Topic: Amount of time for backup

[tviles]

Is this a normal amount of time for a backup to a Western Digital USB drive 1TB? I formatted the drive to ext3. I am still using the Disk Archieve option from the server panel. I like it better. Belows shows amount of data being backed up and how long it took.


Total target disk space usage:
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc1             917G   39G  832G   5% /mnt/dar2/pwbackup

Executing post-backup event
Creating /var/log/dar2/shpwserver.shpw.local/pwbackup/2009.01.31.log
No terminal found for user interaction. All questions will be assumed a negative answer (less destructive choice), which most of the time will abort the program.
Dismounting /mnt/dar2/pwbackup

Sat Jan 31 20:30:01 CST 2009 - backup started
Sun Feb  1 08:09:03 CST 2009 - backup finished

[cactus]

I am still using the Disk Archieve option from the server panel. I like it better. Belows shows amount of data being backed up and how long it took.


Total target disk space usage:
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc1             917G   39G  832G   5% /mnt/dar2/pwbackup

Executing post-backup event
Creating /var/log/dar2/shpwserver.shpw.local/pwbackup/2009.01.31.log
No terminal found for user interaction. All questions will be assumed a negative answer (less destructive choice), which most of the time will abort the program.
Dismounting /mnt/dar2/pwbackup

Sat Jan 31 20:30:01 CST 2009 - backup started
Sun Feb  1 08:09:03 CST 2009 - backup finished

Guessing the drive was empty I conclude you backed up 39Gb in almost 11:45, which means a little under 4Gb per hour, which is just under 1 Mb/s, that does seem rather slow to me considering that most larger disks now are SATA 2, which support a maximum throughput of 3 Gb/s.

Is this a normal amount of time for a backup to a Western Digital USB drive 1TB? I formatted the drive to ext3.

That is hard to say, it depends on more factors than the one you are showing now, for instance:

• How did you connect the drive IDE/SATA/SCSI (hotswap bay), USB 1.x/2.0?
• Do you use compression in your backup or do you write data uncompressed?

On top of that ext3 is a journaling filesystem (http://www.linuxtopia.org/HowToGuides/ext3JournalingFilesystem.html), speed might be improved by using a non-journaling filesystem perhaps, but I think the issues regarding the speed you reach are not solved by using a non-journaling filesystem.

[tviles]

OK thanks C I'm happy with that answer. No one is in that office during that time anyway. USB 2.0 connection and no compression. It is an older Dell Poweredge with dual 1ghz CPU's and only 2 gb of memory. Thanks again.