2012-11-27

USB Drive Backup Speed Slow

Howto: Speed-up all USB drives in  Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows 7. USB speeds for all Thumb drives, cameras, and other external USB disks will be oodles faster with a minor tweak.  This change is recommended.

Acronis full system USB backup speeds were horrible -- 8 hours to backup 100G. The backup should only take about 20 minutes.  This was not an Acronis problem.

At first I thought it was a problem with the 64-bit drivers, then I suspected a problem with the backup program, but the real issue turned out to be how Windows handles USB drives. This turned out to be interesting and is applicable to all kinds of devices.




Follow these steps - which must be done for each plugged-in USB Device where you want improved speed.  The drawback to this change is you can't unplug the drive at will; you must use a menu to eject the drive, described below.


Solution:

In Device Manager, change the drive's USB Policy to "Better Performance".

1. Plug-in the USB drive and allow it to mount normally.

2. Start, Control Panel,
   Locate "Device Manager"; Right-Mouse-click, "Run as administrator"

3. Open the "Disk Drive" section, locate the USB drive section (illustrated in red box).

In the details, locate the plugged-in USB drive.
For example, my drive is an external Seagate 5G disk, labeled "Seagate BUP"

Make these changes:

a. Other-mouse-click (right mouse) the drive, Properties
b. Click the [Policies] tab
c. Choose "[x] Better Performance"
    Leave "[x] Enable Write caching on the device" checked (not illustrated)
d. Click OK and close the control panel


4. In the System Tray (Windows 7 illustrated), click the arrow to expand hidden icons;
Choose the USB icon ("Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media);
Eject the disk
Unplug the USB cable.

Re-plug-in the disk for the changes to take effect.





Note:
If you purchase a new USB drive, you will need to make this same setting. 
Set one time per device, regardless of which USB port it is plugged into.

This holds true with thumb drives, cameras and all other external writable drives. I have not researched, but there is probably a global policy which can set this for all devices.




Results:

USB Disk operations will be a zillion times faster. The new backup took exactly 23 minutes, which was a slight improvement over the original 8 hours. Everything, including standard file-copies to this drive, was improved.


Microsoft made a conservative default setting, which allows you to pull drives without fiddling around with software. But if you make these changes, you will have to exercise restraint when pulling a drive; you will have to use the System Tray menu to eject the disk.


Drawbacks:

If you like to jerk the USB drive when you are done, you may be in trouble.  With this change, you must click the system-tray icon and eject the disk in a controlled manner. Out of habit, you should be doing this anyway -- just to be safe.

Cameras seem to corrupt their memory cards more-often-than-not and it is probably best to leave the USB settings for this device unchanged, mostly because people tend to unplug cameras and run away; everyone is always in a rush.. 



Hard Disk Cache

The local Hard Disk has a similar setting, which I also enable on my own computers.

A.  In Control Panel, Device Manager (run as Administrator), "Disk Drives"
      Locate the hard disk (may be labeled as "ATA Device")

B.  Select Properties, [Policies] tab,
[x] Enable Write Caching on the Device
[x] Turn off Windows Write-cache buffer flushing on this device*

*only recommend doing this on battery-powered laptops or on desktops with UPS protection.


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Windows 11 Tuning
Windows Deleting unused apps


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2012-11-24

Run a Windows 8 DOS CheckDisk



If your disk-image backup program hangs or crashes, or you have other reasons to believe a disk is corrupt (power failures, etc.), run a DOS check disk (chkdsk).  This command will more thoroughly repair the disk than the default Windows-based error-check routines.

Steps:

A check disk will take approximately 1.5hrs, depending on the size of the disk.  It will spend a huge amount of time at 28%, be patient.

