I just noticed that the Block Level Backup Service was sending >100MBps outbound from my Windows 10 desktop PC. The Block Level Backup Service apparently is responsible for executing system level and hard disk backups and it may appear like that this was what it was doing. However, I don't have any Backups configured and I wasn't able to confirm if Windows was performing a backup in any other way than seeing the Block Level Backup Service hogging up my network. I have - for now - stopped the Block Level Backup Service.
Can anyone advice me on what else the service is used for? Any way to determine what started/used the service? Why was my Windows machine sending large amounts of data outbound? In case this happens again, any advice on how to determine where the machine was connected to/was sending the data?
1 Answer
Turns out a backup was running indeed.
I used the Windows Application Logs to
- determine that I indeed had cancelled a backup by stopping the service and
- that the backup was indeed a normal Windows backup
However, the "Backup Settings" page did not show any scheduled backups. After clicking around a little ("More Options" -> "See advanced settings" -> "Go to Backup & Restore (Windows 7)", I finally landed on a backup page that was familiar and did indeed show a backup job that I had scheduled at some point and hadn't been running for several days, since my computer was powered down.
I'm going to restart the Block Level Backup Engine Service and control the backup through the somewhat hidden Backup and Restore (Windows 7) setting page.
