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Why is my backup working at 12mb per minute?

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arson00

IS-IT--Management
Dec 30, 2002
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I checked the scsi controller, its set at 160mb. I have an external dell powervault 110t.
 
Check you SCSI card drivers. I had an issue very similar to yours where it was the Adaptec driver that caused this. Replacing the driver with BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the Microsoft driver cured this problem.
 
The drive already has the microsoft drivers.
 
I'm saying the SCSI card drivers, not the Tape Drive drivers. Also, even if you're using the M$ drivers for the card, you should still attempt to switch the drivers to something more current or just plain different. Process of elimination.
 
Scsi card set to 160MB/sec.....hmm....sounds like an Adaptec Scsi card.
You need to understand the 160Mb/sec you are seeing is a default setting better suited for a harddrive.
You need to set that Sync Transfer Rate setting to match the top speed the tape drive can handle.

Check your System log for event id's of 7, 9, 11, 15 with a source of the Scsi HBA or the tape drive. These are hardware errors. Event id's of 9 and 11 are Scsi Timeout errors.

Check the Block size, Buffer size on the Properties|Configuration tab on the tape drive in Backup Exec. Find out what the optimum settings are for that tape drive and set accordingly.

What are you backing up that is so slow? Is the backup going over the network? Try transferring a block of files over the network to the backup server and time it. If that is slow too, it is your network. Change network cabling, change the switch ports used. Set all NIC cards to use Full Duplex at whatever the slowest NIC speed is and do that on the the remote server and switch ports as well. Check for collisions on network, errors on the switch. Update all NIC drivers. If it is just one remote server that is the problem, see what else is running on that remote server. Update the RAID Scsi controller drivers and firmware on the Raid array if the remote is a file server.

Run a test backup-to-disk folder backup (if you are running Backup Exec version 8.6). This would bypass your tape device and might indicate a problem with your tape device. Are you running Antivirus, diskkeeper/disk defrag utilities, using Open File Option? All these will slow a backup down.

You need to put more info in your post. Got very little to go on.
 
If this is an Exchange server, and you are doing a brick-level backup, this may be your problem. Most backup vendors use the MAPI client to perform a brick-level backup, and it usually drops the performance significantly.
 
Hey Arson,

I just got through trying to figure out why my backups were taking so long. We've got a dedicated server running win2k professional with 2 Super DLT drives. Should run like the blazes, but...

1. Not sure what kind of Tape Backup Hardware you're running, but if it's DLT or SDLT: make sure you have the latest firmware.

2. I played around with the Buffer settings and set the buffer size to 1024K, the highest it would go. Also changed the buffer count to 32, left the watermark at 0. Lo and behold my backup speed improved over 50%.

Hope this helps
 
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