snvworld Posted October 4, 2012 Report Share Posted October 4, 2012 Hi Guys, I have Retrospect 7.7.533 Single Server running on a W2k8 R2 server which is connected to a Tandberg LTO4 tape streamer on SCSI. The server has an Intel Xeon 2.4Ghz 64-bit processor and has 16GB of RAM memory. The issue i have is already for over a year now but it just got worse. Right from the beginning when i installed the Retrospect software on the server is took a long time to backup +/-400GB of data. And when i say long time i mean 12 hours! Since a week or 2 now it takes between 17-18 hours to complete a backup cycle. That`s not acceptable anymore. The average performace comes down to a 200 MB/minute: 4-10-2012 12:54:35: Snapshot stored, 207,6 MB 4-10-2012 12:54:45: 3 execution errors Remaining: 3 files, 260 KB Completed: 683520 files, 196,5 GB Performance: 201,6 MB/minute Duration: 16:53:36 (00:15:56 idle/loading/preparing) But the weird thing is, this only counts for the data on the D-drive of the server. The C-drive data is going with a perfomance of 2.600 MB/minute!: 3-10-2012 19:56:22: Snapshot stored, 305,5 MB 3-10-2012 19:56:30: 48 execution errors Remaining: 54 files, 8,9 GB Completed: 79368 files, 124,5 GB Performance: 2654,9 MB/minute Duration: 00:56:04 (00:08:03 idle/loading/preparing) And when i restore files it goes with 4000-6000 MB/minute! The D-drive is where the userdata and organisational data is stored, but that shouldn`t matter. I have checked all the settings over and over to see if i`m missing something but i can`t find. Verification is turned off. There are not other tasks running on the server during the first 7 hours of the backup. Backup is scheduled to start at 19.00 hours. Hope you guys have any ideas where to look for. Please let me know if you miss information. Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted October 5, 2012 Report Share Posted October 5, 2012 That may indicate that the D drive is about to die. There are bad sectors that the server tries many times to read before giving up. Can you check the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive? If you look in the console during the actual file copy, make notes of file names that seems to take a lot of time to copy. Then copy these files from D to C using Windows' Explorer. Does it take reasonable time, considering the file size? Or does it take a long time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snvworld Posted October 9, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 9, 2012 Hi Lennart, I`ve checked the status of the drive and it is OK. I cannot start retrospect when it is running a backup(script). I`ve scheduled it to start in another user and logoff when i leave the office. Copying or moving large files is not problem at all when i do from D: to C: or vice versa. Any other suggestions? Btw is there a way to export all the settings and post them here? or a file that holds these settings? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted October 9, 2012 Report Share Posted October 9, 2012 I'm sorry: After all these years with Retrospect I totally misread your log in your first post. So forget everything I wrote. OK, You have more than 10 times the number of files on D: than on C: The average size is no more than (about) 300kB. Backing up many small files simply takes a lot more time than a few large files. So backing up almost seven hundred thousand files does take a lot of time. The drive has to position the heads at the disk directory for one file, read the directory, position the head at the file, read the file. Then repeat the whole sequence 683519 times. The positioning takes a lot more time than reading the data. Get a (much) faster D: drive will solve the problem. For so many so small files, perhaps a good SSD? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snvworld Posted October 10, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 10, 2012 I just found this in the logs. I see there were 2 nights that it worked as it should(just posting D: drive logs) : 21-8-2012 22:06:33: Snapshot stored, 191,3 MB 21-8-2012 22:06:41: 2 execution errors Remaining: 2 files, 260 KB Completed: 621605 files, 300,9 GB Performance: 2381,4 MB/minute Duration: 02:24:34 (00:15:10 idle/loading/preparing) and 20-8-2012 22:12:47: Snapshot stored, 192,1 MB 20-8-2012 22:12:56: 2 execution errors Remaining: 3 files, 4.356 KB Completed: 621053 files, 300,9 GB Performance: 2301,0 MB/minute Duration: 02:31:27 (00:17:34 idle/loading/preparing) So it did work 10 times faster for 2 nights...but i don`t see why that was... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted October 10, 2012 Report Share Posted October 10, 2012 That's puzzling and interesting. Is there any other activity on the D: drive than Retrospect? A server disk accessed by many users? What kind of disk is the D: drive? Internal SATA? External USB? RAID system? Type of connection? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snvworld Posted October 11, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 11, 2012 There are 2 tasks scheduled that start every night at 1.45 AM and 4 AM. And they run for 17 and 2 minutes respectively. And it`s an internal 600 GB SCSI drive. Raid 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted October 11, 2012 Report Share Posted October 11, 2012 RAID 1? OK, then it is not just one drive, it is two. But they make up one volume. Do you have 200GB to spare temporarily on another fast volume? What happens if you use Windows Explorer to copy all the 600000+ files? How long time does it take? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snvworld Posted October 12, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2012 Yes but that counts also for the C: drive right? They`re both phically different drives and have a Raid-1 setup. I have to connect and setup a NAS to copy 200 GB of data...will do that next week Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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