Turtle Speed in SiI680 pci raid card Revisited

[Maruzo]

Hi all:

I've posted a reply of this same topic in perdomot's thread here hopefully one of our resident gurus in pc storage might shed some light as to my peculiar dilemma.

I did 2 ghost 2003 cloning of a winxp system hard drive with the siI680 ata 133 pci raid and 1 ghost 2003 cloning of a winxp system hard drive with a hpt 370 ata 100 pci raid card.

The result for the first siI680 cloning (this is from a 68gb content, 120gb c drive onto 2 80 gb raid 0 drive array ) was roughly 5 mb/ sec. The whole cloning process took close to 4 hours.

The result for the second siI680 cloning (from a 11gb content, 80gb c drive onto 2 40 gb raid 0 drive array) was roughly 5 mb/ sec, or 200mb/ min. I've stopped the cloning process prematurely to see if i can find some info on the net regarding this turtle speed transfer rate. I did check Silicon Image's site and found an article regarding this issue. The only suggestion was for us to check the pio/ udma status of the 2 raid channels to make sure they are not in pio mode. You can find status by going to control applet and choosing silicon image ata controllers. Both of my primary and secondary raid channels show Ultra DMA mode 6, which i assume is the ata133 standard.

Anyway, the kicker is, my much older hpt 370 raid card performed a cloning of a 65 gb content, 80 gb c drive onto 2 80 gb raid 0 array in a little under 90 minutes. That translates to roughly 12 mb/ sec, or 720 mb / minute.

I think the siI680 is just super slow when doing cloning/ imaging in dos environment. If anyone can prove me wrong or show me how to improve the stats, i'm all ears.

Mars

[BWM]

Windoze is telling you the drives are in a UDMA mode. Unfortunately, what windoze says doesn't apply to pure DOS, which doesn't use DMA by default. A DOS application must be written specifically to use it. Are there any settings in Ghost that pertain to this?

[Maruzo]

Hi BWM:

That's a good question. I was going with Silicon Image's official recommendation by making sure udma was selected in windows, but what you said makes complete sense. I didn't look for any special setting regarding ide raid drives in ghost 2003. But i did update the software to the latest edition. And since the same setting was applied on the hpt 370 cloning and the siI680 cloning, i naturally assumed that siI680 has an inferior data transfer speed.

I'll report back after i check out ghost again.

Thanks!

[Maruzo]

Hi BWM:

The only option that i found relevant in ghost to the ide raid was the option to choose from 4 given scsi drivers. they are ASPI2DOS.SYS, ASPI4DOS.SYS, ASPI8DOS.SYS, AND ASPI8U2.SYS. I never used these because i thought these drivers are for scsi drives only. Ide raid cards doesn't seem to apply here. But then again other than this option, there was nothing i could find regarding a setting for ide raid.

I'll try googling for some cross reference between ghost and ide raid, hopefully i'll get some info that way as well.

Mars

[BWM]

I'm still looking as well.

[scriptasylum]

I agree with BWM, but I think it depends on the system. I used to use DriveImage2002, which images drives in "DOS" if the filesystem is in use (OS). On one system (a little older), it was snail slow like you describe. On another, it was much much faster. The only difference was the age of the mobo. Both systems were using the IDE ports built into the mobo only. The only thing I could think of is that the DriveImage program had some drive optimizations for certain controllers so the speed was close to what you'd find in Windows. Since your controller isn't a "typical" controller, there porbably aren't any speed optimizations. Anyway, it's just a guess.

[Maruzo]

Hi Script:

Your guess is probably right on the money. Ghost support for the ide raid card that i use is the key point here. If ghost doesn't provide optimization for my siI680, then it'll probably fall to the lowest common denominator driver to process the cloning job. That means the full potential of the raid card will not be utilized. Hence the slowness in speed. I should probably be thankful that ghost 2003 actually made the raid cloning sucessful at all.

Given that the hpt 370 was a much older chipset, and that ghost 2003's people probably had enough run-ins or experience with that card, the software could then utilize the card's potential with the right drivers.

Since siI680 is newer, although my card was purchased 1 year ago, my guess is symantec just haven't got around to the siI card yet.

[Maruzo]

found 2 links on ghost 2003 site: here and here

i'm gonna try a window-based cloning utility called drive wizard and see if that will speed up the job. Will report back soon. wish me luck!

[scriptasylum]

Good luck!

