Windows back up.

Deusrex · February 6, 2017

My windows back up to my second drive in my computer takes for !@#$%^g ever. It's a technical term.

Seriously though I have it scheduled every Sunday at 7, and it takes like 3 hours to complete.

Obviously I can just schedule it so it finishes while I sleep, but I don't understand why it takes so long.

If I manually zipped the data and manually transferred it to the hard drive it would take less time.

SecGuy · February 6, 2017

It depends on the backup software, the compression, the data it is backing up. Some third party backup software will compress the data more compared to just zipping it up. You also have what it's backing up, some software like the default Windows Backup (not file history) will by default, backup a system image as well as all the files in your user directory.

The best thing to do in my opinion is either to write a small program or script which compresses the folders you want to be backed up and moves them to a drive. Or to just get some different backup software... ooooorrr to change what your curreent backup software backs up.

Deusrex · February 6, 2017

3 minutes ago, SecGuy said:

It depends on the backup software, the compression, the data it is backing up. Some third party backup software will compress the data more compared to just zipping it up. You also have what it's backing up, some software like the default Windows Backup (not file history) will by default, backup a system image as well as all the files in your user directory.

The best thing to do in my opinion is either to write a small program or script which compresses the folders you want to be backed up and moves them to a drive. Or to just get some different backup software... ooooorrr to change what your curreent backup software backs up.

I'm using the default software that comes with windows 10... well, 7 technically.

SecGuy · February 6, 2017

7 minutes ago, Deusrex said:

I'm using the default software that comes with windows 10... well, 7 technically.

The backup states it's backing up a system image. "Files in libraries and personal folders for all users, selected folders and system image" It's important to note a system image can take a while to make depending on how big the image is going to be. it also takes up a decent chunk of disk space. I suggest remove those from the backup if you want it to be faster.