1.  Launch an Administrator DOS Prompt

     Windows 8
     a.  From the Start Page, swipe from bottom or "other-mouse-click" background
     b.  Click "All Apps"
     c.  Locate "Command Prompt"
     d.  Other-mouse-click Command Prompt icon; choose "Run as Administrator"

     Windows 7
     a.  In the Start Menu, locate "Command Prompt"
     b.  Other-mouse-click menu item, choose "Run as Administrator"

2.  Type this command:

     chkdsk C: /f /r    (enter)

     With the C: drive, DOS will complain the disk is in-use ("volume in use")
     Acknowledge the prompt with "Y".
     Nothing else will happen.



3.  Close the DOS window by typing this command:  exit

4.  Gracefully reboot / restart the computer. 

     The CheckDisk will start when the machine boots.
     Go out and have a nice dinner.
     When done, it will automatically load Windows.


Review the Results:

Windows 7 and Windows 8 may not show the results of the scan, especially if no errors were found.  Optionally confirm what Chkdsk found by looking in the Application Event Log.

5.  In Control Panel, Administrative Tools, "Event Viewer"
     Open Windows Logs, Applications
     Click "Filter"
     In Event Sources, type "chkdsk"; Click OK

     Review the events.
     Within each found event, note the two tabbed items below. 
     Scroll down to read the reports.


     What you want to see is a report similar to this:

   Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
   No further action is required.
    :
   0 KB in bad sectors.
    :
 

      Anything else may be cause for concern; see below.

 6.  With File Explorer, examine the root directory of the scanned disk (C:)

     Look for chkdsk log files with names similar to this:
    Chkdsk20120703093010.log

     If found, these are recovered damaged files but are likely not useful.
     Examining (with Notepad) and you will probably find they are useless and can be
     deleted. 



What if Bad Sectors / Bad Clusters are Found?


A few (hundred) bad sectors is not the end of the world, but does indicate some kind of hard disk trauma or power problem.  As Chkdsk runs, it marks bad clusters and takes them out of rotation.  Rarely, viruses will damage clusters but most do not do this anymore - a killed host can't propagate the virus. 

If you find a larger number of chkdsk log files and the Event Viewer shows a large number of errors, Reboot and run these steps again. If errors continue, your disk is failing.  Manually copy important files to separate media and replace the drive, or if you are like most people, buy a new computer. 

Times like this are a good time to take an image of the disk, but the image may fail if clusters are misbehaving.  This can be a scary time.  See this keyliner article: Acronis Step-by-Step.

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2012-11-10

Windows 8 Border Thickness

How to: Change Windows 8 default border thickness

The default Windows 8 border thickness is too thick for desktop and laptop users.  You can make the border thinner, matching the Windows 7 style. 

Windows 11 Notes:
Border cannot be adjusted in Windows 11.  But note this important thought:  Although the borders display with a thin, 1 pixel thickness, they actually active around 10 pixels.  This setting is no longer needed in Windows 11.


Recommendations:
  • Make this change only on desktop and laptop computers.
  • For some people this change may not be recommended on touch-screens - the border may be too thin for accurate finger placement.  This is easily tested.

Steps:

This change requires editing in the Windows Registry.

1.  From the Start Page, "other-mouse-click" the background (or swipe from bottom).
Click "All Apps"




2.  From the Charm menu, search for and run "Regedit"



3.  In the Registry Editor, locate this key on the tree-side:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
Control Panel
Desktop
WindowMetrics

HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

4.  On the detail side, change these two values:

BorderWidth from -15 to 0 (zero)
PaddedBorderWidth from -60 to 0 (zero)

Click for larger view
5.  Close Regedit

6.  Reboot.  You must reboot to see the change.

Testing

Launch any standard desktop application, such as Notepad; Confirm border width / thickness.
To undo this change, return the two values to their previous value (documented above) and reboot.

Additional Notes:

Unfortunately, this registry change can only be made in the Current User Registry key and cannot be made in the HKLM key.  Because of this, it must be made for each new user in the system. 

This key can be changed in the Default User's key but this will only help new users added to the system (Keyliner, untested).
HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Changed Keys:
HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics\BorderWidth
HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics\PaddedBorderWidth