mail-complaints-to="news_AT_tioat_DOT_net"   
   From: "Doug Bissett"    
      
   On Fri, 3 Dec 2010 04:21:49 UTC, "Dariusz Piatkowski"    
    wrote:   
   ...snip...   
   >    
   > Well...speaking of USB attached drives...how 'workable' are these solutions   
   in    
   > our OS2 environment? I ask b/c with my current hardware getting a simple SD   
   card   
   > reader used to be a problem. Eventually with the right combination of USB    
   > drivers I was ok, but even then the transfer rate was just miserable.   
   >    
   > What can one expect these days?   
      
   I am using a 1 TB Samsung Story Station USB disk formatted JFS, for    
   backup. I also use RSYNC to do the backup. Most of the time, the    
   backup, of my whole system (somewhere near 150 GB total) takes less    
   than 10 minutes. Sometimes it takes up to 30 minutes, if I have been    
   using the virtual systems (4 or 5 very large files). The speeed is not   
   because the USB is fast, it is because RSYNC is very efficient at    
   doing the job. Of course, the first pass, when it has to copy    
   everything, takes quite a while.   
      
   I also have another disk, with an eSata interface on it (as well as    
   USB). It is a 640 GB disk, in a NexStar enclosure. ESata, of course,    
   runs at SATA speeds, but does require a reboot to connect/disconnect    
   the eSata  interface. I haven't used it for the backup, but I would    
   expect it to do the job in less than 5 minutes.   
      
   There is also the option of using a NAS drive. I don't have any    
   experience with those, but I expect that the speed falls somewhere    
   between the USB and eSata options (network speeds).   
      
   You do, of course, need the latest USB support, and a USB 2.0    
   controller, to make this work (the latest Dani driver does eSata, with   
   no problem). The Samsung drive does work with USB 1.1, but you won't    
   want to use it that way. You also need JFS for any kind of speed, and    
   support for large disks. FAT32 is very slow (but works far more    
   reliably, and faster, if you REM the CACHEF32.EXE line in CONFIG.SYS,    
   and don't use the EA support feature). If you don't use EAs, you    
   should use some sort of backup program (ZIP) to save the files (that    
   also speeds it up because compressed files are also smaller files,    
   most of the time). NTFS is not usable, because it doesn't really    
   support writing (it might work, at your own risk). HPFS, and    
   especially FAT16, are almost useless on large disks.   
      
   IMO, an external hard disk (USB, NAS, eSata, or even another network    
   connected system) is the only reasonable way to do a backup any more.    
   Real hard disks are far more reliable (not to mention faster) than    
   CDs, or DVDs, which are my second choice (Tape would be my second last   
   choice, followed by floppies). Hard disks are, of course, somewhat    
   delicate, but you can use a disk, designed for a laptop, in an    
   enclosure, if you want to transport them regularly.   
      
   Hope this helps...   
   --    
   From the eComStation of Doug Bissett   
   dougb007 at telus dot net   
   (Please make the obvious changes, to e-mail me)   
      
      
   --- Internet Rex 2.31   
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