mgatehouse Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 I'm using Retrospect 6.0.206 to backup under Windows XP Home to a Seagate STT 8000N SCSI Travan 4/8Gb tape drive. Backup speeds appear to be very slow --approximately half those I was obtaining with the same drive and computer using Orlogic/Veritas BackUp MyPC. The speeds also vary considerably. In a single session which makes a full backup of several partitions on a single large HDD, Retrospect reports: Drive C. (System & software) 53423 files. 4.6Gb, 23% compression, 21.4MB/Minute Drive E. (Software apps) 3882 files, 1.1Gb, 0% compression, 23.4Mb/min Drive F. (Docs) 7722 files, 3.7Gb, 41% compression, 54.8Mb/Min TOTAL performance 28.5Mb/Min The drive has no hardware compression, so I have enabled Retrospect's software compression. By contrast, BackUp MyPC normally achieves 46-50Mb/Min for the same drives and files and an overall compression ratio of 1.61:1 Any comments/suggestions? I'm not trying to run down Retrospect and accept that different software is likely to produce different results. But it would be nice to get better speed if that's possible. Thanks! Mike Gatehouse in Brecon, South Wales, UK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jch Posted August 31, 2004 Report Share Posted August 31, 2004 I'm having exactly the same issues with a Seagate STT20000A IDE Travan 10/20GB tape drive. Veritas (45 GB/min) was about double the speed that I'm getting with Retrospect (28 GB/min). You can hear that the tape drive is using its slowest speed (the STT20000A has 3 read/write speeds that it "automatically" chooses between). Veritas uses the fastest tape speed; Retrospect Pro v6.5.350 w/ v5.2.103 drivers uses the slowest tape speed (with lots of shoe-shining too). Hmmmm.... Is it the Retrospect drivers that need tweaking?? Anyone? .../j Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted August 31, 2004 Report Share Posted August 31, 2004 Yes, Retrospect is about twice as slow as Backup My PC. Same problem if you backup to a disk backup set, Retrospect is still about twice as slow as BUMP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Hi Try running the ASPIINST.exe utility in the Retrospect program folder. That may improve performance for you. Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Quote: Hi Try running the ASPIINST.exe utility in the Retrospect program folder. That may improve performance for you. Nate What does ASPIINST.exe do? Does it install ASPI? I don't need that because my tape drive is SCSI. In any case, I first noticed that Retrospect was about twice as slow as BUMP by using both products to back up to an external USB drive, don't need ASPI for that. All my hard drives are SCSI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jch Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Quote: Try running the ASPIINST.exe utility in the Retrospect program folder. That may improve performance for you. Thanks for the suggestion Nate. Ran ASPPinst.exe but it didn't affect the versions of ASPI drivers installed. No difference in performance One interesting thing to note is that the CPU load is only 20%, so there *should* be more horsepower available for Retrospect to use. Any other ideas? .../j Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted September 2, 2004 Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 Hi Sounds like you were already using ASPI? If so try this: type CTRL ALT P P at any screen in Retrospect. In the window that appears select "Use NT SCSI Passthrough" under the execution heading. Restart Retrospect and try the backup again. Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jch Posted September 3, 2004 Report Share Posted September 3, 2004 Quote: Sounds like you were already using ASPI? Yes. Quote: If so try this: type CTRL ALT P P at any screen in Retrospect. In the window that appears select "Use NT SCSI Passthrough" under the execution heading. Restart Retrospect and try the backup again. Much *much* better. Now Retrospect seems to be running at Veritas-speed Thanks Nate! .../j p.s. Does this setting affect DVD writing too? I'm seriously considering switching from tape to DVD, but don't want to go back to the sloooooow data rates of ASPI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jch Posted September 4, 2004 Report Share Posted September 4, 2004 Quote: Sounds like you were already using ASPI? Hi Nate, This may sound like a silly question, but *why* is ASPI enabled by default when NT Passthrough runs at twice the speed?? .../j Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted September 5, 2004 Report Share Posted September 5, 2004 Quote: Quote: Sounds like you were already using ASPI? Hi Nate, This may sound like a silly question, but *why* is ASPI enabled by default when NT Passthrough runs at twice the speed?? .../j I'll ask another silly question. Will using NT SCSI Passthrough, in general, speed up Retrospect? If so, why is it not the default? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted September 5, 2004 Report Share Posted September 5, 2004 See Windows 2000: ASAPI or NT pass thru. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted September 6, 2004 Report Share Posted September 6, 2004 Hi Howard, I'm not sure why this is the case. Retrospect will use ASPI if it is availible and NT Passthrough otherwise. I'm guessing here but the thinking probably goes like this: If a device requires ASPI to run the setup and drivers for that device probably already installed ASPI. In that case Retrospect should go ahead and use it. In other words the default setting in Retrospect is to use whatever the system is using. I have heard some people say that ASPI is much faster than NT Passthrough and vice versa. There isn't much rhyme or reason. In general, if you are having trouble with speed or communication, try both. Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted September 6, 2004 Report Share Posted September 6, 2004 Quote: Hi Howard, I'm not sure why this is the case. Retrospect will use ASPI if it is availible and NT Passthrough otherwise. I'm guessing here but the thinking probably goes like this: If a device requires ASPI to run the setup and drivers for that device probably already installed ASPI. In that case Retrospect should go ahead and use it. In other words the default setting in Retrospect is to use whatever the system is using. I have heard some people say that ASPI is much faster than NT Passthrough and vice versa. There isn't much rhyme or reason. In general, if you are having trouble with speed or communication, try both. Nate As I understand it, there's no reason to even have ASPI installed unless required by a particular drive/app. I run Retrospect on a system that does not have ASPI installed. All hard drives, the CD-ROM drive and the Travan tape drive are SCSI. CD-RW and ZIP are ASPI. Backup drive is external USB. Runs fine with NT Pass Through, but Retrospect performance is disappointing. I have not used the tape drive since June 2003 (as a full system backup and compare would be onerous, i.e., 24+ hours ans swapping in/out umpteen tapes). However, I did time both Retrospect and BUMP backing up to the USB drive sometime last year. BUMP was almost twice as fast. The system has 768MB of memory but Retrospect does not avail itself of the memory. Heck, Retrospect should be able to keep the entire catalog in memory, and then some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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