KVR Audio

Manc Chris · Post by **Manc Chris** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 6:29 pm

Ok, as mentioned in earlier thread, got the external usb hd, currently watching it backup at a snails pace due to only being on usb v1 (yes, I was warned) anyway, seems that I can pickup a usb 2.0 hub card thingy for 20 odd notes, so, before I do this, just wanted to ask if that would do the job? Just a case of fitting it into a pci slot? Without taking the pc apart, I do not even know if I have any slots left, so before I de-plumb my system, just looking for the nod that I am on the right track here? Its an Athlon 1800XP pc, running XP pro.
Final question, this is the motherboard. Will it support this usb2 card thing?
http://www.addonreview.com/gigabyte-ga-7zxe.html

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DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 6:39 pm

If you have an open slot, yes. USB2 is not going to overrun the capabilities of your PCI bandwidth, that's for sure.

Devon

Manc Chris · Post by **Manc Chris** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 1:38 pm

Ok, pci card installed. I was told that the transfer would be 40x faster! I have installed the card,drivers etc, and am now doing another backup. However, it is most certainly not as fast as I expected. It seems a little faster than before, but not 40 x faster!!! This makes me think that I may need to do some bios work or something is wrong with the setup? I am using winXPpro, sp1, on an Athlon 1800XP pc, 768mb ram. the motherboard is here ..http://www.addonreview.com/gigabyte-ga-7zxe.html I presume that is is usb2.0 compliant? If so, anyone have any advice on what may be the problem?

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 2:20 pm

Think of it this way - Youv'e seen large drainage ditches right? Think of the WHOLE ditch as what it's capable of. What do you normally see go down them? Some water, but nowhere near full capacity. Same goes for most computer interfaces. There's ALWAYS overhead, which USB has plenty of, and if your'e transfering from one drive to another, that's another device on the PCI bus.

Also, 480mbps is only 60 megabytes per second.

Also, you need to take into consideration the speed of your source drive. Only the FASTEST and newest drives have actually been hitting 65 megs per second for EIDE. SATA I need to look into what they're doing now max.

Firewire would ahve been the better choice for drives though.

If you REALLY want me to get supoer detailed as to why you ain't seeing 40x faster, I'll need more info from you, but most people don't want to get THAT technical either.

In short, expect improvements, but not 40x faster.

Devon

Manc Chris · Post by **Manc Chris** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 2:51 pm

Ok, cheers Dev. Putting perspective on it, yesterday I got up to 9 hours on the backup, before giving up. Today, after the usb2 pci install, the whole backup completed after 1 and a half hours, so, if thats as good as its gonna get, that'll do for me.

AndreasE · Post by **AndreasE** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 3:06 pm

Manc Chris wrote:I have installed the card,drivers etc, and am now doing another backup. However, it is most certainly not as fast as I expected. It seems a little faster than before, but not 40 x faster!!!

I would recommend a software which makes incremental backups, like the Freeware Xxcopy. It takes me usually 4-5 min. to do an incremental backup of 30 GB of data (incl. OS).

Manc Chris · Post by **Manc Chris** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 7:55 pm

Hmmm, thing is, I use Drive Image because it is just that. An image of your drive. So, if the whole thing collapses, I can restore the complete system.

Otherwise, I would just drag all the files from C drive over to the usb hd!

lemmywinks · Post by **lemmywinks** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 8:41 pm

Manc Chris wrote:Ok, as mentioned in earlier thread, got the external usb hd, currently watching it backup at a snails pace due to only being on usb v1 (yes, I was warned) anyway, seems that I can pickup a usb 2.0 hub card thingy for 20 odd notes, so, before I do this, just wanted to ask if that would do the job? Just a case of fitting it into a pci slot? Without taking the pc apart, I do not even know if I have any slots left, so before I de-plumb my system, just looking for the nod that I am on the right track here? Its an Athlon 1800XP pc, running XP pro.
Final question, this is the motherboard. Will it support this usb2 card thing?
http://www.addonreview.com/gigabyte-ga-7zxe.html

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Your motherboard will definitely support a USB/2.0 card -- hopefully you got a combo USB2/Firewire card.

Also, you didn't mention what brand/model external disc you have. If it's not USB2.0, then you're wasting time as that's as fast as it's going to get.

Also, you have to have XP Service Pack 1 installed, as XP will not recognize USB 2.0 devices without SP1.

Hope these help...

AndreasE · Post by **AndreasE** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 9:54 pm

Manc Chris wrote: An image of your drive. So, if the whole thing collapses, I can restore the complete system.

This I was speaking about. Doing only an incremental image (backup only the files which were changed since the last image) reduces the backup time extremely. I´m doing it with Xxcopy for over 1 year now and it works without problems within a few minutes each time.

Manc Chris · Post by **Manc Chris** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 11:17 am

AndreasE wrote:
Manc Chris wrote: An image of your drive. So, if the whole thing collapses, I can restore the complete system.
This I was speaking about. Doing only an incremental image (backup only the files which were changed since the last image) reduces the backup time extremely. I´m doing it with Xxcopy for over 1 year now and it works without problems within a few minutes each time.

Like the idea, but isnt this xxcopy prog DOS only? If so, I aint gotta chance.

AndreasE · Post by **AndreasE** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 12:31 pm

Manc Chris wrote:Like the idea, but isnt this xxcopy prog DOS only? If so, I aint gotta chance.

I don´t mean the DOS command Xcopy.
Quote from their site: A Win95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP utility which runs in command line mode.
Look at http://www.xxcopy.com for detailed informations.
If you do have further questions don´t hesitate to ask me.

Manc Chris · Post by **Manc Chris** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 2:07 pm

Cheers AndreasE. Have sent you a PM

USB pci card setup help?