Still SLOW backup speed changing to SCSI U160

[ITMax]

I decided to use an external Ultra160 version of the powervault and an Adaptec 39160 controller instead of the USB2.0 unit.

Updated to the latest drivers from adaptec, restarted the job .. I am still not sure about block size but I am still looking.

Still no change at the moment I am backing up the local logical drive at a burning 3.22mb/MINUTE at this rate I believe the entire population of Tek-Tips will have had a chance to peruse this post and I will still be on the same backup job.

 

[ACiDelic]

Try turning off the anti-virus software before running a backup. It can cause serious performance issues when performing backups.

 

[TheLad]

What version of Arcserve and on what OS?

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"It's true, its damn true!"
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[ITMax]

Windows 2000 sp3
arcserve2000 sp4

I stopped the symantec server service and the symantec console as well

I ended up calling CA tech support

they had me use sharemem from the utility folders on the CD which allows you to increase your buffer size beyond the 512k limit .. he had me set it for 250mb whcih increased the speed to 130mb/min whcih allowed me to do a full backup
in 2 hours.. barely..


however one of the things that i have noticed is that the CLEANING light keeps coming on every backup attempt.

I would pop in the claning tape the light goes off when its done, and I would start the backup the cleaning light comes back on, this last backup shows incomplete though it did get 90% of the selected data, but I have an error log saying clean the tape drive E6918 .. the tape drive has been cleaned 11 times today !

not sure what to make of this, is this hardware related?

I will try to use a new tape tomorrow and just use NTbackup and see if it has the same problems, if it doesnt I am going to have uninstall arcserve2000 and its updates and resintall it from scratch .. (this was the last resort that tech support also agreed upon)

anyone else out there seen anything like this?

waves

 

[rallynut]

Sounds like the head(s) in your tape drive may be worn out.

 

[TheLad]

What drive have you got and what type of tapes are you using?

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"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[ITMax]

Brand new powervault 100 (external) its less then 60 days old.

The cleaning light does NOT come on at all when using ntbackup (last 3 days) and NTbackup has a throughput of about 170mb/min .. it finished an 11gb backup in 69 minutes

my only problem is it cant format tapes for this drive nor can it be scheduled easily, with reports blah blah ..

 

[speshalyst]

HI,

What is the version of the SCSI Driver you are using...

cheers
speshalyst

So it Shall be Written!
So it Shall be Done!!

 

[longlivegoku]

We use a PV 110T and get 600mb/min. We used to run at 100-150 and then we updated the driver of the SCSI device and jumped up to 600. That's quite the increase so it makes me think it is most likely the SCSI driver. We had problems with our tape drive at one point as well with it not being able to use cleaning tapes at all. sounds a little different but Dell just replaced it for us and it ahsn't had a problem since.

Just wanted to let you know what we did and give you an idea of the speed the PV is capable of.

 

[speshalyst]

Hi Waves...

try this...

http://support.dell.com/us/en/filelib/download/index.asp?fileid=R51504

cheers
speshalyst

So it Shall be Written!
So it Shall be Done!!

 

[ITMax]

I updated the adaptec 39160 drivers with the latest available from the adaptec site.

without any significant improvement, since the last post I have had to reinstall entirely and the only thing that has given any real speed advantage was sharemem setting it to 200mb buffer gave a performance increase to an avg throughput of 85mb min for the entire backup.