Windows 7: 3.0 USB External

Have got a small WD 3.0 USB 320Gb external for back up (Gigabyte GA-H67A-UD3H-B3 mobo) did a back up of 47Gb (system image – new build) and it took 25 minutes to do it.
Is this about right as I thought it would be much quicker than the old 2.0 drives I have been using.

Is there a chance I have missed something in the settings ?do I have to acitvate something?

Copy the image file to your C drive. Then reboot your machine and time how long it takes to copy the file back. This will give you a good indication of how well your USB 3.0 is performing. If you get more than 25MB/sec....then you are doing better than USB 2.0

Thanks pparks1 I'l give that a burl. - Appreciated!!

25 Minutes for 45GB is about right - even pretty good. Mine needs 19 minutes for 23GB with a 5400 RPM HDD - see details in post #8 here. USB3 is only a bit slower than USB2 because it is limited by the transfer speed of the HDD. If you were to use an SSD, that would be a different story.

PS: check whether the recovery program can deal with USB3. E.g. the Macrium recovery program (Linux based) does not recognize a USB3 disk.

USB3 is backward compatible with USB2, but to utilize all that speed, you need the USB3 capability in your PC controller too. Buying a controller card is on my to do list.

If you plugged your external drive into the blue colored USB 3 ports than you should be OK. I have had some weird up and down speeds transferring images from external USB 3 to external USB 2 though depending on image file type.

Paragon uses archive .arc file format and Acronis True Image WD Edition (Free if you own a WD drive) uses .tib file format but the transfer speeds will vary.

Thanks you fellows I just checked to do what pparks1 suggested - found no backup.

So have just run it again and 9Mmins for 49Gb so the first backup must have gone walkabout - everything seems ok now.

Oh and yeh the drive is in the blue port - thats what made wonder what the dickens was going on the first time.

Help much appreciated and so quick!!

The drive is a WD 329Gb part number WDBACY5000ARD-00 and has the 3.0 label attached to the lead.

Hmm, 9 min for 49GB is amazing. I must have a problem with my enclosure or my HDD in it is just too slow. I am imaging from a recent Vertex2 SSD, so that should not be the problem. Maybe my enclosure is no good.

Is your Macrium image file itself 49GB in size...or was the amount of installed stuff on your hard drive around 49GB that you were imaging?

whs has a valid point I had the same problem about 2 years ago when I tried a previous version of Macrium with WD USB 2 Externals The program worked fine within windows for backing up but did not work from the Macrium recovery program/disk as no externals were showing up of which contained my backup image.

A way to test this now is just simply to reboot and insert your Macrium recovery program/disk into the DVD drive and see if your external is detected, if so you are good to go for restoring, if not than as an owner of an WD drive you can use Acronis True Image WD Edition Software as an alternative. I have used this program extensively over the last couple of years on more than 1 computer and even tested backup/restore with my new USB 3 and have not had a failure yet.

You can also choose a high compression setting to reduce backup size conserving valuable HD space.