How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

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Skyglider
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:15 am

How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by Skyglider »

I just did a Win7 restore of a 64GB SSD (30GB of data) to a Plextor SSD using Win7's "Backup & Restore" and it took 10.5 hours. The partition alignments fortunately were correct multiples of 1024.

So now I want to use Image for Windows to backup the SSD and use Image for Dos to restore to the SSD in the future if necessary.

1. When I do the IFW backup of the SSD, if I tick "Align at 2KiB" will that insure proper partition alignment when I do an IFD restore? Do I need to set anything else to insure proper alignment when I do a restore?

2. About how long will it take IFD to do the restore to a SSD assuming 30GB of data on a 64GB SSD?

I'm running Win7 Home Premium 64 bit on an Asus P8H67-V mobo, i5-2500K, 8GB RAM. Image is stored on an external Thermaltake BlacX eSATA drive.
Thank you very much for any help,
Sky
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by DrTeeth »

On Mon, 2 Jan 2012 19:36:14 PST, just as I was about to take a herb,
Skyglider disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Do I need to set anything else to insure proper alignment when I do a restore?

There is an option (IIRC natch) for aligning on 2K boundaries when
making an IfD disk.
--

Cheers

DrT
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Skyglider
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:15 am

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by Skyglider »

----------
Skyglider said:
When I do the IFW backup of the SSD, if I tick "Align at 2KiB" will that insure proper partition alignment when I do an IFD restore? Do I need to set anything else to insure proper alignment when I do a restore?

DrT said:
There is an option (IIRC natch) for aligning on 2K boundaries when making an IfD disk.
----------

When I open IFW, I click "Settings" on the first screen.
1. "Align MBR for BIOS Auto Mode" is already ticked by default.
2. I ticked option "Align at 2KiB".
3. I ticked option "Use Source Host Geometry".

I don't see an "IIRC natch" or "IIRC match" option.

If options 1-3 above are ticked, will that insure alignment on 2K boundaries for a SSD?

Thanks,
Sky
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by TeraByte Support »



"Skyglider" wrote in message news:995@public.image...

I just did a Win7 restore of a 64GB SSD (30GB of data) to a Plextor SSD
using Win7's "Backup & Restore" and it took 10.5 hours. The
partition alignments fortunately were correct multiples of 1024.

So now I want to use Image for Windows to backup the SSD and use Image for
Dos to restore to the SSD in the future if necessary.

1. When I do the IFW backup of the SSD, if I tick "Align at 2KiB"
will that insure proper partition alignment when I do an IFD restore? Do I
need to set anything else to insure proper alignment when I do a restore?

>> that option only has to do with restoring, doesn't affect the backup.

2. About how long will it take IFD to do the restore to a SSD assuming 30GB
of data on a 64GB SSD?

>> depends, if you can use BIOS (direct) or the BIOS isn't slow, maybe
>> 10-30min, if it is slow, longer.

I'm running Win7 Home Premium 64 bit on an Asus P8H67-V mobo, i5-2500K, 8GB
RAM. Image is stored on an external Thermaltake BlacX eSATA drive.
Thank you very much for any help,
Sky

Skyglider
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:15 am

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by Skyglider »

-----------------------------
1. When I do the IFW backup of the SSD, if I tick "Align at 2KiB"
will that insure proper partition alignment when I do an IFD restore? Do I
need to set anything else to insure proper alignment when I do a restore?

Terabyte support said:
>> that option only has to do with restoring, doesn't affect the backup.

>>> That's very good to know. I won't bother with that setting when doing future IFW backups.

-----------------------------

2. About how long will it take IFD to do the restore to a SSD assuming 30GB
of data on a 64GB SSD?

>> depends, if you can use BIOS (direct) or the BIOS isn't slow, maybe
>> 10-30min, if it is slow, longer.

>>> Sounds good. A lot better than Win7's restore that took 10.5 hours.

-----------------------------

FYI:
I upgraded my paid copy of IFW to ver 2.68 and just did a backup of the SSD to a spinner.
The spinner is an external eSATA HDD.
The backup was 36GB from a 64GB SSD and it took 4 min, 38 sec.
Wow, that's hugely faster than my previous Win7 backups of the same SSD.
I have great expectations for an IFD restore to the SSD.

