Optimizing Your Backup Speed

Using the Default Settings

The pre-configured settings in Polarbackup will guarantee the minimum resource usage while keeping your data backed up frequently to your Polarbackup account.

While we recommend keeping these settings as they are, in some cases you might prefer speed over resource usage, such as in your initial backup or when backing up large, yet important data. So, this article will discuss the options that Polarbackup offers in terms of speed and what effects do they have on your backup flow.

Keep in Mind

• Polarbackup performs incremental backups, meaning that the initial backup will be the most time, bandwidth and resource consuming process, as any future backups will only upload the modifications and new additions to your selected data.
• Your upload speed and computer’s processing power are very important. They either help Polarbackup work faster or hold it back from using its full potential.
• Your speed related settings (Throttling, MutliThreded Uploads, Turbo Mode, etc.. ) should take effect immediately, but if a process is already running, Polarbackup might wait until that process is finished before using your new settings with the rest of the backup.
• Even in ideal conditions and configurations, the backup speed might differ by a small margin depending on the files being backed up.

Prerequisites

To effectively optimize your backup speed, you’ll need to obtain some information about your computer and Internet connection, the steps are fairly simple and as follows:

1. Visit www.speedtest.net and run a speed test on your connection. This will tell you what Download/Upload speeds you are getting from your Internet Service Provider (ISP).Please if you are not located in the US, before doing the test, go to the settings in the upper right corner of the Window and change the server you are testing to to any server in the US.
2. Right-click theicon on your computer and click on Properties, this will show you the basic specifications of your computer, such as available RAM and the processor’s speed.

You’ll be needing the upload speed from your connection speed test, and the available RAM/CPU on your computer to have a reasonable expectation of how fast your backup can go.

What are the best settings for a faster backup?

Polarbackup offers a variety of options to enhance your backup speed, as described below, each option will affect your backup speed significantly in many aspects:

• Enable MultiThreaded Uploads

This option will let Polarbackup upload multiple files at the same time, which is very effective when you need to get the backup done quickly, regardless of how much of your bandwidth or computer’s resources being used.

• • Disable Bandwidth Throttling

  

   

  Bandwidth Throttling will allow you to limit how much Polarbackup uses of your Internet connection. This is intended to prevent Polarbackup from using up your entire upload speed in case you wish to upload something else while Polarbackup is backing up, so disabling it will allow Polarbackup to use the full upload speed available on your connection.

   

  • Disable Presentation Mode

• Polarbackup provides you with the ability to pause the backup while displaying presentations, playing games or watching movies. If you want the backup not to be interrupted, make sure the presentation mode is not enabled under the Settings → Resource Optimization.

   

  • Switch to Turbo Mode

  How?

  

   

  By default, Polarbackup runs in Smart Mode, which intelligently manages your system resources to prevent Polarbackup from taking up much of your RAM or CPU usage to allow you to use the computer while the backup is running, without slowing down other processes that are running on your machine.

  Switching to Turbo Mode will give Polarbackup a higher priority usage of your system resources allowing it to use more of your computer’s power.

  While in Turbo mode, you will be able to use your computer for other tasks but you’ll notice a slight decrease in the computer’s performance while Turbo Mode is activated.

   

  • Schedule your backup wisely

  It is preferable that you set your backup schedule with the size of your data in mind, for having a schedule or an interval that separates the backup runs by a long time will increase the size of the backup being handled on each run.

   

  Example:
  
  Having 5 files selected to be backed up, each file is 200 MB in size and each file gets modified on a day of the week. Your backup interval is set to backup every Friday of the week.
  Each file is modified/edited on a day of the week, that means you have 1000 MB to upload on Friday, which is a bit much and will take a while to back up (depending on your connection).
  Best setup would be to have the backup run on an interval of 24 Hours, this way, each day you upload 200 MB instead of 1000 MB being uploaded at once on Friday.

  This is a personal preference, knowing what your connection and computer are capable of (using the prerequisites mentioned earlier ) you can take your average backup size and decide what interval/schedule to use based on how much you can process and upload at once.

   

  • Free Polarbackup from restrictions:

  In some cases, other applications on your machine might interfere with Polarbackup and the backup process by either locking some files and not allowing access to them, or preventing the actual executables of Polarbackup from running as intended by restricting Polarbackup’s access and permissions.

  To avoid such behavior on your computer, please find the below recommendations for the most common cases:

   

  A) Exclude Polarbackup from your Antivirus Software

  While Antiviruses are very useful software to prevent unwanted software from running on your machine and protecting your data, they tend to get aggressive when they find another software that is scanning your files, which what Polarbackup does to check your selected data for modifications and to back those files up when required, so having the Antivirus interfere with Polarbackup’s way of work will slow your backup significantly and, sometimes, halt it.

  To exclude Polarbackup from your Antivirus software, you’ll need to add an Exception/Exclusion for the following files/folders:

  C:\Program Files\PolarBackup\
  C:\Users\YourWindowsUserNameHere\AppData\Roaming\PolarBackup\

   

  B) Try to use Polarbackup only

  Having other backup solutions running at the same time isn’t a recommended procedure, as this will cause conflict if Polarbackup and the other backup software are both trying to access the same files or the same services on your computer, meaning that none of both will function properly.

  If you insist on using another backup software with Polarbackup, try not to select the same data in both applications, and make sure to not select the above mentioned directories in the other backup solution on your machine.

  Final Notes

  • Polarbackup uses the latest Cloud technology available to offer a reliable, secure and very affordable Cloud backup solution, with that in mind, we cannot guarantee that it will live up to everyone’s idea of a fast upload.
  • Polarbackup compares chunks of data server wide to detect duplicates and save you the upload time; It will only send de-duplication requests to the server if a chunk of data matches one that is already on the server, so detected duplicates will result in lowering the upload speed rate shown on your dashboard (since only dedupe requests are being sent, no actual file upload is occurring and it uploads the requests faster than it can be calculated).

   

  Example: