Inefficient External Backup Drive?

[PaladinAzumarill]

I had this 2TB TOSHIBA USB 3.0 Backup Drive since January. It worked like a dream at first, but sometime in July, it seems to be slowing down with data transfers...

It was in August that I finally realized that something was wrong with it. It was doing it's job, but it was doing it so slow, it's becoming more trouble then it's worth... It took fifteen hours just to get everything backed up. Usually it takes about five to six hours to back everything up.

I would insert a link to the item in question from TOSHIBA's official site, but for some reason, when searching for it by it's P/N or S/N, nothing comes up... Looking on other TOSHIBA sites doesn't bring any results ether...

...And this is likely why (I bought this in a Wal-Mart store, not online): http://www.walmart.com/ip/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-2TB-Portable-External-Hard-Drive-Black/24032181

If anyone who had this can confirm or deny the reviews credibility about this device, do so, because I have a feeling I got ripped off. Big time.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Azumarill.

I'd recommend that you backup any important data which you might have on that drive. After that go ahead and download the manufacturer's diagnostics tool (or a 3rd party diagnostics tool, if the manufacturer doesn't offer one) and test the drive to see if anything alarming pops-up. You could also try running chkdsk, but only after you've backed up your data. In order to run the "chkdsk" command you should open CMD (command prompt) and type chkdsk X: /r /f (where "X" is the letter of the drive you wish to check, so don't forget to change it).

Please let me know what are the results of the tests.
Boogieman_WD

 

[PaladinAzumarill]

Hey there, Azumarill.

I'd recommend that you backup any important data which you might have on that drive. After that go ahead and download the manufacturer's diagnostics tool (or a 3rd party diagnostics tool, if the manufacturer doesn't offer one) and test the drive to see if anything alarming pops-up. You could also try running chkdsk, but only after you've backed up your data. In order to run the "chkdsk" command you should open CMD (command prompt) and type chkdsk X: /r /f (where "X" is the letter of the drive you wish to check, so don't forget to change it).

Please let me know what are the results of the tests.
Boogieman_WD

Sorry for the delay, here are the results via the CMD: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=8z2HFPBM
I'm sure that this drive is just poorly programmed, but I could be wrong.

 

[jsmithepa]

Walmart.com is really just a portal for Walmart to sell stuff from affiliates, I hate it myself.

Now your situation... you seems to immediately point your finger to hardware. Not so fast.

As HD fills up, it gets slower, for optimum efficiency, there is a number, no more than around 80% full that you should maintain.

Also, fragmentation. If your back up software routinely deletes obsolete backups, there will be fragmentation, which will again, slow your HD, to consider.

Lastly, you could do doing a lot of incremental/differentials, those takes more time vs a straight full backup and the source PC needs to sort out what to, or not to back up. If you have enough room on your backup drive, I would compare full backup to full backup speed before I blame the hardware.

Every lastly have you re-installed OS and forgot to update the USB driver from the Mobo's vendor?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Sorry for the delay, here are the results via the CMD: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=8z2HFPBM
I'm sure that this drive is just poorly programmed, but I could be wrong.

No problem mate. Everything seems to be OK, judging from the chkdsk scan, but I'd also strongly suggest that you check the drive with an HDD diagnostics tool, just to be sure that everything's fine and that there are no errors. You can take a look at this article for such a tool/utility: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm

Also, take a look at @jsmithepa's suggestions as well.

 

[PaladinAzumarill]

...I didn't mean to come off as blaming the hardware. I meant the programming for it. I assume that not all brands of backup drives are programmed to handle the process in the exact same way. Also, there wasn't a fault with the hardware itself, according to the chkdsk scan results on CMD here via my pastebin: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=8z2HFPBM

As HD fills up, it gets slower, for optimum efficiency, there is a number, no more than around 80% full that you should maintain.

Obviously, of course.

What you said here though...

Also, fragmentation. If your back up software routinely deletes obsolete backups, there will be fragmentation, which will again, slow your HD, to consider.

...If the backup drive I have routinely deletes old backups like you say, then it's no wonder it takes so long. Given what kind of files I have on my HHD, this makes purchasing this backup drive a very poor choice in retrospect.

As for this:

Every lastly have you re-installed OS and forgot to update the USB driver from the Mobo's vendor?

I always make sure that everything is up to date, drivers, programs, the works, especially in the event I need to re-install my OS.

Maybe I should look into buying a brand that I used in the past? I had two I bought a long time ago, but have since then gave them away to family members that needed them more, but I might still have the boxes kept somewhere, maybe you could give an opinion about them once I find them? I'm in no hurry.

@Boogieman_WD

No problem mate. Everything seems to be OK, judging from the chkdsk scan, but I'd also strongly suggest that you check the drive with an HDD diagnostics tool, just to be sure that everything's fine and that there are no errors. You can take a look at this article for such a tool/utility: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm

Also, take a look at @jsmithepa's suggestions as well.

Will do.

 

[PaladinAzumarill]

OK, did another diagnosis scan on the backup drive, this time using HD Tune v2.55

Here's the benchmark test results: http://pastebin.com/Wa8HKwmG
And here's the error scan results: http://pastebin.com/rXLhCvVk

What can be made of these results?

Also, I managed to find the boxes of the old backup drives I told about in my last post. The two brands names that were on them were as follows:
SimpleTech.
Clickfree.

Here is the website for SimpleTech: http://www.simpletech.com/ (NOTE: At the time of this post, the website isn't available. Don't know what's wrong on their end.)
And here's the one for Clickfree: http://www.clickfree.com/

Personally, I didn't have much luck with the SimpleTech Backup Drive I got way back in 2004, thing broke down after two months.

