Turn off virus program to speed Retrospect 6 cloning

Jun 25, '04 09:41:00AM

Contributed by: Norm Nager

Some users have suggested that temporarily turning off an antivirus program allows Retrospect to run faster in creating coded file backups. No specifics on time savings were found nor did I see anything on the larger-scale operation of using Retrospect's "Duplicate" feature to clone a volume over a comparable volume on a second internal hard drive.

Two duplication runs were made on the same 733-mhz G4 with 1 GB RAM, cloning 6.87 GB from a 28.5 GB partition on Drive A over a four-day earlier clone on Drive B. OS 10.3.4, Retrospect 6.193 and Norton AntiVirus (NAV) 9.0.2 were used.

With NAV turned off, Retrospect logged an average performance speed of of 11.6 mb per minute while scanning both drive's volumes and then deleting and overwriting files and privileges on the cloned volume. With NAV turned on, Retrospect performed at 7.3 mb per minute.

With NAV disabled, it took 15 minutes, 20 seconds to complete 2455 files or a total of 171 mb. With NAV enabled, it took 26 minutes, 19 seconds to complete 2432 files or 187.4 mb.

No time is lost in disabling and re-enabling NAV if a simple AppleScript is made that records turning off NAV, turning on Retrospect, running a customized Retrospect duplication script and then turning on NAV.

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