Re: Back ups takes ages! Why?

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance



offwego wrote:
...will do.

I ran a defrag last night after my first Scandisk but will try the Scandisk and defrag again if you think it's a good idea.

"Rick Merrill" wrote:

offwego wrote:
...just got a response from Western Digital. They can offer no way of checking my external hard drive and if there is a fault there is no way of fixing it, apparently! I ran 'scandisk' on my 'c' drive and picked up one bad sector that was repaired.
You probably should run scandisk again, then if clean, run defrag.


"offwego" wrote:

..thanks for the posts. So I could use MS's 'check disk' utility for my 'c' drive and the WD download DL suggests for my external hard drive?

I have asked WD in the past and I'm sure I can't run check disk for my ext HD.

"Richard Urban" wrote:

"offwego" <offwego@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:401EF9A2-A65E-40A8-87B0-EACFF0FEF2BF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I've got really fed up with Acronis True Image as software for backing up my
data as it always seems to get corrupted. I thought I would try MS's
in-house facility but it takes ages. It takes all night!! Am I getting
something wrong or is this just what I have to put up with? Can I schedule
it to run automatically?

Thanks.

If you have corruption on either of your drives Acronis will balk during the backup or recovery. It fails when bad sectors are detected. Those same bad sectors may be causing the backup program that is part of Windows XP to take so long.

Check both your drives for errors.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience




Once in a while a corrupt sector will contain a piece of a fragmented file. Running checkdisk or equivalent a second time will repair this
and similar other possible problems, but the odds are low that you really need it. (Oh, and if you have NTFS you probably do not need to.)
.



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