I've since switched to either Acronis TrueImage (kids PC) or DriveImage7 (mine and the wife's); both let you image the system while in Windows so "DOS" issues are not an problem for me anymore. Of course a restore would have to be done in DOS, but hopefully it won't be needed often enough where speed is a concern.

[Maruzo]

Okay, reporting back. DriveWizard 2.03 version to be exact, took 10 minutes exactly. The content of drive was 12537mb, roughly 12.5 gb, and the thruput was a staggering 1253mb/min!! Unbelievable!!

Thanks to BWM for pointing me in the right direction. I never would have thought to look at the cloning software's issues. I was all set to get a new hpt card since i thought the siI was just not performing up to par.

Script, i have heard some good things about the di7 software. Isn't this the first window-based imaging software coming from the Drive Image line? I'll have to try it next time.

Btw, how do you make an image of hard drive for back up, and then how do you restore that image to a new drive/ or old drive? Can you record the image onto an ide or an usb 2.0 dvdrw drive? if so, how do you restore that copy of the image?

Much obliged!

Mars

[scriptasylum]

Script, i have heard some good things about the di7 software. Isn't this the first window-based imaging software coming from the Drive Image line? I'll have to try it next time.

Btw, how do you make an image of hard drive for back up, and then how do you restore that image to a new drive/ or old drive? Can you record the image onto an ide or an usb 2.0 dvdrw drive? if so, how do you restore that copy of the image?

Much obliged!

Mars

DriveImage7 works well and is easy to use, but you have to install the MicroSoft .NET framework too. Not a big deal, but it's just one more thing to install. As silly as it sounds, this is why I will probably start using Acronis TrueImage.

I've used an external drive successfully with DI. They have generic USB drivers for that type of thing. It also supports networking and other IDE drives so it's pretty full-featured. I've never used the networking part though.

Generally, you make an image while in the OS. To restore the image, you boot from the CD and follow the instructions. The GUI from booting from the CD isn't Windows, but it looks very much like it so it is really easy to use. I have not found the need to restore the full image from the backup as of yet :knocks on wood:, but I have been able to retrieve specific files from the image using DI's "Image Browser", which is done while in Windows.

Incidentally, Drive Image used to be owned by PowerQuest, but has since been acquired by Symantec. I've heard they are releasing a version soon that incorporates features from both Ghost and DI, but I think it will be called Ghost. I assume this means that the name Drive Image will be no more.

[Maruzo]

Thanks for the reply, script. Alas, it's a shame DI will cease to exist. I've used their di2002 frequently last year and was very happy to report it had done the job evertime i used it. I've always wondered about that ms .net update though. Whenever i ran windows update, this file always pops up for me to install. I'm on sp2 now and i still get this upgrade. I've never used it so never bothered to install it.

Anyway, i was thinking about pci raid cards and it's maximum thruput limit. Since it's well-known that pci bus runs on 33mhz/ sec speed, is it safe to assume that it's maximum data transfer rate will not exceed 33mbps? or am i reading it completely wrong? I think i'm reading it completely wrong. Does anyone know the relationship between the 33mhz and the pci bus's maximum data thruput rate?

[scriptasylum]

PCI clock=33MHz
PCI Bus Width=32bit
That equates to 1.056Mbit/sec or 133MBytes/sec

Don't forget; that bandwidth is shared among any other on-board devices you may have: USB, firewire, sound, LAN, etc. Some chipsets may have some of these devices on the Sb chip, so it might not be quite so many devices on the PCI, but you get the idea. Therefore, you will probably max out at about 100MB/sec (give or take) depending on what else is using the bus and how much.

[Maruzo]

Thanks so much for the info, Script. I guess that means i don't get to use the full 133mb/sec potential of the raid drives. But then again, i doubt these ide drives will do 133mb sustained. On the same note, does an onboard ide raid solution suffer from the same restrictions as the pci raid cards? I mean, do they all use the same pci bus?

[perdomot]

Hi Maruzo.
Glad to hear you solved your problem with the Ghosting. I gave up on raid a little while ago even though my mobo has the KT600 chipset which is incredible. The speed on my raid array was just not noticable since my 2 new HDDs from Hitachi are so damn fast. I figured it would be better to set them up indedpendantly and run them that way. I did get a third hard drive which I use Ghost to image my main C partition and it is extremely fast. I then copy and back up any other info or data in Windows and remove the HDD to keep it safe(got a good mobile rack from Tiger for $12) Can you post some more info about this Drive Wizard and how you used it? Thanks.