Asus and IDE performance

[Nanga Parbat]

I have a A7N8X deluxe with Barton 2500+, 2x256 ram, 2xMaxtor 40GB
HD's. Both disks are on IDE0 as master/slave. When I take a backup
from my system partition on disk1 to disk2 with PowerQuest Drive Image
the transfer rate is about 250MB/min.

I never cared much about this speed but now I'm configuring a
P4V800-X with P4-2.6HT, same amount of memory and also 2 Maxtors 40GB
on IDE0. With this system the transfer rate with Drive Image is almost
600MB/min.

Anyone any ideas that could explain this difference?

Nanga

 

[Doug Ramage]

I have a A7N8X deluxe with Barton 2500+, 2x256 ram, 2xMaxtor 40GB
HD's. Both disks are on IDE0 as master/slave. When I take a backup
from my system partition on disk1 to disk2 with PowerQuest Drive Image
the transfer rate is about 250MB/min.

I never cared much about this speed but now I'm configuring a
P4V800-X with P4-2.6HT, same amount of memory and also 2 Maxtors 40GB
on IDE0. With this system the transfer rate with Drive Image is almost
600MB/min.

Anyone any ideas that could explain this difference?

Nanga

I do my imaging under DOS at 2Gb/min - on different channels.

 

[Doug Collette]

I ran into the same problem with my A7N8X. Apparently, the nVidia
chipset does not do bus mastering in DOS mode, which is what DriveImage
uses for backups.

There is one thing that you can try that might help. Refer to the
following PowerQuest article:
http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id3456.cfm

Although this particular article refers to PQIDeploy, it also applies to
DriveImage. I made the changes described in Step 1, adding the /IDE=ON
switch, and it increased my transfer rate by a factor of 20X to 450MB/min.

The other thing you might want to consider doing is to purchase
DriveImage 7.0, which is ultimately what I did. It creates the images
entirely within Windows and doesn't have to boot to DOS to create the
images. With DriveImage 7, I can backup my WinXP partition (2 GB of
data) in 1-1/2 minutes. In addition to obtaining a faster transfer
rate, a lot of time is saved by not having to reboot to DOS and then
booting back to Windows.

Good luck,

Doug

 

[Nanga Parbat]

I ran into the same problem with my A7N8X. Apparently, the nVidia
chipset does not do bus mastering in DOS mode, which is what DriveImage
uses for backups.

There is one thing that you can try that might help. Refer to the
following PowerQuest article:
http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id3456.cfm

Although this particular article refers to PQIDeploy, it also applies to
DriveImage. I made the changes described in Step 1, adding the /IDE=ON
switch, and it increased my transfer rate by a factor of 20X to 450MB/min.

I added this switch to the PQDI command in autoexec.bat from the
recovery disk but it makes no difference.

The other thing you might want to consider doing is to purchase
DriveImage 7.0, which is ultimately what I did. It creates the images
entirely within Windows and doesn't have to boot to DOS to create the
images. With DriveImage 7, I can backup my WinXP partition (2 GB of
data) in 1-1/2 minutes. In addition to obtaining a faster transfer
rate, a lot of time is saved by not having to reboot to DOS and then
booting back to Windows.

I'll have a look at that.

Nanga

 

[Nanga Parbat]

I'll have a look at that.

Looks impressive. Also the PC Shop around the corner has it on stock.
I'll buy it tomorrow. Version 5, which I still use, doesn't know how
to handle my DVD-writer anyway. For that reason I was already
considering an upgrade. Thx for the info.

Nanga

 

[Robert Sudbury]

I've been using PQDI since v2 or v3, but v7... yikes.

You can't schedule backups, you can't duplicate more than a single partition
at a time. Duplicating an entire drive to a same entire drive doesn't
mirror it perfectly, my partition sizes changed.

I submitted a huge list of problems and never heard back, so I cancelled my
order and made sure they didn't charge. I am extremely disappointed with
PQDI7, I've gone back to 6(2002) and continue using it in DOS...at a meager
180MB.

And yeah, I got it from the horse's mouth that the nVidia nForce2 chipset
doesn't have a conventional controller and NO IDE BUSMASTERING for DOS
level...sucks. So I leave my machine running overnight for a 6 hour backup
drive to drive. Which is actually better since then XP doesn't signature my
backup drive and screw up the drive letters should I need to switch drives
if my master fails.

