Speed Up Windows Backup

Backing up Windows is essential, because forty forevers are needed to get a Windows install back up to snuff. I used to use Clonezilla to clone my Windows install, but Clonezilla is quite limited for use with a failing hard drive. There is the "rescue" mode, which I used, but I found that the display suffered severe corruption due to I/O errors that displayed rather untidily wherever. Apparently, Clonezilla only updates five numerical values during the cloning process. The labels for these values are not updated, so any errors that pop up simply result in a mess. I did not like looking at that, because in order to interpret the display, I had to google Clonezilla and find a screenshot of what the screen is supposed to look like during ordinary operation. The Clonezilla web site does not offer such a screenshot, I guess because it was deemed unimportant. I tried the very latest version of Clonezilla Debian and Clonezilla Ubuntu, and both had the same behavior. Compounding the problem, I noticed that the "time remaining" value was constantly increasing, rather than decreasing. Of course I do not wish for the cloning process to last all my days, so I aborted the process by hitting the power button, which to my knowledge is the only way to regain control. I think in the future I will only recommend Clonezilla for drives free of I/O errors, and suggest that a drive scan be performed prior to attempting to use the program.

I resorted to using the Windows Backup in Windows 7. I did not have high expectations, but actually I have found it is fairly good, although simple-minded. The display does not get corrupted, which is nice, and what is even nicer is that I can continue using the computer while it is backing things up. The one problem I ran into is that by accepting Windows Backup defaults, again the backing up takes forever. It is much slower than it should be. Googling for help, I found that many users complain about the same problem. I made a simple observation that I am sure has occurred to others. First of all, Windows Backup attempts to compress files, which is often a bad idea, because some files are already compressed, such as jpegs and many popular video and music formats. For some users, such files comprise the overwhelming majority of the space used on their hard drive. This I believe is the main reason that many users complain about slow backup. I do not think Windows Backup is intelligent enough to skip compression for already compressed file formats. For the sake of performance, it should be storing these files, rather than attempting compression. Instead, it is attempting to compress them further, wasting time, because little or nothing will be gained in space. Once a file is compressed, it is impossible to compress it further without using a more efficient algorithm, and I doubt that Windows Backup uses the most efficient algorithm in the world. I do not know why Microsoft went this route.

The solution to slow backup in Windows Backup, in such cases as described above, is to pick and choose the directories to be backed up. The video, music, and picture directories should be copied using Windows Explorer to the backup drive. Windows Backup should not touch them, because that will only slow the backup process down a great deal. Where Windows Backup excels is at compressing all of the system files, documents and data files and areas that the user cannot easily access. I let Windows Backup handle all of that for me. It is actually a pleasant little utility that seems a lot nicer to use than certain alternatives, but like all tools, it does have its limitations.