Image question

Hi,
 
I have a lenovo laptop which had 2 usb ports attached to it. One of the ports is 3.2 on the left side of the laptop the other is 2.1 on the right side. I just installed the OS last week so there is not much on the SSD. I put a USB flash drive which contained Acronis image software on it. The usb port on the right side had a SSD drive on it.  After completing the IMG, it took 2.5 hours to do which seems very long to me.
 
The question I have for you is if I put the SSD on the left side port and the flash drive with s/w on it if the image would run much quicker. If yes, what is a ball park guess on how much.
 
TIA

Edited by iMacg3, 24 February 2024 - 03:23 PM.
Moved from Windows 11 to Backup/Imaging/Disk Management

USB 3 is nominally ten times faster than USB 2 (4.8 Gbit vs 480 Mbit), but other factors come into play, such as cables and the devices in use. But 10x is a nice ballpark number.

 

USB 3.1 is roughly twice as fast as 3, and 3.2 is roughly twice as fast as that.

1. Without using the QUOTE button to post, can you please tell us what you are trying to accomplish?
(I *think* you're trying to tell us you are trying to create an Acronis system image backup?)

2. Also, from your original post, you said the "Acronis software" is installed ("contained") on a flash drive. Are you trying to run the Acronis backup software from a thumb drive, rather than from your computer?

Thank you for clarification

Edited by hamluis, 25 February 2024 - 01:30 PM.

To all your questions....YES

Edited by hamluis, 25 February 2024 - 01:28 PM.

Was taking longer after 45 mins so i canceled it.

The backup software should ideally be installed on the computer and not on a thumbdrive.

 

The limitation when backing up through a USB port to an external drive is usually how fast data can be transferred through the USB port.

 

The drive you are using to make the backup to is usually not that important as most will be able to accept and write the data much faster than the USB connection can give it to them.

 

The external drive that you are backing up to should be connected to you fastest USB port available. that's the 3.2 port in your case.
(Using the USB 2 port will still do the job but will take a lot longer to do it).

 

It does take time to make a full disc image backup to an external drive, there is a lot to be copied and transferred across, up to an hour is not unusual and it could be longer if you have a lot of data to backup or a large capacity drive.

 

Also remember that even if most of your drive is empty, say if you have a TB or multi-TB sized drive to backup, then the imaging software still has to scan every byte of that drive to see if there is something in it, it doesn't/can't just use the Windows file table because you may have other types of files on there that Windows doesn't know about, (say a Linux distro and files), so the imaging software has to check the entire disc.

 

As an example - this laptop that I'm typing on currently has a 500GB SSD as the OS drive, with about 88GB of that capacity used, and it takes Macrium Reflect about 50 mins to make a full image backup of it to a HDD via a USB 3.2 (gen 1) port.
(I'll be doing it later and will try to remember to add a screenshot here).

 

 

@Nukecad:

That's precisely what I was thinking.
But you explained it much better than I would/could...

:-D

Macrium reflect 24 mins. Much better. 

I didn't get around to doing mine until a few hours ago, and it took 26 mins for my 500GB SSD setup described above.

Not sure where I got the 50 mins from that I said above but I may have been thinking about when I had the 1TB drive in the laptop - larger capacity drive (by 2x) so longer (by 2x) to scan an image of it.

Edited by Nukecad, 26 February 2024 - 12:59 PM.