# Windows backup time increasing 30-45min per day with same data?



## Guldan (Jan 6, 2010)

Hey guys, I'm backing up 600gb of data from my domain controller locally (to its own partition), it intially took 4 hours, now its taking 16 with the same amount of data

What could cause this? I am stumped.


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Are you doing full or incremental backups? Open files? Does the job actualy ever finish? What software are you using?


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## Guldan (Jan 6, 2010)

Rockn said:


> Are you doing full or incremental backups? Open files? Does the job actualy ever finish? What software are you using?


Windows Server Backup
Incremental (VSS Copy)
They finish and are usable
*
*Soon it's going to take over a day though... at this rate


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Is VSS backup backing up every snapshot? That will increment the backup time substantially if you do all of the snapshots for a given day.


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## Guldan (Jan 6, 2010)

Rockn said:


> Is VSS backup backing up every snapshot? That will increment the backup time substantially if you do all of the snapshots for a given day.


It does baremetal/system state daily
C:\ (for system state) incremental
E:\ (select folders) FULL (even though incremental is selected?)

what do you mean by snapshot? are you referring to system state?


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

VSS is a snapshot. Try disableing hte VSS backup and see how long it takes. I don;t think it is even possible to do an incremental of a VSS snapshot since it only writes to it once and creates a new one at the next snapshot. These are differnt files each time VSS takes a snapshot so it will backing up every one of them.


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## Guldan (Jan 6, 2010)

Rockn said:


> VSS is a snapshot. Try disableing hte VSS backup and see how long it takes. I don;t think it is even possible to do an incremental of a VSS snapshot since it only writes to it once and creates a new one at the next snapshot. These are differnt files each time VSS takes a snapshot so it will backing up every one of them.


You can't, it uses VSS regardless. The only options are "Full/Incremental" and "VSS Full/VSS Copy"

I'm doing Incremental/VSS Copy however when it does system state it forces it to be full anyways.

A bit confusing, I'm beginning to think maybe the system state is causing the troubles, not sure which log file will tell me what takes how long


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

System state on its own is normally a very small data set. Sounds like you are running Server 2008 which has castrated all functionality out of the native backup. Apparently they think server admins are too stupid to decide what they need and do not need to backup.


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## Guldan (Jan 6, 2010)

Rockn said:


> System state on its own is normally a very small data set. Sounds like you are running Server 2008 which has castrated all functionality out of the native backup. Apparently they think server admins are too stupid to decide what they need and do not need to backup.


It's definitely an epic failure of a backup solution

I can't even tell what's causing this problem because the log files are 100% useless.


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

I can almost guarantee that it is Volume Shadow Copy. Go to the drive where you have VSS running and look at the available restore points. I am not sure to tell how large they are, but my backup software will not function correctly for vaulting off site due to the large number of files that VSS was creating.


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## Guldan (Jan 6, 2010)

Rockn said:


> I can almost guarantee that it is Volume Shadow Copy. Go to the drive where you have VSS running and look at the available restore points. I am not sure to tell how large they are, but my backup software will not function correctly for vaulting off site due to the large number of files that VSS was creating.


Shadow copies are disabled on all drives on this particular server


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

According to one of your earlier posts you are dining incremental VSS Copy backups.

"Windows Server Backup
Incremental (VSS Copy)
They finish and are usable"


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## Guldan (Jan 6, 2010)

Right on both counts, it's using VSS Backup however shadow copies are disabled.

Regardless I fixed it by remaking the backup schedule


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