[geeks] windows backup software

[Joshua Boyd]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 01:21:17PM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> On 03/21/13 18:11, Mouse wrote:
> >> Its 2013 and I find it amazing how many backup programs are stuck
> >> with 80s level interfaces, no support for multiple cores,
> > 
> > What possible use could multiple cores be?  Unless it's truly
> > spectacularly badly designed, it will be I/O bound anyway, no?
> 
> Well, example:  thread 1 actually streams file data to the backup
> destination, while threads 2-n scan distinct physical volumes to
> determine which files thread 1 should copy.

If it truly is IO bound, then you don't need multiple cores for that.
You could have 2 threads on a single core run just as quickly, or even
one thread and use asynchronous IO.

Even hashing, compression, and crypto, which would be obvious things to
pipeline with threads, are likely to IO bottle neck before running out
of CPU power, even if your IO can support multiple GB/s.

If you have a system where lack of multi-core support in your backup
software is truly the bottleneck, I'm very impressed.