USB 2.0 2.5' Hard Disk with Decent Performance.

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networkn

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#87611 2-Aug-2011 18:07

HI There!

We use WD Elements 2.5" Hard disks for client backups but recently have thought perhaps we should find something a bit faster. Could someone recommend something not massively more expensive but with better performance we could try as an alternative?

michaelt

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#500950 2-Aug-2011 18:16

You're not likely to see speeds above 30MB/s on USB 2.

If you're getting anywhere over 25 MB/s, then the bottleneck is likely the USB 2 interface, instead of the hard drive. I know that USB 2 is specified as 480Mbps (60 MB/s) but I've never seen a transfer speed over 35 MB/s. There's a lot of overhead involved.

Modern hard drives generally outperform the USB 2 interface.

If possible, you should transition to eSATA or USB 3.0.

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#500980 2-Aug-2011 19:29

Get a 3.5" hard drive and definitely an external power supply. The 2.5" laptop hard drives are slower, and USB can not deliver enough power to run a fast hard drive. If you want to ensure high speed then it is better to buy a hard drive enclosure and fit your own hard drive. Find a drive with a large cache and rated for performance. Anything "green" will be slow.

Seagate (specifically, perhaps others also) had issues a few years ago due to squeezing too much into less platters. Their 7200.11 drives had reliability issues. I believe the 7200.12 drives are better, but not familiar with the ones released in the past 1-2 years. Whatever you get, it is worth reading up reviews and spend a bit of time searching for reports of issues.

You can never have enough Volvos!

gzt

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#500999 2-Aug-2011 19:51

Are you imaging the disk? or some other kind of backup like robocopy? ,etc? Because it is possible you might get better performance changing the method, than changing the hardware. What size is your typical backup operation?

networkn

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#501034 2-Aug-2011 21:06

Shadowprotect.

zapf

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#501057 2-Aug-2011 21:49

networkn: Shadowprotect.

Are you using an internal staging drive and Image Repository?

Is this HDD to be used / updated everyday?

Full or incremental backup's? And what is your rotation cycle?

Cheers!

gzt

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#501068 2-Aug-2011 22:00

networkn: Shadowprotect.

Next time you have it running, what kind of throughput does it show?

If you are using the gui it is displayed in the volume tab of the job information. Not sure where to find it if you are using other methods.

New World

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networkn

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#501070 2-Aug-2011 22:02

Was reporting 100MB+ a second but that's not really possible (Write caching was enabled).

timmmay

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#501074 2-Aug-2011 22:11

USB 2.0 disks or even flash drives are really slow, they don't go near as fast as the theoretical bandwidth available. A modern 2.5" disk can do 80-120MB/sec, so USB or eSata is really necessary to reach maximum speeds.

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#501079 2-Aug-2011 22:22

networkn: Was reporting 100MB+ a second but that's not really possible (Write caching was enabled).

I guess that was a silly question. Time total vs image size might be better.

zapf

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#501080 2-Aug-2011 22:24

gzt:
networkn: Was reporting 100MB+ a second but that's not really possible (Write caching was enabled).

I guess that was a silly question. Time total vs image size might be better.

Or use the Physical disk writes bytes/sec from Perfmon

gzt

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#502517 5-Aug-2011 18:49

I have some marginal suggestions. Not familiar with SP, here's what I was going to suggest if the transfer rate is suboptimum for USB2. If it is compressing during the create (or esp. encrypting) that will be cpu bound on slower machines. Might get better overall transfer by reducing the SP compression ratio (no idea if reduction is possible).

Depending on network quality there *might* be an opportunity get /slightly/ better performance moving to a small NAS device. I'd guess there is a bit of skill in picking one in your price range which will give the performance required but might be worth a shot if you have one lying around to try.

Like Niel's suggestion as well.

[edit: stating the obvious but depending on numbers a usb3 card for each machine might be cost effective]