PowerVault RD1000 Issues, Questions????????

Question

Purchased USB external unit for customer, testing, disappointed. Slow, slow, slow. Other than being removable, what in the world is the advantage of this junk? Takes 1/10th the time to do a backup to any USB external hard disk with ANY backup software (Symantec Backup Exec, Acronis True Image), so why do I want this? The other scary stuff is I read other posts here, 0 (ZERO) replies for some questions, how does one get help? Support engineers have answers? Bottom line is, I want to use a backup device, automate it, and forget about it, why is this so difficult? The item is touted to be a preferred backup device, yet I spent a good part of the day testing this, and find it is painfully slow. Is there some special way this device is being seen on a computer? I see it also claims double the capacity, i.e, 120Gb/240Gb (compressed I'd assume), how does one disable the compression, or how is it utilized? Also, after doing several backups, and the backup being 58Gb, why does the Dell utility show 13 Gb free, but windows shows 60Gb (approximate)? Man, what a nightmare.

at5147 · Answer

What system is the unit attached to?

If the system is not using USB 2.0, then transfer speeds will be slow. In order to see the speed, USB 2.0 is needed. Backup Exec 10D and higher will work with the unit without issue as will Yosemite 8.1 or higher.

You Backup Exec see this KB on how to create a removal backup-to-disk folder:

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/253764.htm

For Yosemite, just target the RD1000 in the job setup and make sure to enable 'removal backup drives on the right.

Once you get the hang of the backup software, it gets pretty easy from there.

Guruuno · Answer

The system IS USB 2.0.
The question was:
1> WHY IS IT SO SLOW, when compared to ANY OTHER EXTERNAL USB HARD DISK?

It should not matter (and if so, WHY) what application is being used for backups....if it all works with a REAL / NORMAL USB External Hard DIsk (fast, efficient, etc.), then why the slug performance when using this device?

DELL-Bob D · Answer

What sort of #'s do you see? 10+MB/sec should be about the norm... this will vary depending on what it is your writing... where the data's coming from etc...   H/W compression will be handled within the disk properties. Go to My Computer select your disk Right Click select properties and check the Compress drive to save.... box. Otherwise you will need to use S/W compression via the app... this will slow everything down.   The major advantage of the RD is the removable feature. Alot easier to store multiple cartridges than some of the other solutions on the market....    I thought they bundled the Yosemite backup app with that device... have you tried it yet?   Personally I'm a tape guy and don't have much hands on time on the RDxxx... you want fast reliable easy... get an LTO tape device  :smileywink:  .... I know I know there is no USB solution :smileysad:   Bob

tbrucato · Answer

I am starting to get a little experience under my belt with this device, and I think I can at least partially answer this.

So far I am noticing that on a USB2 system using NO Compression, this device is reasonable fast. Once you start to add compression to the equation, things get a lot slower. I am currently doing a test to compare use of software compression (in Tapeware) to using actual NTFS compression. To test this, what I have done is I ran a job using Tapeware compression. I have been getting 22% compression this way on my data. I also was able to back up 75GB in the space of 3 hours.

I am now applying NTFS compression to the existing backup data on the RD1000. My compress command had been running for over an hour and has a long way to go. So far it appears that this is not yielding any additional compression.

I have also run jobs using straight NTFS compression and noticed that they run much slower than the sofware compression. I wasn't thinkinking about testing when I did this.

What I think I can tell from all this, is the following.

You will get better performance if you compress the data using tape software as opposed to NTFS because you are compressing the data first.
It is best to use only one method of compression. This way you do not incurr the penalties associated with both methods. The compression of each method is comparable, but the tapeware is faster.
As with tape, view the stated compressed capacity with suspicion. Plan your backup strategy based on the native capacity instead. If you are counting on compression to meet your needs, you will be dissapointed unless you happen to be backing up 240GB of text files.
Most obviously, if speed is your goal, you should avoid using compression.

Anyway, Hopefully someone will find this useful.

Tom

plucido · Answer

Did you ever figure out what the issue with the performance was? Or how to make the RD1000 faster? Thanks, Paul

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