GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 517950
Very, very slow operation when copying partitions from interrnal to external drive
Last modified: 2008-08-28 19:34:45 UTC
Please describe the problem: I have been using the GPartEd LiveCD for a few years now to back up files from my laptop to an external drive. Recently, I have experienced a change in performance. Whereas before I could copy a 30GB NTFS or FAT32 partition in half an hour to an hour, now it takes much, much longer. A backup of three partitions, totaling just under 100GB, took more than 24 hours to complete! My system is as follows: Dell Inspiron E1705 Intel Core Duo 1.66GHz 2GB DDR2 533 Nvidia GeForce FX 7900 GS Fujitsu 100GB 5400RPM internal drive Unknown brand DVD Burner Backing up to an 160GB 7200RPM ATA133 drive through a generic drive enclosure which provides USB 2.0 interconnect to the computer. As far as I can tell, the only change to my system that could possibly affect the operation of the computer (i.e. outside of operating system changes) was that I updated the BIOS from version A06 to version A09. Steps to reproduce: 1. Boot LiveCD version 0.3.4.9 or 0.3.4.11 on a Dell Inspiron E1705 with BIOS version A09 installed. 2. Use standard keyboard options, and utilize standard VESA driver at 1024x768 using Forcevideo command. 3. Copy either NTFS or FAT32 partition from internal hard drive to external HDD over USB 2.0. Actual results: The process takes an extremely long time to complete, probably at least four to six hours for a 10GB partition. Expected results: In the past, I have experienced speeds as fast as 15 to 30 minutes for a similar operation on my system. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: Dell A09 bios link: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R160079&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=10432&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=8&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=1&fileid=214240 Dell A08 BIOS link: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R152927&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=10432&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=8&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=1&fileid=203788 Dell A07 BIOS link: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R147712&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=10432&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=8&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=1&fileid=196322 Dell A06 BIOS link: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R143448&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=10432&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=8&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=1&fileid=191453
Just some more symptom information to include: the scanning process is also much slower than it has been in the past. It takes about 10 minutes for every scan, when it starts up, after an operation, etc.
Thank you for the detailed problem report Michael. There are two bugs that have recently been fixed that may address the problems you reported here. The bugs are: Bug #546423 - Optimal block size algorithm appears wrong This bug had a preference for using smaller block sizes when copying/moving and is likely the cause of the slowdown you experienced. This bug fix has been committed to the gnome SVN repository and will be included in the upcoming release of GParted 0.3.9 Bug #351753 - Missing floppy causes loop on scanning devices This bug was related to a problem when the BIOS indicated a floppy drive was present, when in fact no physical floppy device was installed. The fix involved parsing the /proc/partitions file for devices. This bug was fixed and included in GParted 0.3.8 Consequently, I am marking this bug as a duplicate of bug #546423. If the problem you reported is not solved by the above, then please feel free to re-open this bug and add details using the latest version of GParted. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 546423 ***