Old IFW V2.x slows down dramatically during backup

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Montclair
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:48 pm

Old IFW V2.x slows down dramatically during backup

Post by Montclair »

I've been living with this issue for quite some time, but it wasn't such a problem for years as I had smaller drives. In the last few years, I've increased drive sizes in some of the 4 PCs I run this on, but the problem affects all of them with larger drives. One OS is XP, the others are Windows 10 and the backups all go over my gigabit LAN to a Synology DS218j with two Western Digital 2.7TB SATA drives configured as RAID 0.

I've tried all the switches, and just can't get this issue to go away. It was a problem when I backed up to a USB drive on the LAN years ago, and it's a problem today backing up to a NAS.

The problem is particularly painful on a 2TB M2 SATA drive drive in a Win10 install running with an Intel I9-9900K processor, gigabit Intel LAN card, with 32GB of RAM. My speeds start of at an acceptable level, but as the backup progresses, it crawls to 8.8MB/s or less! This problem also affects this same machine when it backs up a 1TB M2 SATA drive. It also affects the XP machine when it backs up it's larger 500MB drive, just to rule out the PCs as the problem. The backup uses VSS on the Win10 machines, and PHYLock on the XP machine (VSS refuses to work on it for whatever reason).

For example, in the below graph, I'm backing up the aforementioned 2TB M2 SATA drive on the I9-9900K Win 10 machine. The speeds start out just OK, but as time goes on, it progressively gets slower, taking over 24 hours to backup. The graph shows the progress up to 79% of the backup, with IFW showing 4 hours, 52 minutes remaining (that will increase for sure) with 18:42:30 elapsed!

Switches for this backup (mind you, I've tried all the IOBS options, pldisk:1 with pldcs:4095, removing plmem and plcs and this is the best version I've come up with):
/b /d:3 /uy /ui /hash /err /purge:14 /plvolf /plmem:0 /plcs:16384 /pldisk:0 /po:771 /plmwt:1 /pltr:0 /pltw:0 /comp:14 /usevss /logfile:"C:\Users\[removed]\Desktop\ifw.log" /savename:c_lastfullbackup /f:"t:\Fullback\[removed]\C\$~MM$-$~DD$-$~YYYY$"
ifw_slow.jpg
ifw_slow.jpg (71.07 KiB) Viewed 1716 times
It's not the computer as this consumes about 2% CPU utilization. It's not the NIC as this is no where near gigabit capacity. It's not the NAS, as that's at about 65% CPU utilization with IO wait time of generally 2% during reads and writes. None of the drives have errors, including those on the NAS. What is causing this or has this been fixed in V3.x of the software?
TeraByte Support(PP)
Posts: 1644
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:51 am

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by TeraByte Support(PP) »

What size is the backup image for the 2TB M2 drive?

Do you see the same issue if you copy a similar size file from the PC to the NAS using Explorer?

I assume this is still v2.85 (released in 2013). As mentioned in the other thread, updating to v2.99-00 (2016) might help as there were many changes/improvements there as well as a PHYLock update. There is also a trial version of 3 if you want to try it before upgrading.
Montclair
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:48 pm

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by Montclair »

Yes, till 2.85. I can't answer the size question as it's -still- not done yet. Got about 15 minutes left. We're at 1 day, 5 hours, 16 minutes on this.

Right now, at 99%, its 1,237,856,256. It's currently doing about 7MB/s which seems to be the floor on this.

And, no, I do not see this slow down copying files to the NAS, but I'll double check when this is done and report back, and with the details from the log.
Montclair
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:48 pm

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by Montclair »

Regarding copying to the NAS:

Copying a 53GB file from I9-9900K to NAS approaches the 1Gb limit:
ifw_filecopy_fast.jpg
ifw_filecopy_fast.jpg (121.38 KiB) Viewed 1692 times

Regarding IFW file size and log:

IFW Final file size: 1,244,608,295 KB
Log:
[6/10/22 7:29:00 AM] /b /d:3 /uy /ui /hash /err /purge:14 /plvolf /plmem:0 /plcs:16384 /pldisk:0 /po:771 /plmwt:1 /pltr:0 /pltw:0 /comp:14 /usevss /logfile:C:\Users\[removed]\Desktop\ifw.log /savename:c_lastfullbackup /f:t:\Fullback\[removed]\C\$~MM$-$~DD$-$~YYYY$
[6/10/22 7:29:00 AM] Image for Windows 2.85 (GUI)
[6/10/22 7:29:00 AM] Starting ...
imagew64.exe /b /uy /ui /d:w3 /f:"t:\Fullback\[removed]\C\$~MM$-$~DD$-$~YYYY$" /comp:14 /err /purge:14 /hash
[6/10/22 7:29:00 AM] Attempting to Create VSS Snapshot...
[6/10/22 7:29:00 AM] Added \\?\Volume{17012123-0000-0000-0000-100000000000} (E:) to snapshot.
[6/10/22 7:29:00 AM] Added \\?\Volume{d9927197-d274-11e4-a601-806e6f6e6963} (C:) to snapshot.
[6/10/22 7:29:05 AM] VSS Snapshot Created Successfully.
[6/10/22 7:29:06 AM] Backup: Drive 3 (E:) System Reserved Partition (01) 204 MiB HPFS/NTFS
[6/10/22 7:29:06 AM] To: t:\Fullback\[removed]\C\06-10-2022.TBI
[6/10/22 7:29:06 AM] INFO: Total Sectors:417213 Total Allocated:56488
[6/10/22 7:29:06 AM] INFO: 56488 Sector(s) backed up
[6/10/22 7:29:06 AM] Backup: Drive 3 (C:) SSD_PNY_2TB Partition (02) 1907519 MiB HPFS/NTFS
[6/10/22 7:29:06 AM] To: t:\Fullback\[removed]\C\06-10-2022.TBI
[6/11/22 1:03:30 PM] INFO: Total Sectors:3906598399 Total Allocated:2886421128
[6/11/22 1:03:30 PM] INFO: 2799068848 Sector(s) backed up
[6/11/22 1:03:31 PM] Notifying VSS that backup completed...
[6/11/22 1:03:32 PM] Operation Completed with Error Code 0
[6/11/22 1:03:32 PM] Stop
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by TeraByte Support »

Version 2.x in general hasn't been supported since 2016. It's 6 years out of date and is much slower than V3.

That version hasn't been supported since 2014 and is 8.5 years out of date.
Montclair
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:48 pm

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by Montclair »

Two questions:

1) If I install the trial version, and the problem persists, will you provide support to try and resolve? (If resolved, I will buy again.)
2) If unable to resolve with v3.x, am I able to uninstall the trial version and reinstall the version I paid for without issue?

Thanks.
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by TeraByte Support »

i'm not sure it's a problem, it's just the bandwidth being limited.

You can uninstall it and resinall the old one, doubt you'd want to.
Montclair
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:48 pm

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by Montclair »

But why would the bandwidth be limited? I've shown the graph directly from the NAS showing that the data it receives is less and less, and these backups go on at night when nobody is doing anything here. They don't run concurrently either. Why would the speed progressively get slower only with this software and nothing else?
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by TeraByte Support »

The system resources like caching, etc.. would be used up, also the way the drivers communicate. But you're using V2 nothing applies from 8 years ago.
Montclair
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:48 pm

Re: IFW slows down dramatically during backup

Post by Montclair »

I really doubt the cache being full on an SSD is going to account for a gradual 500Mbps to 7Mbps performance drop. What drivers communicate slower for your software only? Like I said, this same pattern is seen on all 4 PCs using IFW with varying versions of Windows.
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