Clonezilla moving s...l...o...w

DocGreen

DocGreen

Well-Known Member
Reaction score
44
Location
South Bend, IN
Can anyone explain to me why Clonezilla wanted to take over 10 hours to clone a 160GB HDD (fat32)??

I canceled the operation as soon as I realized the time remaining wasn't dropping and decided to go a different route. Instead of cloning, I just copied the contents to the new drive (formatted in exFAT, because it's an external used on a Mac and I have no clue why the original was FAT32 to begin with)

Unstoppable Copier says it will be finished in under 2 hrs... WTF? lol
 
The drive is a loaner... one of my spares that I'd loaned to a photographer while her's is off at Seagate for data recovery. I'd run a full diag on it before giving it to her to be sure it was good, but I suppose I could run another before I put it back in my pile o' drives. Need to wipe it anyways. ;)
 
Ive used clonezilla alot. It can take a pretty long time to clone a drive. I think its because it is reading every sector of the drive. What I will do is instead of having it read every sector I backup the partitions of the drive instead. This tends to go quicker. I always use expert mode too. Have it skip / not error out on bad sectors. But I will agree it takes a long time to do this.

Incidently, Just the last few days they released a new version of it. Might try that and see how it goes.

coffee
 
DocGreen said:
The drive is a loaner... one of my spares that I'd loaned to a photographer while her's is off at Seagate for data recovery. I'd run a full diag on it before giving it to her to be sure it was good, but I suppose I could run another before I put it back in my pile o' drives. Need to wipe it anyways. ;)
Click to expand...
Ouch! You could have left out the mention of going to Seagate for data recovery. :(

I think I mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again. Test first, then wipe. Just had a drive that we used for a head swap. When we re-assembled, we tested and found about a dozen UNC errors. We wiped and the write to those sectors forced the drive to remap and now the drive tests with no read errors, but will be put on a shelf for parts and not into any type of production scenario. Had we wiped first and then tested, it might have been put into use.
 
coffee said:
Ive used clonezilla alot. It can take a pretty long time to clone a drive. I think its because it is reading every sector of the drive. What I will do is instead of having it read every sector I backup the partitions of the drive instead. This tends to go quicker. I always use expert mode too. Have it skip / not error out on bad sectors. But I will agree it takes a long time to do this.

Incidently, Just the last few days they released a new version of it. Might try that and see how it goes.

coffee
Click to expand...


This clone was abnormally slow... I'm thinking either because the filesystem was FAT32 (not sure that it would matter) or there's something wrong with the drive. I cloned a different drive last night (320GB source to 500GB dest) that took less than an hour. The problem drive I posted about originally was only reading at around 200 MB/min, while the drive I just mentioned was able to read at 2.5 GB/min. Both were WD SATA 3.0 5400RPM drives.


lcoughey said:
Ouch! You could have left out the mention of going to Seagate for data recovery. :(

I think I mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again. Test first, then wipe. Just had a drive that we used for a head swap. When we re-assembled, we tested and found about a dozen UNC errors. We wiped and the write to those sectors forced the drive to remap and now the drive tests with no read errors, but will be put on a shelf for parts and not into any type of production scenario. Had we wiped first and then tested, it might have been put into use.
Click to expand...


Yeah... I went to Seagate, but this was after I first went to 300DDR and they weren't able to recover. Since the drive was still under warranty I decided to go ahead and send it to Seagate to see if they could fix it under warranty, which they would have had it been a firmware issue like I was hoping. It ended up being bad heads, so it's not going to be a free repair, but the cost actually isn't bad at all. $399 for a 1.5 TB including replacement media and no shipping charges.


As for testing/wiping, wiping/testing... I'm using the built-in SecureErase feature, does that have any different effect on a bad drive? Not sure which order I'd used, but I'll try to remember to test first in the future. Thanks for the tip. ;)
 
Last edited:
Wow! I have never heard of Seagate or any reputable data recovery lab do a recovery from a drive with bad heads for $399. That is amazing!
 
