Hardware solution to all sector backup

[nexstar]

I thought I'd do a write-up of my experiences of a possible hardware-based alternative for performing an all-sector back up of a Rollback system including all snapshots. The device is a Cavalry Retriever and the short version is that it does the job very well. The longer version was a voyage of discovery, as these things often are .

About 12 months ago I bought a fairly cheap USB docking station which takes 2 hard drives. It has 2 slots for bare 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives. Only one of the slots can be read when connected to the PC via USB. Disconnect the PC and plug in two drives and it becomes a standalone copying station. Of course, for non-RB systems then this particular unit is fine as it only copies used sectors on the disk which is ultimately quicker.

I wondered if such a device existed which would create an EXACT copy of the RB enabled drive. After plenty of research I discovered that there were several high-cost devices but in the more modest price range I could only really find the Cavalry Retriever which ticked all my boxes. It had the added bonus of having a USB 3.0 port and also both the docks were active when connected to the PC.

The initial problem was that I'm in the UK and the only sources I could find were in the USA. I bought one in the end from Amazon.com and it cost me £65 which included £11 for a 'Import Duty Deposit'. This was to cover the VAT when it came through Customs and was much better than trusting to luck and having to pay another £13 for the post office to collect the VAT. Anyway, the CR arrived safely and with nothing else to pay.

It is a fairly simple device with 1 power led and 2 HDD access led's which also give you some feedback if there are problems and they also let you know the progress of the cloning process.

So I first tried cloning my laptop's 120GB OCZ SSD drive (RB installed) onto a 2.5" Samsung 160GB drive which was about 4 years old. You put the source drive in one slot and the target in the other and press the small button down for 3 seconds. Both led's then start to flash and the copying commences. The source drive led goes to solid green when the 50% mark has been reached and that happened after only 8 minutes. After 15 minutes I found that the target led had stopped flashing and wasn't on at all. Both led's are supposed to go solid green when finished.

The acid test was to put the copied drive back in the laptop and see what happened. Unfortunately, there was no RB screen on bootup but the system did boot. I was puzzled by the led scenario and massively disappointed that the CR didn't seem to do much more than my other device did.

I rattled off an email to Cavalry support to try and confirm that this thing really is supposed to copy all sectors. To their credit, I had an email back in 15 minutes saying that the lack of led normally indicates a communication error and asking me to check the target drive for issues.

Before I did this, I tried cloning a 3.5" WD Caviar 500GB drive to a 3.5" Samsung Spinpoint 500GB. On pressing the button for 3 seconds I got a red led for the target device indicating that the target was no good. This was odd but I had another identical Samsung drive so swapped it over. The same thing happened.

By this time I was getting very frustrated ! I then tried the two identical Samsung's and that worked fine. So it wasn't the drive itself but maybe the capacity. I wondered then if 500GB drives really are 500GB and if I was trying to copy a larger drive to a smaller one. There only needs to be one less sector on the target than the source for the copy to fail.

I email'd support and they were again quick to reply that this can be the case sometimes, especially with SSD. They also confirmed that it really does copy all sectors, used or not.


Further investigations discovered that:

1) The 2.5" Samsung drive was indeed faulty and failed its SMART analysis with 'Reallocated Sector Count = 1'

2) Both 3.5" Samsung drives were reporting 976,771,055 total sectors when the figure should have been 976,773,168. This would explain why the WD Caviar (correct size) wouldn't clone to either Samsungs but they could clone to each other.

3) Samsung provide a HDD utility here which allows you to set the actual sectors up to their natural maximum. I did this and then both Samsungs were able to work with the WD .


So, armed with a newly acquired 2.5" Hitachi Travelstar 320GB drive, I attempted to clone the 120GB RB enabled SSD drive. The process took 17 minutes again (the SSD helps the speed a lot) and this time finished with 2 solid green led's. I put the cloned drive back in the laptop and (drum roll) up came the RB screen . It all booted up as it should with ten snapshots which I restored without issue.

I have repeated this several times now and all have been successful.

Cloning larger non-SSD drives takes much longer of course. The 500GB drive copied in 1 hour 50 minutes but the really nice thing is that you can test the backup just by booting it up. There's no restoring of an image and holding your breath while it boots up.

I have no idea why Samsung reduced the size of these drives and I don't know if other manufacturers do it but it is worth being aware of. You could always get a drive that is stated as being larger or just use a utility on the drive to regain the space.