For the Clickfree Backup Drive I got sometime in 2011, it worked wonderfully. From what I know, it worked like this: The program that's on the backup drive scans your PC, or only parts of it as you can choice what you want backed-up and what you don't want backed-up. Once it finishes the scan part, it goes to work with the backup process itself.

For me, it took two to three hours to backup everything the first time I used it. Once that part was done, the next time you do a backup, if the scan finds news files and finds files that have been backed-up, but have been changed, it will remove the old file from the backup drive and replace it with the newer one. ex. a Text Document that had one letter changed will trigger this mechanism. When restoring files, just like with the backup part, you can choose what is restored and what's not restored. You could also move the files into your PC manually.

The only downside with this drive was that if there were custom file types on the target PC, like a cfg file, a pkm file or any other "unusual" suffixes used for certain kinds of files, it would ignore them outright. A workaround for this was to place the files in question into a zip folder. After that, the program would backup the folder along with the custom files as normal. Depending on how many new files you put into your PC, or changed, future backups would take roughly ten minutes to an hour if you had lots more files on your PC then last time.

How exactly it handles these processes is beyond me, but it did it's job well. One thing I don't know if true or not, but if you delete a file on the target PC that had been backed up, the backup drive would remove that file from it's own drive the next time during the scan part of the backup. I assume it wouldn't.

Thoughts? Questions? Possible recommendations?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well judging by the tests, there are no bad sectors. However the benchmark shows really low transfer speeds. They don't even reach 40MB/s. Clearly there's something wrong and we've missed some of the most basic troubleshooting steps. Try the drive with a different USB cable (preferably shorter than 12") and a different computer if possible, to see if the same thing happens.
About the other drives and their respective backup programs - unfortunately as a Western Digital representative I can't really comment on different brand devices and software.

 

[PaladinAzumarill]

Well judging by the tests, there are no bad sectors. However the benchmark shows really low transfer speeds. They don't even reach 40MB/s. Clearly there's something wrong and we've missed some of the most basic troubleshooting steps. Try the drive with a different USB cable (preferably shorter than 12") and a different computer if possible, to see if the same thing happens.
About the other drives and their respective backup programs - unfortunately as a Western Digital representative I can't really comment on different brand devices and software.

Sorry again for taking so long to reply. For the USB cable, I had no other choice but to use the same one that came with the drive, the part that plugs into the drive itself is something I never seen before, let alone something I needed to replace if I absolutely had to. As for the length, it's just shy of a person's outstretched arm if that's anything to go by.

I did another benchmark test using my laptop... I'm actually quite surprised by the results, since I don't find my laptop to be great in comparison with my regular PC: http://pastebin.com/xbNPWE5C

I did another test on my regular PC, but the test results were hardly at all different from last time.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

It's probably a standard USB 3.0 cable. One of the ends that's plugged into the drive is a little bit different. Since you got a lot better results with the laptop and the drive's health tests turned out OK, I'd suggest that you backup your PC HDD's data just to be on the safe side and test it to see if everything's OK with it. It might be the cause for the slower transfer speed between it and the external HDD.

 

[PaladinAzumarill]

It's probably a standard USB 3.0 cable. One of the ends that's plugged into the drive is a little bit different. Since you got a lot better results with the laptop and the drive's health tests turned out OK, I'd suggest that you backup your PC HDD's data just to be on the safe side and test it to see if everything's OK with it. It might be the cause for the slower transfer speed between it and the external HDD.

I backed up both my PC and Laptop. The time it took for the process to finish are as follows:

Main PC: Roughly fourteen hours. That's slightly better then before.
Laptop: Two and a half hours. Oddly worse, as the last time I ran a backup, it took one hour and fifteen minutes.

As for the benchmark tests: the results came back practically the same as before.

Something to bare in mind is that my Laptop hardly has anything on it, only 60GB's of data out of a 500GB HD, hence why it didn't take as long as I expected it to in comparison with my PC, which at the moment has 400GB's of data out of of a 1TB HD, which supports jsmithepa's point regarding Hard Drive efficiency as it gets filled up. Though, it doesn't explain why the vast differences in transfer speeds between the backup drive and my PC and Laptop Hard Drives.

Can anyone elaborate on why that is?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well the differences are probably explained by the fact that backing all of the 400GB data definitely has a lot more small files and a lot larger number of files than the 60GB data of your laptop. What I mean is that when transferring 10GB of pictures would be a lot slower than transferring a single 10GB files (or several files with the combined capacity of 10GB). So if the drive has no issues, having in mind the slower performance of a half-full HDD and the larger number of files you have for backup, that would probably explain the difference. On the other hand the transfer speed is pretty slow roughly ~8-9MB/s for both the laptop and the PC, which is not normal at all.

 

[PaladinAzumarill]

Well the differences are probably explained by the fact that backing all of the 400GB data definitely has a lot more small files and a lot larger number of files than the 60GB data of your laptop. What I mean is that when transferring 10GB of pictures would be a lot slower than transferring a single 10GB files (or several files with the combined capacity of 10GB). So if the drive has no issues, having in mind the slower performance of a half-full HDD and the larger number of files you have for backup, that would probably explain the difference. On the other hand the transfer speed is pretty slow roughly ~8-9MB/s for both the laptop and the PC, which is not normal at all.

Your explanation does make sense. That explains why this drive is so inefficient. Shame I can't figure out why the transfer speed is so slow.

I think I seen enough with this thread, doubt anything else will come of it. Thank you very much for your help.