Backup & Restore takes forever. Is it movies I have loaded on my hard drive?

[Doug_FL]

I use Windows Backup & Restore (ie,  Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Action Center) about once a week.
                                                            Maintenance
                                                            -----------------
                                                            Back up your files

This takes a long time. Is this because I have large files on my hard drive? I use DVD+ for this. Would it be better to use a USB stick. I already
have a couple of 16 GB USB drives. They are pretty inexpensive. Like under $10. They can be written over and over, or so I have been told.
Would it be better to write the movies to these DVD+R and free up space? With a 1 TB HD. I never figured a few movies would make much difference. But, something has slowed down the process. Any suggestions?

 

[Ned]

Writing to a DVD is much slower than writing to a hard drive or even a USB flash drive.  If your files will fit on the 16GB flash drives, you can use them.  Movies can be up to several GB in size, depending on length and resolution.

 

[Molaker]

Or, you could tailor your backup to not back up the movies.

 

[Jeff]

I back up about 260 GB using an USB external hard drive and it takes about 4 hours.

 

[Doug_FL]

So, it would be a good idea to not backup the movies, "tailor" the process away from this and use the USB Drive for backup.
Do I have the gist of what you are all saying correct? Well, along with be more patient. Which ain't easy for me.

 

[Molaker]

Don't know where you got your movies, but if you have original DVDs (even if you don't, then make DVD copies of them,) there is no need to back them up every time.  Just skip them in your backup procedure and back up everything else (or selected files) to a USB drive.  Somewhere in your Backup and Restore option on the Control Panel (depending on Windows versions) you should find the option to "choose" which files to back up - may be marked "Let me choose".  If you want to back up everything but the movies, check your "C" drive then expand it to view the files and folders on it and uncheck the movies.  It would be easier if your movies are stored in a special folder.  If so, all you would need to do is uncheck the folder itself.

 

[Mopar1973Man]

I'm a bit different I run parallel hard drives in my main computer the main drive is 1.0TB and the backup drive is 1.5TB it only takes me about 1 hour to back up each day. I do it in partitions and smaller chunks. So I don't attempt to backup all at once. But all data is backed up weekly use Linux TAR (Tape ARchive) which is a old Linux method that works very well. It's done silently during the noon hours so I really don't even notice it but I see the hard drive bandwidth is really high and drive access is delayed a bit. As for the laptop I'll tie in to the network cable and force a backup to the 1.5TB drive but have very little to backup since the laptop is a near mirror image of the main computer so technically I've got to full backups at all times.  8)

 

[John From Detroit]

Movies eat about a gig an hour and yes, takes a long time (relatively) to back up that much data.  To the back up program it is ALL data, don't matter what it is it is all data.

Other things that affect back up speed.. IF you are using compression the amount of free space on the hard drive, RAM and CPU speed.

Finally USB 1-2-3 or other connection means.

 

[DearMissMermaid]

I have three of these Rugged Armour 1TB external hard drives. They come with a built-in short cord and an extra cord that is longer. Super handy and very durable.

One I use to hold a ton of movies, the other to hold my backup and the third to hold a backup of the backup. So basically, I keep two backup hard drives.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EWTL7C/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005EWTL7C&linkCode=as2&tag=motorhomeandrvstore-20