  • Like
Reactions: CLC
Well, it was a Seagate drive that was under warranty. Although, technically the warranty expired before I sent the drive to them, but since my original contact to them was before the expiration, they still considered it an in-warranty recovery. I'll see if I can dig up the pricing details they sent me and post them for reference.

By the way, I decided to go to Seagate because I couldn't find any techs locally that do L3 recovery... everyone here just farms the work out. What are your prices like, for future reference, and do you do L3 yourselves?
 
Last edited:
Having another very slow Clonezilla job... I'm very confused.

I'm imaging the same 320GB HDD from earlier, the one that was running at 2.5GB/min, only now I'm imaging it to a file on an ext hdd instead of cloning it. For some reason, it's not gotten over 300MB/min.

Here's a thought... I did put that 160GB drive back in for testing while the 320GB was imaging. Could it be that simply having the 160GB in is slowing everything down? Could it be causing a problem with my controller maybe? (Tests came back clean for that 160GB btw...)
 
DocGreen said:
Having another very slow Clonezilla job... I'm very confused.

I'm imaging the same 320GB HDD from earlier, the one that was running at 2.5GB/min, only now I'm imaging it to a file on an ext hdd instead of cloning it. For some reason, it's not gotten over 300MB/min.

Here's a thought... I did put that 160GB drive back in for testing while the 320GB was imaging. Could it be that simply having the 160GB in is slowing everything down? Could it be causing a problem with my controller maybe? (Tests came back clean for that 160GB btw...)
Click to expand...

Perhaps the external drive is usb and thus running slower? I always do imaging from sata ports / esata.
 
So how long DOES Clonezilla normally take for say a 500 GB 7200 RPM drive?

I am moving towards cloning to image using CloneZilla and away from cloning with a docking station (drive to drive), but I just tossed in a 250 GB (130 GB consumed) and it is estimating 8 hours (as opposed to 1 hour in the dock).

Safer, but SOOOoooo much slower.
 
Clonezilla's speed is dependent on the buses in use, and the drives.

A full 500gb drive will take a day to replicate. Far less if it's an SSD, but all of this depends on where you're putting the images too... Another thing is the compression involved. Are you using a multicore system? Did you select a multicore friendly compression?

I've got a pretty good feel for how my gear runs, so when it feels slow to me it's always because the media is busted.
 
just wow - came in this morning and we are at 16 hrs. elapsed with 6 more estimated to go. For 160 GB on a 320 GB drive? WTH?

I will look at some of the compression options and maybe try this in an old xeon-based server (2008r2).

Clonezilla is bus dependent and what? CPU dependent? RAM play a role?

I was looking for safety in cloning client drives (not damaged ones) to an image, but 24 hours... no thanks!
 
I couldn't find the final invoice from Seagate, but I did find their quote. (It was 5 years ago, after all)

$399 was the cost for in-warranty repair. That may not have been clear in the above post.
(old information blacked out, in case you were wondering)
upload_2018-2-21_1-19-48.png
 
Ahh, definitely. Quotes are one thing, final invoices another.

The data recovery industry has gotten a bad rap overtime due to companies always using a "low hook-in quote" and then slam you with a "sorry, the damage is a lot of worse [often exacerbated BS], therefore here is your mighty invoice". And if you decline the service OR the data is unrecoverable, here are such and such fees. Not to mention the customer service at the big companies, which is pathetic. It's like to talking to useless salesy robots. Might as well talk to Siri or Alexa, haha.

Companies like Luke's RecoveryForce, Jared's Data-Medics and us, at Data Recovery Guru, are fighting really hard to bring high quality service, expertise on all types of recoveries and value to customers & partners, along with transparency, honesty, reasonable prices without any hidden fees. It is a tough challenge, as most partners' perception of DR companies have been impacted negatively, but we are not given up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Kitten Kong
Hirens 13 - Now released
2
Replies
31
Views
17K
eloria
E
Back
Top