Bare metal optimization

Bare Metal Plus backups can take quite some time on large disks if not optimized before the backup. Optimization can dramatically decrease the time of a bare metal backup. Optimizing the disk takes about one minute per 500 megabytes of data on a slow Intel computer. In contrast, to backup 500 megabytes of unused data to the backup system could take as much as three minutes plus the space used on the disk.

The optimization process notes the unused space on a disk so that compression will be maximal. This process must be performed on the running client before the metal backup has begun.

To perform optimization of a windows client, you can access this as a choice under the Options section of the main agent menu.

Optimization of UNIX clients is performed using the following command:

/usr/bp/bin/bputil -X

Consider optimization periodically for each client metal backup. The period chosen depends on the amount of disk activity on the client. A good time to consider optimization is when a large number of files have been deleted from the client’s main disk drive.