Backup Drive Issue


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Hello All

 

My USB enclosure for my Seagate 8TB Drive is suppose to be USB 3.0,  anyways plugged into rear system port,  it takes it hours to receive a copy of my system music folder,  30 plus albums i got when i had Windows Phone in 2014-2015 years, plus some bought with Bing Rewards back then, and Google Music that i bought some from over the years, plus Amazon Music purchases,  Anyways been trying to backup that folder for 16 hours,  it's finally nearly done

 

But Why is the drive so sticken slow, is it cause of being an SMR drive?     Won this in 2019 Twitter Contest from Seagate, otherwise all my other drives are CMR Western digital drives, and Samsung SSDS

 

Is there any way i can speed up this drive for backups, and such?

 

 

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I wouldn't think SMR matters in this use-case.  

 

"is suppose to be USB 3.0"  ... what is the case (brand/model) for verification?

 

Are you sure you're plugged into a blue USB 3.0 port vs. a USB 2.0 port.

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What's the size of the data you're backing up?

Are you using a program to perform the backup?

What happens if you were to just manually copy-paste the data to the drive? Does it take the same amount of time?

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yes definitely in a blue port, triple checked that

 

Enclosure model number coming up

 

Hard Drive Enclosure RSHTECH USB 3.0 to SATA Aluminum External Hard Drive Dock Case for 3.5 inch HDD SSD up to 16TB Drives, Support UASP (RSH-339)

 

Other Enclosure i have is rated for USB 3.1, and still was slow,  ports on system as usb 3.2 gen 1

 

Motherboard is Gigabyte B460M_DS3H 

 

 

Macrium Reflect Home Edition for the monthly backups

 

This is Copy and Paste this time,  so far been going for 16 hours plus

80 percent done now

 

Folder size 363GB, maybe i purchased too much music over the years lol

 

I'd Put the Drive Internally, but sadly Desktop internally out of space for another 3.5 inch lol, so guess will just have to put up with the slowness perhaps

 

Edited by bikeman25
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What's the speed it's moving at? Could be that your system is using too many resources. You sure your not running too much in the background?

 

Edit: I only have 15GB of music, and I thought I had too much.. dang..

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Don't think i am running too much, over night it was still slow with nothing open

 

Right now Spotify is open, not playing anything right now, Outlook 365, Steam, Origin, Secondlife 3rd party viewer Firestorm, and 1 MS Edge Window

 

Speed currently 8.07mb/s, moves up and down

 

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Ok will try the benchmark later on here or tomorrow depending on how this task takes to finish

 

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Just now, Mindovermaster said:

@Steven P.ninja'd me.. I was typing that exact same thing out when I saw your reply..

Yeah but 8mb/s is really slow maybe the linked tips will help.

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1 minute ago, Steven P. said:

Yeah but 8mb/s is really slow maybe the linked tips will help.

Yeah, that is slow..

 

I have a USB3 HDD dock. Some Sabrent model. And it works pretty speedy..

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It sounds like you need to use a more intelligent backup software program. Every file on your computer is marked with various attributes, including a marker that tells the operating system when a file has been modified or added, the Archive attribute. If you use an intelligent backup program, it would check the archive attribute of every file and only backup the ones that need to be backed up. Once a file has been backed up, the archive attribute on the computer is turned off so that you don't waste time backing up files that are already backed up and haven't changed. It sounds like you're doing it the hard way by backing up every file when only the newly added or modified files need to be backed up.

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Yeah i'll give those usb tips a try, and see if it improves any later.     Then hopefully all fixed or at least better than it is now

 

May also see if it's slow with Secondary Gaming Laptop, Previously had it in USB 3.1 Enclosure, recently switched this drive back to the USB 3.0 Enclosure, thinking maybe was issue with 3.1 Enclosure, but seems to work the same lol as it was in the USB 3.1 Enclosure lol

 

Vantec NST-371C31-BK NexStar Gx USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C 3.5" Sata HDD/SSD Enclosure, Comes with C to C and C to A Cable, Aluminum Casing, Black

(my secondary Enclosure option, but don't know if it would be any faster in that one, or same slow speed as it was previously in that enclosure)

--((Laptop does have USB-C port), but think just normal USB 3.0 ports on that one))

 

 

 

 

Edited by bikeman25
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Update: Transfer started at 2:30am Thursday 6/10/2021,   Finished at 9:11PM on 6/10/2021

 

Making sure Better Performance enabled for this drive now,  and then will see how it handles a system image backup for Saturday or Sunday, Hopefully a bit faster than this task took.     

 

 

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8MB/s sounds really slow, even for a mechanical drive. I copied about 25GB of information from an external HDD to a SSD today and it was easily doing more than 50MB/s I think. The copy-paste process ended up taking maybe 5 minutes.

