and used the Win 7 Backup + Restore program, Macrium and Acronis. Because Windows 7 does not allow for drag and drop, the folders in Computer goes where they want regardless of naming them or using default. It is not an issue as my rescue discs can find the images I need. At any rate, I am glad to hear someone else has noticed the same time aspect that I have. I wonder if eSATA and fire wire are faster than usb2.0 as I have ports for them. I would need to buy one eSATA cable and or another fire wire cable as there are two ports and only one cable. That is unless the one cable would allow for images to go to one of the partitions in the ext drive. Sorry to ramble as my question has been answered but at my level almost everything is a 'new' topic full of information. P.S. I made an attachment that was only KBs yet it was disallowed because the screen said it was 2.1 MB of 2 MB max. I do not undertsand that. It was a screen shot to show you that the Win7 B+R folders were divided with Macrium on the middle. Another anomoly. Thank you for the confirmation, and agin pardon the rambling.

The only thing that comes to mind that would effect the time it takes to make a backup would be if you are performing incremental backups, or you are verifying your backups also. If you are performing an incremental backup, it may have to look through each backup incrementally before it creates the next backup file. And if you are verifying, I know for a fact it goes through each backup incrementally. So, therefore, the more backups you have, the more time its going to take. If they are all FULL backups then it shouldn't make any difference. It doesn't appear you have any other files uploaded to the forum, so I would have to say that somehow you did try to upload too large of a file. Aww well. You can try again I guess.

Well, I the attachment tried again this a.m. to no avail. Strange. I just wanted to add that I do only full backups with verification yet the fewer the images the faster the speed. I have an eSATA port on both the drive and the pc. if the increase in speed would be appreciable I would get the cable.