Text 2856, 65 rader
Skriven 2010-12-03 17:01:53 av Doug Bissett
Ärende: Re: Was AMD Phenom based hardware - backing up issues
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From: "Doug Bissett" <dougb007!SPAM@Use-Author-Supplied-Address.invalid>

On Fri, 3 Dec 2010 04:21:49 UTC, "Dariusz Piatkowski" 
<dariusz@_NO-SPAM_mnsi.net> wrote:
...snip...
> 
> Well...speaking of USB attached drives...how 'workable' are these solutions
in 
> our OS2 environment? I ask b/c with my current hardware getting a simple SD
card
> reader used to be a problem. Eventually with the right combination of USB 
> drivers I was ok, but even then the transfer rate was just miserable.
> 
> What can one expect these days?

I am using a 1 TB Samsung Story Station USB disk formatted JFS, for 
backup. I also use RSYNC to do the backup. Most of the time, the 
backup, of my whole system (somewhere near 150 GB total) takes less 
than 10 minutes. Sometimes it takes up to 30 minutes, if I have been 
using the virtual systems (4 or 5 very large files). The speeed is not
because the USB is fast, it is because RSYNC is very efficient at 
doing the job. Of course, the first pass, when it has to copy 
everything, takes quite a while.

I also have another disk, with an eSata interface on it (as well as 
USB). It is a 640 GB disk, in a NexStar enclosure. ESata, of course, 
runs at SATA speeds, but does require a reboot to connect/disconnect 
the eSata  interface. I haven't used it for the backup, but I would 
expect it to do the job in less than 5 minutes.

There is also the option of using a NAS drive. I don't have any 
experience with those, but I expect that the speed falls somewhere 
between the USB and eSata options (network speeds).

You do, of course, need the latest USB support, and a USB 2.0 
controller, to make this work (the latest Dani driver does eSata, with
no problem). The Samsung drive does work with USB 1.1, but you won't 
want to use it that way. You also need JFS for any kind of speed, and 
support for large disks. FAT32 is very slow (but works far more 
reliably, and faster, if you REM the CACHEF32.EXE line in CONFIG.SYS, 
and don't use the EA support feature). If you don't use EAs, you 
should use some sort of backup program (ZIP) to save the files (that 
also speeds it up because compressed files are also smaller files, 
most of the time). NTFS is not usable, because it doesn't really 
support writing (it might work, at your own risk). HPFS, and 
especially FAT16, are almost useless on large disks.

IMO, an external hard disk (USB, NAS, eSata, or even another network 
connected system) is the only reasonable way to do a backup any more. 
Real hard disks are far more reliable (not to mention faster) than 
CDs, or DVDs, which are my second choice (Tape would be my second last
choice, followed by floppies). Hard disks are, of course, somewhat 
delicate, but you can use a disk, designed for a laptop, in an 
enclosure, if you want to transport them regularly.

Hope this helps...
-- 
From the eComStation of Doug Bissett
dougb007 at telus dot net
(Please make the obvious changes, to e-mail me)


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