backup speed degradation

[Cletus9000]

I'm looking for some thoughts on where to begin looking for a problem we encountered last night.

We're running backups to a Seagate 8TB USB drive using a USB3.0 port. Typically our nightly incrementals are between 400 and 700MB/min and the full backups end up around 2000-2500MB/min.

Last night we now see a speed of 130MB/min.

We had some trouble with the USB drives and Windows not releasing the driver, so a reboot was required. (we always eject the USB media rather than just unplugging it). And we also just added a new disk to the RAID array, but the full that ran after that upgrade was fine.

Any thoughts about what to test or look for?

I'm thinking i'll just try a reboot and re-test. It seems really random.

[CraigV]

Hi,

Is the hard drive listed on your version of BE's HCL? Have you tried to run b2dtest.exe to see if the HDD is actually supported as a B2D target?​


You should also make sure that any AV installed has excluded the B2D folder from active file scans, and check for fragmentation of the HDD.


Thanks!

[Cletus9000]

all good suggestions, and no, i haven't check the HCL, but we've been using these drives for a few months with no problem, and this specific drive once 2 weeks ago without issue. I also haven't check the AV, but again, the backups have been fine for months and we haven't changed anything. :\

It's like an "out-of-the-blue" drop in speed. That's why i think i'll just reboot and test. Seems like maybe just a fluke...??

[CraigV]

Wouldn't be the first time a drop in speed has happened that a reboot has fixed (it always does!), but check for fragmentation too...

[Cletus9000]

update on this - the backup over the weekend was super slow again (about 160MB/min).

i just canceled the job, and rebooted the server. came back in and started teh job again. now i'm getting 1.00MB/min.  any thoughts??

[CraigV]

...is there any sort of maintenance happening over a weekend? Be it AV scans, updates, maintenance on other applications or storage etc?

[Cletus9000 · Accepted solution]

we've exhausted tons of combinations and variables over the past number of days (weeks??) and i think we're coming to the conclusion that the physical USB port on the device is flaky.

performance is consistently inconsistent.