How to speed up slow backups to USB disk

[Erik_Runeland]

Hello!

I am experiencing extremely slow backups to an external USB 2.0 disk. We do full backups of about 80 GB of data to a Lacie external disk drive. The data transfer rate is around 50MB/minute. This is way below what I would expect from a disk-to-disk backup. The server is a Windows 2000 server and I just applied service pack 4 to Backup Exec, so it should be quite up to date, I suppose. Anyone out there have any suggestions on where to look to speed these backups up? Also, what kind of transfer rate can one expect from a disk-to-disk backup using Backup Exec?

Thanks
/Erik

[Sharvari_Deshmu]

Hello,

As a preliminary step we suggest that you upgrade to BE 9.1 4691:

Please see the technote below to upgrade tol BE 9.1 4691:
http://support.veritas.com/docs/264658

Thanks,


NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.

[Ken_Putnam]

Is this after repeated backups/delete/backup cycles, or is it in a freshly formated drive?

May or may not apply, but see http://forums.veritas.com/discussions/thread.jspa?forumID=103&threadID=48771&messageID=4371989똕

[priya_khire]

Hello Erik,

Have you followed the steps sugegsted in the previous two mails? Do update us on the status of this post.

Note : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked ‘assumed answered’ and would be moved to ‘answered questions’ pool.

Regards

[Dennis_Chow]

This seems to be an issue for me too, is 9.1 a free upgrade for 9.0 users?

[Ken_Putnam]

Yes - v9.1 will accept all v9.0 serials

v9.1 here
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/264658.htm

v9.1 SP4 here
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/279308.htm

Be aware that Veritas totally hosed the SP4 install, but it should install OK over a new v9.1 install

[Dennis_Chow]

Thanks, can I use the v9.1 single zip file to install on both the host and the node, to the upgrade, or will I have to do something else like completly uninstall and reinstall the node.

[Ken_Putnam]

It contains all the files you would get on an install cd.

You do need to upgrade all the Remote Agents.

[Erik_Runeland]

I just wanted to thank you all for the input, I haven't checked the forum in some time and missed the abundance of tips in here.

I will upgrade to 9.1 as soon as there is a maintenance window and test that. Regarding the defragmentation stuff I haven't tested that yet, but I will take a look and get back on that. The feeling I get is that the backup times have been really slow from the time the drive was freshly formatted though.

Cheers,
/Erik

[Erik_Runeland]

I just analyzed the USB drive and it seems that the backup folder files have some fragmentation, but to me (as a novice) it doesn't look that alarming.

One 64Gb backup file is stored in 126 fragments.
Another 76GB backup file (B2D000009.bkf) in 53 fragments.

I have seen that large file sizes are discouraged sometimes, but I have seen this mostly with respect to NAT drives. This is USB. I think I have set the maximun file size to 250 GB since that's about what would fit on the drive. Is this considered okay?

Fragmentation report:

Volume BACKUPHD01 (F):
Volume size=233 GB
Cluster size=4 KB
Used space=115 GB
Free space=118 GB
Percent free space=50 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation=47 %
File fragmentation=95 %
Free space fragmentation=0 %

File fragmentation
Total files=15,332
Average file size=10,735 KB
Total fragmented files=5
Total excess fragments=280
Average fragments per file=1.01

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size=0 bytes
Total fragments=0

Directory fragmentation
Total directories=1,072
Fragmented directories=111
Excess directory fragments=1,093

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size=16,450 KB
MFT record count=16,421
Percent MFT in use=99 %
Total MFT fragments=2

[Ken_Putnam]

That doesn't look too bad

If you just copy several large files to the USB drive, what kind of throughput do you get

[Sharvari_Deshmu]

Hello,

We request you to update us to continue the troubleshooting this issue.

Thanks,

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.