Speeds seem a little slow.

[Namtaro]

I don't remember my hard drive's speeds before, but they seem a little slow now.

I have a few 2TB drives in my File Server not in any Raid and when transferring a file to them, they're hitting at most 20-30MB/s. Reading off them to my main rig will get 100+ MB/s.

Feels slower then I remembered, but I haven't written anything to them in a while...

Oh the drives are WD 2TB Green Drives. 64mb cache I believe.

[Odanez]

What is the file server hardware-wise? What file system? Reading at 100+MB/s and writing at 20-30MB/s excludes any network problems.

When was the last time you wiped the drives on the file server, how long has it been running (since first setup) and how much data do you store to it? I have noticed with my NAS, that once I filled it to over 95% a couple of times, the read and write speeds deteriorate over time, my guess is fragmentation, although the drives are formatted with some kind of journaling file system. So what you are experiencing might be expected when it has been running for a long time and starting to get fragmented.

[Carozzeria]

Those sound like good healthy numbers for a WD Green. 5400RPM right?

[bravotsx]

their write speeds aren't great...but they're not 20-30MB/s slow..especially for sequential transfers. are they close to being filled up?

[Namtaro]

I just reinstalled XP on it so it's a fresh copy. Defragged the harddrives weekly too so I don't think that's the problem.

Yes it's a 5400RPM WD Green drive. I just tried writing to the backup drives and they're hitting max 20-30MB/s as well. The other two drives are 500GB 5400RPM WD Green Drives.


The 2TB drives have around 300-500GB free while the 500GB drives have 300GB free... I don't believe it's them filling up that's the problem.

Oh and it's running on some duo-core, P5K motherboard 4GB ram and some random GPU.

Additional Comment:

EDIT : It's defently a network problem somewhere. I tried an internal file transfer and it was around 30 seconds to transfer a 2GB movie file around from one harddrive to another. I can't pin point the exact speeds since XP doesn't show it... but when I transfer a file on the server to another computer it's getting 100MB/s and is done in 30 seconds. When I transfer from another computer TO the server it's getting 20-30MB/s and takes around 2-3 minutes...

[Odanez]

If it is a network problem, see if you have your jumbo frames set correctly. You are on a gigabit network, right? Make sure that in the settings of the network cards on both machines, jumbo frames are activated and set to the biggest size possible. Also look under MTU if you cannot find jumbo frames, otherwise google is your friend.

[ORL]

So many factors here.

First what kind of Router/Switch/Hubs etc are you using? Do you have a huge collision domain with many competing devices? How are the interfaces configured speed wise? What kind of cabling are you using? (Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6e?)

Give me an idea of what all is running on this hardware and all. I don't need specific specs of the rigs but more so the NICs and models of any Switching Routing equipment, and anything else the cabling is interfaced to. I understand this is most likely a personal network and more likely than not small... but I have seen some personal networks in homes that put shame to some businesses.

[Namtaro]

Yes, very small as it's a personal network.
Not sure what a collision domain with other devices is though.

Router - Asus RT-N66U
Cables - All Cat 5e

Using the onboard NIC for the server and I suspect this may be the problem? (ASUS P5K)
Using the onboard NIC on my main computer. (Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4P)
Using TeraCopy to transfer files.
I've tested on large Blu-Ray rips (16GB) to ISO files (8GB) and it's all the same giving me 20-30MB/s.

For testing, I just have the router connected to the two computers and I'm getting the same results.
Normally the router would have my Printer, a switch (http://ncix.com/products/?sku=36825&...cture=TRENDnet), Laptop, and PS3 connected.

[Odanez]

So it's not the path between the pc and file server, but rather the network configuration of one end. I am not 100% sure, but I suspect that the slower write speeds to the file server is caused due to your PC's MTU (jumbo frames) as I have mentioned above is not set optimally. Set the MTU to 9000 bytes in your network card settings and see if that helps. Also check the MTU settings on the fileserver side.

[Namtaro]

Upon further research, it seems that the onboard network card for the P5K has a ton of problems, so I'll try buying a new NIC and see what happens.

[ORL]

Well don't go buying quite yet mate. It could be something as simple as a configuration issue.

Really quick move your cables to different ports and record the benchmarks again. Sometimes if there are to many twists undone in a cable the crosstalk can downgrade the connection to 100BaseT instead of 1000BaseT. Even if the cables look good sometimes frequent moving can cause disruptions of this forming although rare.

Once you do this we can run some tests on your interfaces and see whats up. Just want to attack what we could of Layer 1 first!

Next sometimes within windows the OS will downgrade the media connection without you ever knowing. What OS are you running so I can give you directions on how to check everything?

In general this is roughly it....

Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections

Open properties of your network interface.

Now you can force it to utilized a speed on the interface but this may not work if your Layer1 (Physical) has issues. Do this via the the Link Speed and Duplex or Media Type options that will be displayed.


Also as previously mentioned you can directly adjust your "Jumbo Packet" settings right here.


Let me know if you get a result from here!

[Namtaro]

Tested different ports and cables, same speeds.
Main rig is running Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit. The other box is running Windows XP Pro 32Bit.
Changed the 'Duplex' to 1.0 Gbps Full Duplex on both computers. Also changed the Jumbo Packet on both computers and router to 9k.

Seems to have boost things a little as I'm getting minimum 30Mb/s speeds with the average 30-39MB/s while transferring a 8GB ISO file.


Do you think having a 7 year old IDE harddrive as the OS drive on the old computer might have anything to do with the speeds? Just trying to eliminate all the possibilities here.

[ORL]

I wouldn't think it does. But remember a chain is only as good as the weakest link. If that hard drive is full and is what your trying to transmit from its quite possible. Even general aging could slow you down, yes.

I know its not the cause but turning off some features that you do not need can help boost this if anything by the most marginal amounts as well. Such as Indexing. Since its purpose is a file server I assume you know where your putting everything. This among good old fashion defrags and cleaning the junk will help a bit.

Your router is protecting you from having a collision issue. Sometimes when you use Hubs etc having multiple devices on a network only distributed by a hub can really leave you hurting during a file transfer. This was my first thought.

Can you attach a laptop or something else to your network and backwards diagnose the problem? Move files to each destination from a known reliable connection. This will help narrow down the exact culprit.

[Jahova]

Fragmenting? This is why Linux is the better choice for servers. No fragmenting occurs. Free of the fragmenting heck. The number of Linux users grows at the same rate as the number of Internet users. Strange, eh?

Try replacing the network cables. If you make your own, Amazon.com has really good prices on CAT6e and CAT7, also STP and UTP. I bought 100 feet of CAT7 Shielded for like $25 shipped. Nothing wrong with going overboard on cable.

[ORL]

Jahova is very right. I never do any installs these days for friends, families, or even companies with less than Cat6e Cabling. Tech updates fast and overbuilding is always better. Especially with the marginal differences in prices between the cable types. Although if you do not have a set of RJ45 Crimpers this can add a bit of an expense to the list. You can get a decent one for 40 bucks or so, go to cheap and sometimes the crimps suffer. The 2 crimp tools I have are made by Sentinel. But I think they were about 200 bucks each so I do not recommend that route for casual. Network Cabling and programming is my life line.