Silvermeteor Loc: South Carolina, USA

I have a Seagate USB 2 external drive hooked up to my computer which only has one internal HD. My backup software is an old version of Memeo Instant Backup that came with the Seagate.

This software backs up any changes made on selected files & directories and serves as a mirror image of this information in case of catastrophic failure of my main drive.

The problem is that it backs up all the time, is terribly slow and basically bogs down all other processes on my computer until it is done.

If I work on photos in LightRoom and then leave of course LR wants to back up also. LR also locks down my computer until it is finished backing up the catalog.

These situations may be related or separate issues.

I am looking for free (preferably) software that I can use. As a retiree on SS I have a limited budget.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Part of your problem is you have USB 2.0 - not real fast, especially for large backups.

Lightroom is only backing up your catalog, not your images, so don't rely on Lightroom as a back for your photographs - it is not.

My thought on a backup system would be you want a complete backup of your important files, then after the initial backup you should do incremental backups - meaning files that have changed since the last backup only - that way after the initial backup of say 1,000 files that takes hours, the incremental backup of the 10 files that changed only takes minutes.

Your real bottle neck is of course the slow USB 2.0 speed. You might want to look at the possibility of adding a USB 3.0 card to your system that would allow much much faster backups to a USB 3.0 device.

You did not mention what your computer is - is it possibly a bottleneck as well?

The free option for backup software will limit you in features and speed I fear.

sarge69 Loc: Ft Myers, FL

The only important item to consider is your system RAM. A low amount of RAM ie., 2 Gigs can really slow down your actions.

Sarge69

Silvermeteor Loc: South Carolina, USA

It is a Dell that is 4 years old but has an Intel i7 processor.

Silvermeteor Loc: South Carolina, USA

16 GB which is the max I can install.

Silvermeteor Loc: South Carolina, USA

I agree about the USB 3. Just trying to avoid a $70 purchase for the card. Maybe I can find one at a better price point.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

The addition of USB 3.0 would give you some crazy speed to a USB 3.0 disk - much much faster than 2.0 for sure.

I use Thunderbolt on my Mac for an external drive, a bit faster than USB 3.0 - and use Firewire 800 for my Time Machine backup - faster then USB 2.0 but slower than 3.0

It may also be the software you are using adding a little to the slowness.

Good luck ;)

stbg1951 Loc: Lewes, DE

I've tried the software that comes with drives and bought one's like Norton Ghost. Didn't like them. I found CrashPlan and for me it works great. You can download for a trial which will backup local and to the internet, their site ir one of your choice. When the trial is over you can only backup local to your 2nd drive. Very flexible setting for performance among others.

Zonker Loc: Leesburg, FL

If you know what a "batch file" is and can write one try XXCOPY.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

re: Crashplan

After seeing several people say how good it was, tried it on my Mac. Problem is that the Crashplan app does not prevent the Mac from sleeping, so unless the Mac is set MANUALLY to not sleep the crashplan backups can go on and on between sleeps - based on that - uninstalled ;)


I believe that once the trial is over you can back up locally and to another user's disk over the internet using Crashplan - just not to the Crashplan site. BTW - other products are now providing the same thing - backup to another user's disk if they run the same software over the internet - Chronosync for one.

stbg1951 Loc: Lewes, DE

Good to know about the Mac and CrashPlan. I use it on my various windows machines and haven't had an issue yet. Their unlimited cloud backup is nice but I want my data somewhere I can get my hands on it.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

I hear ya - I think cloud backup has its place, but not as your main backup. I keep two local backups plus images stored on Amazon Prime myself.