I have Acronis TrueImage 2014. I have defined several backup sets. Some back up a local and USB drive to another USB drive. Others back up a USB drive to a networked Western Digital My Cloud.
In my network I have a Cisco wireless router and a “Hitron CGN3 Residential D3” modem/wireless router from Rogers, my ISP. I have set the Hitron to bridge mode, so it is effectively just a modem. The Cisco wireless router is connected to the Hitron modem via the Internet port on the Cisco. My computer is connected to Ethernet port 1 on the Cisco and the 4TB Western Digital My Cloud is connected to Ethernet port 3. I also have a 3TB Western Digital My Book Essential drive connected to the Western Digital My Cloud via the USB port on the WD My Cloud. This makes the Western Digital My Book Essential appear as a 3TB share named “drive2” on the Western Digital My Cloud.
When I back up from one of my USB drives to other USB drives I don’t have any problems. In August 2015 I added the Western Digital My Cloud to my network and moved the destination for one of my backup sets to its 4TB folder, and the destination for another one of my backup sets to the 3TB folder. I left the backup options as is except for the destination folders, which now appear like
\MyCloud\AcronisBackups1\H and \MyCloud\drive2\AcronisBackups2\E
Since I had existing backups for each of these sets I moved them from the USB attached drive to the MyCloud drives. These were very large files and took over a day to migrate. Even though this migration generated a lot of network activity I did not experience a spike in Internet usage.
However, when Acronis makes new backups to the networked drives I experience very high Internet usage. For example, when I made a full backup which resulted in a 1.7TB .tib file I had Internet usage of 90GB. When I made a differential back up which resulted in a 30.2GB .tib file I had Internet usage of 19GB. This usage is problematic, especially for the large backup, since I have a monthly limit of 100GB.
During subsequent testing I determined that the Internet usage only occurs during the actual backup, and not during the validation, even though the validation uses much more local area bandwidth. For example, for a recent differential backup, during the actual backup which took about 16.5 hours the local area bandwidth was 4.5GB write and 56GB read, producing a backup file of 3.7GB. The subsequent validation of all backups (i.e. 1.6TB including history) took 9.5 hours using a bandwidth of 17.7GB write and 1,758GB read.
Since the Acronis program does have the ability to back up to destinations over the Internet, I am confirming that I am not backing anything up over the Internet. I have not even logged the Acronis program into my Acronis account, so in theory it can’t even access the Internet storage available from Acronis. Also, although accounts for two MyCloud users are set up at WD for Cloud Access, I have not actually set up any devices nor users for Cloud Access.
Does anyone have any ideas of what might be causing the Internet usage?
I have found a way to stop the high Internet usage which might give a clue. My Cisco router has a Parental Controls feature which permits you to block Internet access for specific devices on the local area network. I have set the parental controls to “always” block the Western Digital My Cloud, and now when I back up using Acronis TrueImage 2014 I no longer have high Internet usage.
Of course, now I can’t access the data on the WD My Cloud from outside my LAN. I wasn’t using the “Cloud Access” feature, but I recognize that my solution to the Internet usage problem is not ideal since it defeats one of the main features of this product.
Hi there,
If you disable cloud access, does the internet usage drop? Or is this only with the Acronis backup.
I have not tried disabling cloud access, but I will test that option the next time I do a backup. If that works in solving my usage problem I still won’t be able to access My Cloud over the Internet, but perhaps it will shed some light on the source of the problem.
I tested by disabling cloud access while backing up using Acronis TrueImage 2014 and this also solved the Internet usage problem.
Oh, and in response to your second question, ArMak, I only experienced high Internet usage while backing up using Acronis TrueImage 2014 to the locally connected WD My Cloud. If I copied files from a hard drive to the My Cloud drive I didn’t experience high Internet usage. Curiously, even though the high usage occurs while writing to the My Cloud drive, the Internet usage is read usage.