 

[Doug Ramage]

I have DI v7 too, but prefer Ghost.

My transfer rate, in DOS, of 2Gb/min was between a SATA and a PATA drive.
--
Doug Ramage

***Watch Spam Trap***

I've been using PQDI since v2 or v3, but v7... yikes.

You can't schedule backups, you can't duplicate more than a single partition
at a time. Duplicating an entire drive to a same entire drive doesn't
mirror it perfectly, my partition sizes changed.

I submitted a huge list of problems and never heard back, so I cancelled my
order and made sure they didn't charge. I am extremely disappointed with
PQDI7, I've gone back to 6(2002) and continue using it in DOS...at a meager
180MB.

And yeah, I got it from the horse's mouth that the nVidia nForce2 chipset
doesn't have a conventional controller and NO IDE BUSMASTERING for DOS
level...sucks. So I leave my machine running overnight for a 6 hour backup
drive to drive. Which is actually better since then XP doesn't signature my
backup drive and screw up the drive letters should I need to switch drives
if my master fails.

--
]Robert[

I ran into the same problem with my A7N8X. Apparently, the nVidia
chipset does not do bus mastering in DOS mode, which is what DriveImage
uses for backups.

There is one thing that you can try that might help. Refer to the
following PowerQuest article:
http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id3456.cfm

Although this particular article refers to PQIDeploy, it also applies to
DriveImage. I made the changes described in Step 1, adding the /IDE=ON
switch, and it increased my transfer rate by a factor of 20X to 450MB/min.

The other thing you might want to consider doing is to purchase
DriveImage 7.0, which is ultimately what I did. It creates the images
entirely within Windows and doesn't have to boot to DOS to create the
images. With DriveImage 7, I can backup my WinXP partition (2 GB of
data) in 1-1/2 minutes. In addition to obtaining a faster transfer
rate, a lot of time is saved by not having to reboot to DOS and then
booting back to Windows.

Good luck,

Doug

 

[Nanga Parbat]

I've been using PQDI since v2 or v3, but v7... yikes.

Oops! I almost went for it.

You can't schedule backups, you can't duplicate more than a single partition
at a time.

Duplicating an entire drive to a same entire drive doesn't
mirror it perfectly, my partition sizes changed.

I submitted a huge list of problems and never heard back, so I cancelled my
order and made sure they didn't charge. I am extremely disappointed with
PQDI7, I've gone back to 6(2002) and continue using it in DOS...at a meager
180MB.

V2002 is included in v7, maybe I'll buy it anyway. However, here

And yeah, I got it from the horse's mouth that the nVidia nForce2 chipset
doesn't have a conventional controller and NO IDE BUSMASTERING for DOS
level...sucks. So I leave my machine running overnight for a 6 hour backup
drive to drive.

I usually image partitions to a backup drive and, after that, have the
backup drive copied to tape, all during the night. That would be
problematic if it takes that long.

Which is actually better since then XP doesn't signature my
backup drive and screw up the drive letters should I need to switch drives
if my master fails.

I'm not sure I understand what this means.

Nanga

PS. This has nothing to do with Asus, so off-topic here. I do hope we
don't get any comments on that

 

[Robert Sudbury]

I know they made claims. Maybe they've been fixed with the patch, but v7.00
had some issues. Not the least of which was NOT making EXACT duplicates of
live drives. Specifically the XPPro boot partition which I was running
from. Because of this, the operation would always fail, then XP on the
duped drive would complain because the partition table had changed.

You can duplicate multiple partitions, but only one partition at a time, no
amount of menu settings would prove otherwise, I was very unhappy. I don't
know if v6 supports DVD sorry, um there's no mention of DVD in the
electronic manual.

The way XP tracks devices and (re-)activation votes and assignment of drive
signatures. You're better off keeping XP blind to the existence of your
backup drive, which is why I've always preferred to work from DOS anyways.

I feel you're better off imaging to a hdd for backup, over burning images to
cd/dvd. Even at 4.7GB per disk and 8x speed, that's a lot of disks and a
lot of time to babysit the computer.

Unless I used the RAID. 8)