How long should a back up take?

Pthree

I am trying to back up my laptop, and it has been at it for hours and the progress bar is not even a quarter full yet, I dont remember it taking this long before.

I realize that the time depends on how much stuff you have, but on average how long should it take?

Thanks.
Pthree

gjchester

Pthree wrote: »

I realize that the time depends on how much stuff you have, but on average how long should it take?

Impossible to say.

Is it a full back up or an incremental one, how much data are you backing up, how fast is the device you are backing up to, are there errors on the source hard drive or the destination causing parts to be re-written repeatedly, how active is the device, is anything else running on the PC.

Theres so many factors its hard to give you an answer that is meaningful.

Fightsback

Depends on how many files you have, what USB version you are using etc etc. If you are using windows back up, it's notoriously slow compared to other solutions.

Pthree

Hi

I guessed it was a 'how long is a piece of string" type question, I just dont ever remember it taking this long before.

It is a full back up, I actually have no idea how to answer the rest of your questions

The laptop is pretty much used for internet and editing photos not many docs or programs but I suppose the photos will take up a fair bit of room.

Thanks for answering though.

Knarf44

Start by telling how you are backing up eg which software are you using, is it an image file you are creating or a clone of your entire hard drive etc.

Using Macrium Reflect or AOMEI Backupper takes about 45mins to make a system image of my hard drive.

audigex

Very much a "How long is a piece of string", it could be seconds or weeks, but we can at least have a guess at whether something is clearly wrong

1) What are you using to perform the backup?

2) What kind of backup is it? (Full disk, full PC, or selected folders?)

3) How big are the drive(s), or folder(s) you're backing up?

4) Where are you backing up to? The cloud, across a network, to another internal disk, or to a USB disk?

5) What kind of things are you backing up? 20 movies should be faster than a system drive with millions of files, even if the total size is the same, because there's overhead added with each file.

With the above we can at least hazard a guess whether you're well out of expected behaviour, or if it's at least in a sensible range for what you're trying to do

Pthree

1) What are you using to perform the backup?
The windows (7) back up

2) What kind of backup is it? (Full disk, full PC, or selected folders?)
Full PC

3) How big are the drive(s), or folder(s) you're backing up?
Ok being a total dummy, is that how much used space there is? If so 258GB, if not how do I find this out?

4) Where are you backing up to? The cloud, across a network, to another internal disk, or to a USB disk? a My Passport Ultra 1TB (but my laptop doesn't have a USB 3.0)

5) What kind of things are you backing up? 20 movies should be faster than a system drive with millions of files, even if the total size is the same, because there's overhead added with each file. Full back up so I assume all the system stuff and my own which is mainly photos (stills) a little music, very few docs.

While I can work a computer rather well, the actual techy stuff goes over my head, I hope this helps

matttye

>12 hours for the 2TB drive at work.

Like everyone else says though, it's a question that cannot be meaningfully answered.