So, for £65 plus the cost of one or more drives, I'd thoroughly recommend this as a way of cloning your RB system with all snapshots intact. Also, I several other general queries because of the Samsung issue and the Cavalry support was fast and helpful each time.

Apparently Cavalry have a new device out in 8 weeks which provides a RAID1 setup which may be of interest to some. I should point out that I have no connection with the company but I am pleased to have come across them

I'll be doing some more testing over the next week or so but it is certainly looking promising so far.

Graham

[bgoodman4]

Thank you for this report, sounds very interesting. One question re something that I am unclear about,,,,, did the Cavalier come with a back-up program or are you using Image For Windows?

This may be answered if I re-read your post but,,,,,,,,,

[Owl]

It's a hardware-only solution - you take the original drive out of the PC/notebook and hook it up the the Cavalier with another drive to image to, and it does everything self-contained.

It is a nice idea. An alternative would be to boot Linux from a pen drive and use that to image the main drive (cold) to a USB (slow) or network drive (dead slow). The Cavalier option would be much, much faster by comparison.

[nexstar]

Originally Posted by bgoodman4

Thank you for this report, sounds very interesting. One question re something that I am unclear about,,,,, did the Cavalier come with a back-up program or are you using Image For Windows?

This may be answered if I re-read your post but,,,,,,,,,

Yes, as Owl says, there is no PC involved at all. You plug in a source drive and a target drive of the same or greater capacity, press the button for 3 seconds and leave it to produce an exact copy .

Graham

[nexstar]

Originally Posted by nexstar

Yes, as Owl says, there is no PC involved at all. You plug in a source drive and a target drive of the same or greater capacity, press the button for 3 seconds and leave it to produce an exact copy .

Graham

I should just add that you can still use the device in the way you describe. So you connect it via usb and image to an external drive. It has a USB 3.0 connection so should be pretty quick. I am devoid of USB 3.0 ports so I can't check that out at the moment but it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 as well so it is future-proof to some extent.

USB 3.0 ports can be added pretty cheaply to most modern desktops and even laptops so it is probably worth the upgrade for the speed benefit. But the main reason for me getting it was the standalone cloning ability.

Graham

[Froggie]

Originally Posted by nexstar

I thought I'd do a write-up of my experiences of a possible hardware-based alternative for performing an all-sector back up of a Rollback system including all snapshots.

Very nice job and a good explanation, Graham.

I also have looked into a few of these "duplicators" and due to lack of specific information beforehand, some have been a pure crapshoot, as you yourself have found out. I'm glad this one has worked out for you.

Looking forward to hearing more as you progress along the way.

[bgoodman4]

Originally Posted by Owl

It's a hardware-only solution - you take the original drive out of the PC/notebook and hook it up the the Cavalier with another drive to image to, and it does everything self-contained.

It is a nice idea. An alternative would be to boot Linux from a pen drive and use that to image the main drive (cold) to a USB (slow) or network drive (dead slow). The Cavalier option would be much, much faster by comparison.

Thanks,I cannot remove the drive as my PC is a Tablet (convertible) so its option 2 for me.

[nexstar]

Here's another in my occasional series on the Cavalry Retriever hard disk duplicator and dock .

Still loving the device and had no issues at all with it. I now have a USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter plugged into the slot on my Dell XPS M1530. It is a 2 port flush mount device by StarTech.com ( ECUSB3S254F ) and it neatly adds 2 USB3 ports without sticking out at all. I'd guess that I'm unlikely to achieve anything like full USB3 throughput with this arrangement but it is certainly substantially faster than the dedicated USB2 ports.

I ran a few tests carrying out an all sector backup of my 120GB SSD drive with the following results:


IFW (with verify) backup to 7,200rpm SATA drive in Cavalry dock over USB2 - 90 minutes


IFW (no verify) backup to 7,200rpm SATA drive in Cavalry dock over USB2 - 57 minutes


IFW (with verify) backup to 7,200rpm SATA drive in Cavalry dock over USB3 - 60 minutes


IFW (no verify) backup to 7,200rpm SATA drive in Cavalry dock over USB2 - 46 minutes


Standalone duplication of SSD to 7,200 SATA drive - 18 minutes


I also tried copying a 4GB file from the dock to the SSD via USB2 (2min 18secs) and USB3 (48secs)

As I say, these are not really representative of USB3-vs-USB2 performance because of the way it is being achieved on my laptop.

The greatest benefit though is had from the direct duplication of the RollBack drive which I find to be a major boon

Graham