Disk backups after Vista SP2 update

[Robert Miles]

On my 32-bit Vista machine, backup times have increased
dramatically after installing the Vista SP2 update - at least
twice as long as before. Since I run BOINC projects
nearly 24 hours a day, other than pauses for backups,
virus scans and the like, any assumptions that I won't notice
the increase aren't true for me.

I've even seen signs that the backups are pausing whenever
the screen coes into screensaver mode, without any option
to turn off this behavior.

My last backup (expected to take 2 DVDs) started over
5 hours ago, and looks like it is only half done so far.
Most of what needs backing up is rather small .nws files -
mostly under 10 KB, but over 100,000 of them.

Is there any way to make full backups go faster under
Vista SP2?

Also, the backups are now generating a fatal error if
the main BOINC program is left running but all the
other BOINC-related programs are suspended;
something about a file permissions error, with nothing
referring to which files give this error. Therefore, I'm
having to generate another full backup, even though
I spent similar time trying to generate one two days ago.

My 64-bit Vista machine does not seem to have a similar
problem, even after installing the Vista SP2 update. It
may be significant that there's not yet enough on its disk
to require such long backups.

Robert Miles