Slow Restore Again -- Over 8 Hours

Back in August, I think, I posted a quite similar problem here and received excellent advice.
The problem came back in a slightly different form and the earlier solution offered by TheWeaz did not fix it this time.

Here is the setup that gives the problem.

WinXP Sp3 and TI 11 build 8.101

Disk 0 Primary Master-Western Digital 320 GB EIDE containing two partitions a primary C: and an extended containing one logical drive D. All formatted NTFS

Disk 1 Primary Slave. The same as Disk0 but contains only an extended partition with a logical drive F: 320GB formatted NTFS.


Here is the setup before the problem appeared.

Disk 0 Same as above
Disk 1 Same as above except the disk was a Maxtor 120 GB .


The Problem

I replaced the 120GB Maxtor with the 320 GB Western Digital and immediately used TI 11 to create a full backup archive Of C: using normal compression. It is 5,333,127 KB and took about 30 minutes to complete.

I then tried to restore the archive to C: from within Windows.

TI rebooted the system and loaded Acronis all set to restore the archive I specified with TI under Windows. From that point, it took 45 miinutes for the green progress line to begin moving. There were no indications in the window of the operations being performed as there usually are. Finally, the restore completed after over 8 hours.

Why so long?

Under the ‘Before Problem’ set up above, the restore of the same archive took about 30 minutes. The only difference being the size of the disk and the manufacturer

Both of the two WD 320 GB drives passed Chkdisk /f and WD’ s Diagnostics with flying colors.

Uninstalling the IDE controller as suggested by TheWeaz in the earlier response to my first similar post in August did not correct the problem.

I will appreciate any help with this problem

 

What are the computer's specifications (CPU, RAM, controller, etc.)?

30 minutes for 5GB seems way too long to an internal drive. Unless you have a really slow CPU, the speed should be much faster. Figuring a "bad" speed of 1GB/min, it shouldn't take longer than 5 minutes. Most internals will get 2GB+/min with some around 4GB/min.

Do you have room on your Disk 0 D: partition so save the C: backup image there? If so, what time does that give for the backup? What time for a Validation? And, if you want to try it, what time for a Restore?

In Windows, how long does it take to copy a 1GB file from Disk 0 to Disk 1 and from Disk 1 to Disk 0? How long does it take to copy a 1GB file from C: to D: (separate partitions on Disk 0)?

What controller/drive speed is reported in the Device Manager for each drive (most likely, it should be UDMA Level 6 unless the computer is quite old)?

 

Thank you for replying.

The processor is a 1300Mhz with 512M Ram. Device Manager reports the controller speed set to UDMA Mode 2. Yes it is an old computer. The BIOS date is 2001.

I copied the archive to Drive D on Disk 0 as you suggested and TI restored it from within Windows in less than 30 minutes. I'm not really concerned about the 30 minutes. But am very concerned about the 8 hrs to restore from the slaved WD. Remember, I said the Maxtor restored in less that 30 minutes.

It may well be the slaved WD is sick but I would think WD's diagnostics would have given some indication of that.

BTW, it took 10 minutes to copy the 5G archive from Disk 1 to Disk 2.

Thanks again for your reply

 

Jack,

You might like to try running an HD Tach test on both drives. The free version of the software can be downloaded from http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach.
Basically it's a benchmark utility for internal and external Hard drives. Hopefully it will provide a comparative guide as to whether your problem might be a hardware one.

Your situation is also perhaps not helped by having the two hard drives on the same cable. It would be preferable if they were both masters on individual channels. Only one device on a cable can perform a read or write operation at one time, therefore a fast device on the same cable as a slow device under heavy use will find it has to wait for the slow device to complete its task first.

The 2001 bios raises the question as to whether your controller fully supports drives over 137GB capacity (28bit LBA standard). The specifications for your motherboard should tell you this.

 

Nothing earth shattering but have you checked the jumpers so one drive is master and other is slave. Probably better to do it this way than use cable-select (CS) on an older machine - CS caused some strange problems.

 

Don't know if this is part of the prob but 512M ram aint' much and ATI likes to use all the memory it can get.

 

There is something strange about those WD 320 GB drives. Linux doesn't seem to like them. I had a problem using one in my Tivo (a linux based system). My situation was similar to your's. I was upgrading from a Maxtor 120 to the WD 320. No matter what approach I used, Tivo would not boot from the WD 320. I reformatted the drive to NTFS and it worked fine in Windows. I ended up using a Maxtor drive in the Tivo.

I suggest you try making a BartPE or VistaPE CD. It should work at normal speed with the WD 320. You could also try replacing the WD 320 with a different brand drive.

 

I have about come to the same conclusion -- there is something strange about the WD drives that the 'reboot' and 'rescue disk' Linux code doesn't like.

I put a another, old, drive in and things worked fine. I even reversed the roles of the two WD's - switched the master/slave positions and the problem persisted when I booted from the recovery CD. Both drives appear to work fine under windows but choke on the Acronis produced Linux code. Go figure!