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Performance of USB 2.0 External HD


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Anyone have an idea of what good performance on a usb2.0 external Hard drive would be? (i'm on a 2.0ghz, Pentium IV w/ 512mb RAM, using a Maxtor OneTouch USB 2.0 external HD connected to a usb 2.0 hub). I get something like 540mb/minute on backing up a Photo partition recently (mostly .jpg files and some .tif); about 216mb/minute backing up a Programs Partition; 258mb/minute backing up a Documents Partition; and 173mb/minute backing up my System Partition. I have no idea if this is good,bad, or indifferent, but figured you would. smile.gif

 

Thanks,

ATHiker

 

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ATHiker said:

Anyone have an idea of what good performance on a usb2.0 external Hard drive would be? (i'm on a 2.0ghz, Pentium IV w/ 512mb RAM, using a Maxtor OneTouch USB 2.0 external HD connected to a usb 2.0 hub). I get something like 540mb/minute on backing up a Photo partition recently (mostly .jpg files and some .tif); about 216mb/minute backing up a Programs Partition; 258mb/minute backing up a Documents Partition; and 173mb/minute backing up my System Partition. I have no idea if this is good,bad, or indifferent, but figured you would.
smile.gif

 

Thanks,

ATHiker

 

 


 

The performance is going to depend on at least the following factors:

 

1. CPU speed.

2. Amount of memory.

3. Quality of USB card.

4. Type of hard drives being backed up, i.e., SCSI or not.

5. Quality of SCSI/ATA/mobo hard drive controllers.

6. What else is running on the system.

 

In addition, I do not believe the figures in the Retrospect log are useful.

The figures fluctuate like crazy during the backup during short time intrervals.

I mentioned this in another thread and did not get a useful response from Dantz.

 

IMHO, the only figure that matters is (total number of bytes backed up)/(total elapsed time for the backup). I do not see enough info in the Retrospect log to compute this figure. And similar info for the verify would be useful.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

WinXP Home

Retrospect 6.5

Athlon 1.7 GHz, 1 GB Memory

 

The performance with USB 2.0 is really bad.

 

Benchmarks:

File system read and write:

USB 2.0 -> 8 MB/s read and write

Firewire -> 37 MB/s read and 15 write

 

Backuping:

While backuping the performance (firewire) goes from 250 MB/min up to 440 MB/min

Performance with USB 2.0 is pretty similar but usually firewire get faster while backuping big files.

 

I used Norton Ghost before and switched to retrospect when I bought den Maxtor OneTouch.

Ghost starts in windows but backups in "DOS" mode after a reboot and I was getting more than 40 MB/s (2.4 GB/min) from disk to disk. Theoretically since my benchmark with firewire connection shows 15 MB/s write speed I should be able to get 900 GB/min. Let's see I am going to test it.

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Blade said:

WinXP Home

Retrospect 6.5

Athlon 1.7 GHz, 1 GB Memory

 

The performance with USB 2.0 is really bad.

 

Benchmarks:

File system read and write:

USB 2.0 -> 8 MB/s read and write

Firewire -> 37 MB/s read and 15 write

 

Backuping:

While backuping the performance (firewire) goes from 250 MB/min up to 440 MB/min

Performance with USB 2.0 is pretty similar but usually firewire get faster while backuping big files.

 

I used Norton Ghost before and switched to retrospect when I bought den Maxtor OneTouch.

Ghost starts in windows but backups in "DOS" mode after a reboot and I was getting more than 40 MB/s (2.4 GB/min) from disk to disk. Theoretically since my benchmark with firewire connection shows 15 MB/s write speed I should be able to get 900 GB/min. Let's see I am going to test it.

 


 

On my ancient PII 400, using a Maxtor 5000LE, a recent full system backup is alleged to have performed at 99.5MB. Whilst not satisfactory, it sure raises some questions about your 8MB performance.

 

I use a separate USB 2 card, not the mobo USB, which is only USB 1.1.

Perhaps you are using USB 1.1, not USB 2?

Perhaps, only USB 1.1 drivers are installed.

It sure appears like USB 1.1 performance to me.

Perhaps you just need a better USB card or USB 2 drivers.

 

Comparing Ghost with Retrospect is comparing Apples and Oranges, as the functional goals are quite different.

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