3666 Direct DVD Writing - Works but not ready for prime time

I tested writing directly to DVD with the Workstation version of build 3666. I made a backup image of my C: drive directly to DVD-R media that spanned 6 disks. The backup was done while running in Windows. All went well except that it was very slow. Each disk took about 30 min. to write.

The good news is that the recovery CD for 3666 is now able to see the backup files on the disks. The bad news is that it took around 20 disk swaps to get the restore process started. I made the successful restore running under BartPE. I had tried under Windows and the Linux CD but gave up before all the required disk swaps. I can only assume the process would have gone the same if I had continued with all the swaps. Just when you think it will never stop asking for a different disk number, the restore finally starts. Each of the six disks took about 35-40 min. to complete. The entire restore took 4 hours. This same restore from an internal hard drive takes only 17 minutes. Ouch!

Come on Acronis. You can do better than this!

mustang

 

I believe multiple disk swaps when restoring from CD/DVD is a consequence of TI's "live" imaging snapshot technology. Acronis Support (Kirill Omelchenko) provided an explanation in Post #4 of this previous thread titled <Question about restoring from DVD> (for "consequently" read "sequentially" ). Given the explanation, I don't see how TI can ever overcome this limitation without it undergoing a major paradigm change.

I guess it only re-enforces the argument often made in this forum that backups to CD/DVD should be considered a second line of defence and really only suitable for archival purposes.

Regards

 

Thanks for pointing that out. If that is indeed the reason, then doing a defrag before creating the image should reduce the number of disk swaps. I'll give it a try later.

I saw this post https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=136444 yesterday. I decided to try restoring a single file from my 6 disk image using the Linux Recovery CD. When it got to the screen showing the directory stucture of the image, endless disk swaps began. I could see some progress as little hourglasses were changing to plus signs next to each directory. I gave up after it had asked for 40 disk swaps. I then had to hit the cancel button about 20 more times to get it to stop asking for different disks. At that point less than half the directories had plus signs next to them. I was able to choose a single file from one of them. Interestingly, the restore did succeed.

I'll post back after I try it all again (with a defrag).

mustang

 

Well, I ran another 6 DVD image of my C: drive after a defrag. I then tried to restore individual files running under the Linux Recovery CD. It took 86 disk swaps to put a plus sign next to all the subdirectories of the root before TI stopped asking for disks. Then I hit the + next to the Windows directory. Disk swap mania began all over again. I had to hit the cancel button 72 times to make TI stop asking for disks. At that point I gave up. I can only imagine that it would need 500-1000 disk swaps to list the entire directory structure. I don't know if the defrag helped or not. At this point it doesn't seem relavent.

If you plan to do any restore operations from directly burned DVD's, you should plan to copy all the DVD's to a hard disk first.

I feel like I have proven the old adage, "Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it."

mustang

 

Based on restoring an entire archive from DVD (pre-direct-burn era) I came to that conclusion. It even takes a long time to verify. I have said many times I only see storing on DVD as a secondary or tertiary backup and copying to HD if possible is a good idea.

Even though the number of swaps is high and perhaps something can be done to improve it, maybe it needs to be put in context. My Windows folder alone is 2.4GB and contains 14,631 files and 827 folders.

 

I've always found file & folders restoring to be a slower that disk/partition restoring, whether it be from a HD or DVD. Excessive CD/DVD swapping during a files & folders restore has been a pain - even before the new direct to DVD imaging feature.

I'm currently checking out Build 3666's DVD recording capability using DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW media. Will report my results via a separate thread.

Regards