USB 2.0 100% CPU Utilization...why?

[jtsnow]

Im doing image backups over my home LAN 100baseT to a P3 600 XP SP2, 640mb,
to USB 2.0 PCI card to 250G external harddrive.

During this backup time, CPU utilization on the P3 Server is 100% and
network is 20%.

If I do the identical backup to a installed HD on the same P3 PC the CPU
utilization is 75% and network still 20%.

Any way to make USB more efficient CPU use wise.?

What should CPU usage be for something like this?

Any insight appreciated

 

[Noozer]

Im doing image backups over my home LAN 100baseT to a P3 600 XP SP2, 640mb,
to USB 2.0 PCI card to 250G external harddrive.

During this backup time, CPU utilization on the P3 Server is 100% and
network is 20%.

If I do the identical backup to a installed HD on the same P3 PC the CPU
utilization is 75% and network still 20%.

Any way to make USB more efficient CPU use wise.?

Don't buy the cheapest parts you can find.

Your LAN card makes the CPU do a lot of the work, which slows things down.

USB has alwasys been processor intensive. Go to firewire if you can. The
hardware supposedly takes a lot of the load off of the CPU.

Finally, if you've got onboard Promise IDE, etc. try to avoid using it
unless the chipset IDE ports are full first.

 

[kony]

Im doing image backups over my home LAN 100baseT to a P3 600 XP SP2, 640mb,
to USB 2.0 PCI card to 250G external harddrive.

During this backup time, CPU utilization on the P3 Server is 100% and
network is 20%.

If I do the identical backup to a installed HD on the same P3 PC the CPU
utilization is 75% and network still 20%.

Any way to make USB more efficient CPU use wise.?

What should CPU usage be for something like this?

Any insight appreciated

What is "image backups"?

If the source system is compressing data, that's probably
the bottleneck, not the other end. If the source, by
"images" means thousands or millions of tiny JPG files/etc,
you have a lot of TCP/IP overhead and might have to live
with it or save to a single archive file(s) rather than the
millions of individual files.

The destination box should not have a problem receiving data
at full /potential/ of the LAN even with a generic NIC in
it, excepting the overhead. Test network throughput with
large files. Check DMA usage for HDD on the destination
system. USB does use more CPU time, yet another reason not
to use it unless necessary.

 

[jtsnow]

thats exactly the problem.... the destination PC is at 100% CPU usage.
Image is a disk image of the drive being backed up. Using Norton Ghost for
that. The network is at 20% usage and the PC CPU is at 100% usage, again on
the PC with the USB drive on it. You are basically locked out of the PC,
cant even click on icons becuase its busy doing whatever its doing.

..