QUESTION:
Would you recommend using HDDErase to erase the SSD to all 1's prior to doing a restore?

Thanks,
Sky
Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by Brian K »

Sky,

34 GB (35000 MiB) in 278 seconds is 126 MiB /second. That sounds too good to be true. I don't have a spinner that can transfer data at 126 MiB /second. Are you sure? What sort of spinner do you have?
Skyglider
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:15 am

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by Skyglider »

----------------------
Brian K said:
34 GB (35000 MiB) in 278 seconds is 126 MiB /second. That sounds too good to be true. I don't have a spinner that can transfer data at 126 MiB /second. Are you sure? What sort of spinner do you have?
----------------------

Hi Brian,
The 4:38 time is what IFW listed as the elapsed time. I started the backup and was surfing on the web using my laptop. The next time I looked at the screen for my tower PC the backup was done. I didn't time it with a stop watch but my "sense of time" was that about 10 minutes had past, so I accepted IFW's elapsed time of 4:38 as being correct. Is the time IFW lists the total elapsed time for the backup or something else?

I backed up a Plextor 64GB SSD on a SATA-3 port to a Thermaltake BlacX docking station connected to a SATA-2 port on the motherboard via a SATA to eSATA adapter cable. The SSD contained 36GB of data. The spinner is a Seagate Barracuda, 1.5TB, 7200 rpm.

BTW, do you have any opinion on erasing a SSD to all 1's using the third party "HDDErase" before doing a restore using IFD? From what I've read about HDDErase is that it erases a SSD by using the SSD's built-in controller to raise the voltage and erasing the "entire" SSD to all 1's in milli-seconds. It seems that would negate IFD having to erase the entire SSD to all 1's using conventional writes. But I'm totally new to SSDs and have no clue to the pros and cons of doing backups and restores.

Thanks,
Sky
Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by Brian K »

Skyglider wrote:----------------------
The SSD contained 36GB of data.
Sky,

That makes sense. If your image was 34 GB you must have selected no compression. My transfer rate is almost 5 times faster with no compression but I always use Standard compression..

I don't know anything about HDDErase. Is it really necessary to wipe a SSD prior to a restore? I haven't seen that as being a requirement.
Skyglider
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:15 am

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by Skyglider »

------------------------
That makes sense. If your image was 34 GB you must have selected no compression. My transfer rate is almost 5 times faster with no compression but I always use Standard compression..

I don't know anything about HDDErase. Is it really necessary to wipe a SSD prior to a restore? I haven't seen that as being a requirement.
------------------------

The 36 GB is the space used on the SSD according to Win7. The backup was compressed and ended up as 10.5 GB on the backup spinner. So the total amount of data actually written to the external spinner was 10.5 GB. Does that value compute with your calculations to be within reason for the 4:38 restore time?

From my research so far, restores to a used SSD can leave un-restored areas unerased. But if TRIM is running, the used areas will be erased to all 1's during idle times to be ready for the next writes. My thinking is that if HDDErase can erase the entire SSD to all 1's in milliseconds, it will spare the restore software from having to do erase before writes and speed up the restore time. It will also insure that the "entire" SSD was erased to all 1's which restores it back to a factory fresh new condition.

What I don't know is whether IFD will do erase before writes regardless, or whether it checks the SSD to see if erase before write is necessary. Also, I don't know whether IFD will erase the un-restored areas to all 1's or leave them as is.

Hope Terabyte support will chime in on whether running an HDDErase before a restore is a good thing or unnecessary, since they are the gurus. Now it would be super excellent if IFD was written to erase the entire SSD to all 1's in milliseconds by telling the SSD's controller to raise the voltage, and then doing a restore.

Thanks,
Sky
Last edited by Skyglider on Thu Jan 05, 2012 9:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: How long to restore a 64GB Solid State Drive?

Post by Brian K »

Ah, a 10.5 GiB image in 4:38. That sounds fine and is almost twice the speed I get with two spinners.
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