making a disk image is so slow

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I use Macrium Reflect for making an image of my hard drive on a Windows 7 computer. I installed a USB 3.0 card and use a Toshiba Canvio external hard drive. I start it late at night so the time it takes is not a real issue most of the time. Five hours to copy 432 MB just sounds like a very long time to me. The log file is included below, so if anyone can tell me if that is normal or what to look for to speed it up, I would appreciate it.

Image ID – B415AC15D62363F0

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Imaging Summary

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Backup Definition File: C:UsersPaulDocumentsReflectMy Backup(31).xml
Backup Type: Full
Destination: G:bkupB415AC15D62363F0-00-00.mrimg
Auto Verify: N
Maximum File Size: Automatic
Compression: Medium
Password: N
Intelligent Copy: Y
Power Saving: N
Total Selected: 501.95 GB

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Operation 1 of 3
Hard Disk: 1
Drive Letter: N/A
File System: NTFS
Label: SYSTEM
Size: 100.0 MB
Free: 75.6 MB
Used: 24.4 MB

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Operation 2 of 3
Hard Disk: 1
Drive Letter: C
File System: NTFS
Label: OS
Size: 919.95 GB
Free: 428.09 GB
Used: 491.86 GB

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Operation 3 of 3
Hard Disk: 1
Drive Letter: D
File System: NTFS
Label: HP_RECOVERY
Size: 11.46 GB
Free: 1.40 GB
Used: 10.06 GB

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Starting Image – Sunday, March 09, 2014 22:00:09
Initializing
Creating Volume Snapshot – Please Wait
Volume Snapshots Created
Analyzing file system on volume
Analyzing file system on volume C:
Analyzing file system on volume D:

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Saving Partition – SYSTEM
Reading File System Bitmap
Saving Partition

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Saving Partition – OS (C:)
Reading File System Bitmap
Saving Partition

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Saving Partition – HP_RECOVERY (D:)
Reading File System Bitmap
Saving Partition

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Saving Index
New File: 432 GB B415AC15D62363F0-00-00.mrimg

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Image Completed Successfully in 04:54:57

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I/O Performance: Read 1.2 Gb/s – Write 205.2 Mb/s

Macrium Reflect Free Edition for non-commercial use v5.2.6474 – 15-DG6N-GP7E-FMJ8-H78U-VEV7-

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It does sound a bit slow, but you were backing 500 GB and the resulting file seems to be 432 GB in size.
Write speeds does read a bit slow for USB 3.0. Have you tested transfer speed for normal file operations?

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Thanks for the quick reply. I just used Teracopy to copy from C; to G: a 1.71 GB file and it took 1:05 at 27MB/s. Does that help explain my situation?

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Thanks for the quick reply. I just used Teracopy to copy from C; to G: a 1.71 GB file and it took 1:05 at 27MB/s. Does that help explain my situation?

It’s not exceedingly fast. USB 2.0 can get that fast, but many USB 2.0 drives average around half of that. Anyway, if the speed was near that one (27 MB/s), it would be a bit more slower than what you got, so it seems that the time is due to the actual transfer speed you are getting with your drive. It does look a bit slow.

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You could use Novabench to see how quickly it can write to your HDD.

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If these are mostly data files and you’re making full images that is perhaps not the best route to take. Data usually needs to be backed up more often and 5 hours daily for a full image is not really reasonable. Either investigate incremental images or consider a separation of OS and data, and synchronize the data (just the files that change) much more frequently and quickly with another drive as backup.

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