 

However, I also did a search for data speeds of writing data to SMR drives, and I found this. More specifically, a user there made the following comment:

Quote

A clean drive can do sequential writes at pretty much normal drive speed, so that is nice. I'd guess at 100MB/sec, but wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong by 20% in the downward direction. But you only get this from clean drives. Once data starts writing and re-writing and deleting, that is done. I wouldn't be surprised if you see it drop to 5-10MB/sec if you tried to write much more than the 20G PMR area. To get performance back, you need the ATA secure erase so it forgets everything.

Random writes will go at normal-ish speeds to for ~20G, then its going to be terrible while the drive cleans out its PMR cache area and handles your random writes at the same time.

I don't know much about SMR drives so I've got no idea how accurate it is, but it does seem to correlate with what you are noticing with your drive.

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Yeah it was a little faster once i flipped on Better peformance in Policy area, but no idea if that was a fluke or what,  but did a Macrium Reflect Home Edtion Full Image backup of Laptops M.2  SSD,  was a bit faster, finished in 15 minutes--versus usual 2 hours it used to take even on that system.   But that drive is small on that system, only 128GB lol,  so don't know if was that much of a test after enabling better performance or not

 

 That drive hasn't been Secure Erased with the Seagate tools i don't believe since got it

 

Won this drive in a Twitter Contest with Seagate in 2019, at the time didn't know a thing on SMR, and still learning a bit as i go with it

 

I'll test it a little more when time,  or maybe load up Seagate tools and see if it can do a secure erase or not, or figure out which program can--and maybe try that sometime, but some night when it's not gonna storm, or anything as imagine 8TB drive will take forever to perform the erase function if i ever do that

 

 

 

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Well in conclusion think by Christmas i'll purchase Acronis True Image, heard that was suppose to be pretty good,  will get the 3 PC version and give up i guess on Macrium Reflect Home Edtion, and see if that has any improvements or not, hopefully it is an improvement, i just won't know til i start using it i suppose lol.

 

Maybe it's more intelligent than Macrium, not sure though

 

Thanks everyone for the replies, so appreciate it

 

Yes i started doing system image backups over 2 years ago when i first started using Macrium reflect, then decided to do seperate backup of the music folder,  that took 16 hours to my SMR 8TB drive

 

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Hello,

 

Have you tried using different cables, just to rule out the cable being damaged?  Also, have you tried using the same cables with "known good" (i.e., fast) HDDs or SSDs, just to confirm that they are working at USB 3.0 speeds?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

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7 hours ago, bikeman25 said:

Well in conclusion think by Christmas i'll purchase Acronis True Image, heard that was suppose to be pretty good,  will get the 3 PC version and give up i guess on Macrium Reflect Home Edtion, and see if that has any improvements or not, hopefully it is an improvement, i just won't know til i start using it i suppose lol.

If the only reason for buying Acronis True Image is to get around this write issue, I wouldn't bother if I were you. You would be better doing a test before Christmas and doing a secure erase of the drive, and seeing if your speeds return afterwards. You can do the format with Windows 10, so it doesn't cost you any money to try.

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Yeah think i'll look into cables for the external drive enclosures,  and think probably won't bother for Acronis True image, instead will get the secure erase of the 8TB Drive in the Enclosure done sometime soon--hopefully the speeds do improve after that, guess will see sometime soon here

 

And Yes only reason that i was thinking of buying Acronis True image was to get around the slow write issue, and your right may not be such a good idea 

 

Instead will purchase new USB C to A 3.2 Gen 1 cable that should work with the enclosure, and a newer cable for the second enclosure that is sorta slow as well

 

 

No i haven't tried any other cables as yet, but will asap here

 

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Major Update: 

 

Windows says too many bad sectors to format,    Format also failed with Seagate Tools,  Looks like this 8TB drive has had it,  just will have to do smaller backups of files--til i can afford another Western Digital 4-6TB drive to dedicate to household system backups (3 systems),   This Drive was Free from Seagate Twitter Contest in 2019, so doubt is any kind of warranty for RMA at all

 

 

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5 minutes ago, bikeman25 said:

Major Update: 

 

Windows says too many bad sectors to format,    Format also failed with Seagate Tools,  Looks like this 8TB drive has had it,  just will have to do smaller backups of files--til i can afford another Western Digital 4-6TB drive to dedicate to household system backups (3 systems),   This Drive was Free from Seagate Twitter Contest in 2019, so doubt is any kind of warranty for RMA at all

 

 

Call up Seagate and ask them. I know several companies (not sure on Seagate) that RMA it by serial #.

 

I had this same type of thing with my old 1.5TB WD-Black.

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