Painfully slow performance on HP Ultium 448

[Neil R Murphy]

Good afternoon,

I am having major performance problems with my Ultrium 448.

I am backing up .tiff images but they are backing up at 126MB/min. Backing up 63GB worth of images took just under 8 hours!

I am running it through an adaptec SCSI Card 39160-Ultra160 SCSI.

Please could someone give me some advice regarding a solution to this problem as I am a bit of a novice with this technology.

Many thanks in advance
Neil

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

Hi Neil can you attacht a support ticket ?

www.hp.com/support/tapetools

Also take a read at this link
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=lpg50460

Pablo Alvarado Siles

[Neil R Murphy]

Thanks for getting back to me Pablo,

I am back online now and trying to improve drive performance ASAP.

The support ticket is below. It says that I have 8 devices connected on the SCSI, but I believe that I only have two hardrives, and a DVD device connected.

Further information which may or may not be relevant is that both hard drives and the Ultrium 448 are connected to channel B. Would this influence the poor performance?

Please let me know if there is any other information required.

Many thanks in advance for your help

Neil
_____________________________________________
Below is my support ticket:

InstallCheck done for HP Ultrium 2-SCSI

Drive Connectivity Test : Drive Connectivity test passed.

System Configuration Test : HBA Model : Adaptec SCSI Card 39160 - Ultra160 SCSI Please check www.hp.com/go/connect for HBA compatibility.

This HBA has a dedicated IRQ channel configured. There are 8 devices connected on the HBA which could possibly lead to a degraded performance.

This drive has a recommended driver installed. There should not be more than 2 devices connected to the HBA.

HP recommends using a dedicated bus.

Drive Read/Write Test : Drive Read/Write test passed.

Write Back data written to device at path

Drive Performance Test : Drive Performance test passed. Drive performance is severely limited. Check HBA and cable configuration.

Measured native transfer rate is 2MB/S, 4% of the maximum Check that you have an appropriate HBA at www.hp.com/go/connect and that drivers are correctly installed.

Write Back data written to device at path 1/0.3.7 See www.hp.com/support/pat for more information.

System Performance Test : System Performance test passed The local disk system tested provided excellent performance to match your tape drive.

Drive Cooling Test : Maximum temperature since media load: 35 C
Minimum temperature since media load: 24 C
LTO Cooling Check passed.
Write Back data written to device at path
_____________________________________________

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

Thats not the support ticket thats the result log.

Click on support >>> extract device data >>> save >>> attacht it here .

Pablo Alvarado Siles

[Neil R Murphy]

Dear Pablo,

Many thanks for your quick response. I have attached the support ticket

Neil

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

I saw 2 things

1. There is 2 Hard disk drives daisy chain with the drive. LTO should be alone on the bus.

2. There is a lot of Test unit ready commands
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842411/en

If you use Veritas software take a look at that document. If you do not upgrade LTO driver to 1.0.5.2 then take a look at that document.

HP StorageWorks Tape Drivers
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/tape/SmartComp/HPStorageWorksTapeDrivers.zip

Pablo Alvarado Siles

[Neil R Murphy]

Thanks agains for your reply Pablo,

As you say it appears the the performance issues I have are due to the tape drive sharing a HBA with the two harddrives of my PC.

How would you suggest the best way to get over this? Both hard drives are essential on my PC, so should I purchase another relatively cheap PC to run the HBA and tape drive exclusively?

Many thanks in advance
Neil

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2]

You have 2 controllers just use the other one here is the infamus link for performance also dont forget to do the registry fix.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=lpg50460

Pablo Alvarado Siles

[Neil R Murphy]

Thanks again for your prompt response.

How do I change to the other controller?(apologies for asking what must be such a simple question, I am out of my depth trying to get this problem sorted!!)

Cheers!

[TapeDrive Killer 1 2 · Accepted solution]

Well the controller should have 2 ports maybe 1 internal and 1 external so just grab a SCSI terminated cable and plug it to the remining port and the tape drive.

Pablo Alvarado Siles