External HDD - USB 2 or Firewire - Slow Compare

[Jeff2003]

Hi... I am attempting to use Retrospect Express 5.15 with an Acom Data external hard drive. (The HDD is formatted as NTFS.)

 

I am running a Dell Precision 330 under Windows 2000 Professional.

 

I originally received Retrospect Express with a Seagate tape backup device. Retrospect Express appears to work great with the Seagate unit.

 

I am able to configure the backup for the Seagate/Acom Data HDD with no problem. The backup appears to work great on the first volume. Performance is nominally 150 MB/min. However, when the compare process begins, the performance drops to 0.5 MB/min on average. I have tried turning off data compression, with the same results. I have tried using the drive as both Firewire and as USB 2.0. All conditions are the same.

 

I have also attempted to use Retrospect Express 5.15 with an Acom Date HDD on a Gateway 9500XL notebook running Windows XP Professional. That drive is set up on a Firewire connection. The backup, and the compare, work great. (The compare is actually significantly faster than the backup.)

 

Obviously, there are a lot of similarities between the two setups, but, there are some differences. I know the drive is not on the approved hardware list. There are things about Retrospect Express that I like, and would like to make this work. (I was even going to upgrade to 6.0; but, until I get some assurance that this problem will be corrected, I don't feel like investing the time or the money.)

 

(I have upgraded to the latest drivers provided by Dantz (or whatever the most current patches contained). I have also tried a backup to an Iomega 80 GB HDD, with the same results.)

 

Any ideas about how I can make Retrospect Express work with my current system?

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Jeff

[AmyJ]

Quote:

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I am able to configure the backup for the Seagate/Acom Data HDD with no problem. The backup appears to work great on the first volume. Performance is nominally 150 MB/min. However, when the compare process begins, the performance drops to 0.5 MB/min on average. I have tried turning off data compression, with the same results. I have tried using the drive as both Firewire and as USB 2.0. All conditions are the same.

 

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It's unclear from your post which drive is slowing down on compare - is it the Seagate Tape drive or the ACOM hard drive? Or do all devices on this computer slow to a crawl during compare? It sounds like the problem may be with the ACOM hard drive....

 

Your post indicated that you tried an ACOM drive on another computer (WinXP) and it worked as expected - was this the same hard drive or a different hard drive? If it was a different hard drive, try using the ACOM drive from the Win2K computer on the WinXP computer - what are the results? If the compare speed is still extremely slow, the ACOM drive may need to be reformatted, checked with a disk utility or returned to the vendor for repairs.

 

You indicated that you tried an Iomega hard drive with the same results - which results? That it worked fine? That it was slow?

 

All hard drives are supported by Retrospect, providing they are supported and formatted for the OS you are using them with. Data is transported through the OS and is not reliant on Retrospect drivers for support.

 

[Jeff2003]

Hi Amy, Thanks for your reply.

 

I am really confused as to what is going on. As I have read in responses to other posts, there may be some similar circumstances that I might focus on.

 

To answer your questions. I am trying to focus in on one backup software, and I have been playing with Retrospect on my desktop, and my notebook. To answer a few of your questions, I will need to rerun Retrospect on the desktop to make sure I give you current information. (I did notice that a tape backup with the Seagate unit now takes longer than it has in the past. Could this be because I have another USB device attached to the system (even though one is a 1.1 device, and the other is 2.0?)

 

However, I have been playing with Retrospect Express on my notebook today. And, I'd like to share the questions and concerns with you that came out of that experience. First, the backup to the Acom hard drive went fairly quickly (probably on the average about 180 MB/min). The compare, on the other hand was a different story. The compare would run anywhere between .7 MB/min and 30 MB/min. The Acom drive is hooked up to a Gateway 9559XL via a Firewire connection. The processor is running (almost) always at 100% utilization. Retrospect Express is the only application that is running.

 

In a nutshell, I don't know whether to believe that the compare process (byte-by-byte) is just grinding itself out on the system, or if there is another problem. I believe that the results that I see on both the desktop and the notebook system are similar.

 

(Just as a matter of comparison, if I run Norton Ghost, it flies through the image backup at a rate between 400 and 500 MB/min. I see these results on the same external hard drive, with performance close to what should be expected depending on whether I am using a USB 2.0 interface, or a Firewire interface.)

 

I would welcome any suggestions you might give me regarding the best way to isolate/troubleshoot this problem.

 

Thanks in advance for your time.

 

Jeff

[AmyJ]

Thanks for the clarification. With many drives and computers involved being discussed, it can be difficult to isolate where the problem is occuring.

 

Going with the fact that Retrospect writes to all hard drives the same way - regardless of access method (IDE, Firewire, SCSI, USB) - we can test whether or not the problem is with the ACOM drive as follows. Set up a test backup of your computer writing to a file backup set stored on the internal drive. If you don't have space to complete the test, try selecting as much data as possible. You can throw away the file set after the test. Do you still see the same slow speeds on compare? If not, there could be a communication (read) problem with the ACOM drive. You can also do a Tools > Verify on the backup set stored on the ACOM drive - this process will read through every file on the set . Your speeds should easily be comparible or higher then the speeds you saw during copy.