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YaakovS

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Iomega automatic backup pro Extremeely slow Data Backup

Hi, i`m using (well actually helping a Friend use) "iomega automatic backup pro" (it came together with the HD (a 160gb external), and when backing up while doing a system backup seems to be a normal (it took about an hour for 54gb), but when i try to do a dat backup it goes extremely slow (i started one two and a half days ago and it only copied 10gb).
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knoxzoo
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External drives are good for infrequent access and storage tasks, but have a tendency to get hot, particularly during heavy use like doing backups.  When they get hot, they tend to have controller errors and/or tracking errors due to heat expansion.  When that happens, things slow down to a snail's pace while the drive tries to compensate, creating more heat, exacerbating the problem.  Abort the backup.  Shut the drive down.  Wait an hour, or so, then fire it back up and test it (chkdsk).  If it tests good, shut it down and wait another hour, fire it up and try the backup again.  
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YaakovS

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  Thanks for your response, the thing is that the system backup worked fine (this is after aborting the data backup after two days).
If the ext. drive had errored often enough in my original scenario, the OS might have stopped attempting to write to it, letting it cool.  

You said when you "do a dat backup", so I thought you were referring to one large file.  If that's the case, the problem may be on the other end - a fault on the drive it currently resides upon, not that it couldn't happen with a bunch of smaller files too.  

If that's not it, were you trying to back up data that was in use/being accessed?  If so, it was possibly timing out waiting for exclusive access to files in use, then moving on to the next one and repeating the process.

You didn't get any errors?  Did you have it create logs?
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Sorry i meant Data, and actually it's a bunch of small files, as for whether it was being accessed at the time, i`m not sure  about that i`ll look into it, but it ran over night when the computer wasn't being used, as for a error`s it didn`t give me any though i`ll see if there is a way to have it generate a error log.
Are you doing a copy backup, or a standard, compressed file backup?  If you're doing a compressed file backup, that could be a problem too, based on end file size.  It's been a while since I used any of Iomega's backup stuff, but they did have a file size limit once upon a time.  If the backup file was too big, it'd just crap its pants.
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I'm doing a copy (uncompressed) backup, but i did try doing a compressed (image) backup without any better results.
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knoxzoo
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