Richard Huxton wrote: >> In our environment it takes approx 2 hours to perform a PIT backup of >> our live system: >> >> [1] select pg_start_backup('labe;') >> [2] cpio & compress database directory (exclude wals) >> [3] select pg_stop_backup() >> >> However, if we perform a plain dump (pg_dump/pg_dumpall) we >> can dump the whole lot in 15 minutes. For us this is more efficient. > > It sounds like there's something strange with your setup if it's quicker > for pg_dump to read your data than cp. Do you have *lots* of indexes, or > perhaps a lot of dead rows? That sounds like a good bet. Did you ever do a VACUUM FULL? What is the size of the online backup? What is the size of the pg_dumpall? Yours, Laurenz Albe