Backing up an external drive to another

[elbarcolutra]

Hi--

I have a Maxtor 150 GB drive that has 10 GB free; the rest of the drive
has photo and data files. I've been remiss about backing up and REALLY
need to back up the entire drive to a second external drive (it's 232
GB). I'm running Windows XP Professional.

First attempt at back up: I tried using simply the copy and paste
command to move folders onto the new drive, and get an error saying
that for a particular file,
"the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."
However, the files that are in error appear to be fine (ie if it is a
photo file, I can open it in PS CS2, and I can copy the file
individually without any problem).

Second attempt at backup: I then tried xpbackup to back up the 142 GB
to a 232 GB hard drive (also asked to verify each file). The estimate
on time to back up was about 26 hours. After about 2.5 hours, I got
the dreaded NOT RESPONDING message on the status message box. I assume
that it really shouldn't take over a day to back up 142 GB anyway.

Third attempt at back up: So next I tried xcopy, using the command
xcopy f: g: /s so that all the directories and subdirectories would be
copied. After copying a few folders, the program stopped and said:

File creation error - error performing inpage separation

Any ideas of what is going on and how I can get files off of the
smaller 150 GB hard drive?

Thanks in advance for any advice (except for the obvious--that I should
have backed up the entire disk long before this!)

 

[JS]

Try using Maxtor's MaxBlast 'Copy' Utility:
http://tinyurl.com/n9q66

JS

 

[EBL]

An addendum...

I just tried Retrospect (which came with my Maxtor), and after 15
minutes, 5 of 22,000 files had been backed up. I also went to the link
below, and didn't see an option to copy--only something to make a
bootable disk.

 

[JS]

The slow copy times suggest your drive has dropped back to PIO mode and is
not using DMA.
My Maxtor drive came with a MaxBlast CD so I've not had a need to download.

JS

 

[Anna]

EBL:
JS correctly directed you to the appropriate Maxtor site. The MaxBlast
program does contain (among other utilities) a disk cloning (copying)
program that a user can use to clone the contents of one HDD to another HDD.
The program is ordinarily used when a user has purchased a new HDD and wants
to clone the contents of his/her "old" HDD to the new one. By & large it
usually works OK for that purpose although from time to time we've not found
it (as well as similar programs - see Western Digital for example) as
reliable as it should be. Its interface is somewhat clunky and many users
have found it awkward to use, but for a one-shot disk cloning operation it
may well suffice.

I think one or more responders to your query have recommended using a disk
imaging program such as Acronis True Image. It's a very nice program for
routine & systematic comprehensive backups of day-to-day working HDD since
it will, in effect, create a copy of your HDD including the OS, all programs
& applications, and user-created data. It's relatively easy to use,
reasonably quick in operation, and quite effective. Look into it.
Anna

 

[JS]

Another thing to consider before you start coping the files is to clean the
drive or partition that has windows installed.
That is to say, get ride of the temporary files as too many files in this
directory/folder can cause problems.
Also how much free space do you have remaining on the Windows partition?

JS

 

[R. McCarty]

Are both of these external drives USB & 2.0 ? and are you trying
to do a direct drive to drive copy/image/backup ? If so you may
be experiencing USB saturation. The few times I've tried to do a
USB-USB copy it was slow and very error prone. Even at it's max
USB is going to limit transfer rates to under 30-Meg/Sec similar to
a CD/DVD drive. As to USB external drives I only use a small
Firelite 40.Gig to transfer data off computers. Slowly we will see
a move to eSATA for external storage as it doesn't have the limits
that USB High Speed does. Plus on almost all machines there is
a single USB-2 controller that handles all sockets. That in itself has
a Bandwidth issue.

 

[EBL]

Thanks for your comment. Both are USB, and at least is USB 2.0. I
can't remember about the other. This kind of makes sense--but what do
I do at this point? Is there any way to get files off one USB drive to
another? Is using a little flash drive or something like that the
answer?

 

[R. McCarty]

Even a Flash Thumb would still be USB based and you'd likely
experience the same USB-to-USB transfer issues. It's really a
difficult problem to overcome. Doing a transfer to your internal,
fixed drive and then over to the 2nd USB is a clunky operation.
Part of the problem is that USB external drives use a translator
chip to convert USB (Serial) data into a PATA (Parallel) stream
for the IDE drive inside the enclosure.You may want to test your
USB drives for speed, just to know what they are capable of. I
use a simple program called DiskSpeed32. Download here:
http://www.geocities.com/vgrinenko/DiskSpeed32/
My FireLite drive has an access time of ~17.4 mSec and averages
just under 27 Megabytes/Sec. This compares to my fixed, SATA
drives in the PC that run at 13.0 mSec and average 82 Meg/Sec.

Sorry I can't provide a better solution to your issue.

 

[Guest]

I've been reading tis thread, and thank you for your informative posts. I
have a few PC's in a newtwork, and was thinking of transferring data USB to
USB as EBL was thinking, not realizing the issues.

Seems the problem has to do with using ONE PC with one USB controller, and
two drives. But if it's two different PC's on a network, then there's not a
problem?? Of course, there's issues of the speed of the router etc.

I tries once to "backup" data from a PC to a USB drive on another PC in the
same network, and a backup that normally takes 1-1/2 hours for about 25Gigs
takes about five to six hours thre the network. But at least it works. I
wound up buying a much larger USB storage, 250Gigs, on sales for about
$110.00, vs the older one at 120Gigs that I paid the same price the year
before.

 

[R. McCarty]

One issue is that most PC's have only a single USB Enhanced controller.
However, my new Office desktop using an Intel 965 chipset does have
two Enhanced controller chips. I've actually moved away from USB 2.0
external drives as much as possible. This desktop system uses the SATA
controller of the motherboard for internal drives. At the same time I have
a PCI based secondary SATA controller for External drives. I don't see
the transfer rate caps or Bandwidth saturation associated with USB.
USB externals are fine as an Average User/Setup backup media. They
do however have limitations.
eSATA beyond it's performance benefits offers the ability to boot from
them. Eventually, even Optical drives will move from traditional PATA to
SATA interfaces.

 

[JS]

Great idea Frank and would work for me since I'm on a local network at home.
If EBL does not have a second PC then the USB controller issues could be
solved by installing a PCI USB card I would think.

JS