Drive Image 7.0: Backup to DVD Discs

[Guest]

I recently purchased and installed Drive Image 7.0 in order to backup my system partition to DVD+RW media using a HP DVD Writer 300n. It is EXCEEDINGLY slow: approximately only 10% done (i.e., 1.3Gb of 13Gb in total) after 90 minutes, using the "standard" (default) data compression option and with no verification enabled. I had to terminate the program before it completed the backup due to another commitment; otherwise, I anticipate that the job would require about 15 hours to finish

Since I have no other problems writing a DVD+RW disc, I believe that hardware is not the issue. And, I have verified that I have the most recent firmware update for the HP DVD Writer 300n

I can't believe that the performance of Drive Image when writing to DVD discs is normal. Therefore, there must be some setting that is causing this abnormally slow DVD write. Any suggestions

Thank you for your assistance.

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

It is. You are talking about an application that makes a sector by sector
copy of your hard drive and then asking it to write directly to DVD.

For best performance, you should let it write to the hard drive and then
copy the image file to the DVD. That will work much faster.

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

You're welcome, Tom.

 

[Guest]

To follow-up on the conversation, note that Drive Image 7.03 generates a backup at the rate of 1.6Gb per minute: i.e., I am able to backup 13.7Gb of data with the default standard compression onto an external Maxtor hard disk (7200 RPM, 8Mb cache, FireWire connection) in 8 minutes and 42 seconds on a Compaq Presario 8000T (2.8GHz processor, 512Mb memory, 7200 RPM internal hard disk, 800MHz bus). The standard compression yields a 48% reduction -- from 13.7Gb of source information to a 6.6Gb destination backup image.