I don't know anything about networks but this should be an easy question


Hydranmenace

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So, I decided I wanted to venture into the world of having a NAS and learning new things. Very frustrating start with Amahi. Unraid is getting my money, hands down.

 

My thought was to re-use old hardware I had laying around because I don't need a massive data store. This isn't a lifestyle choice for me, just a fun thing to try for the experience, and having a cool way to back up personal media, movies, random stuff I download, saved games and mods and that kind of thing.

 

I have unraid up and running, it is doing everything I need it to do and probably a lot more. I'm sure it will just get cooler as I learn and grow into what it's capable of. The thing is I am in the initial stages of moving about 3Tb from a drive in my gaming pc to my nas share (SMB if that matters?) and it is taking AAAAAAGES. Transfer rate is fairly steady at right around 11.5MB/s. So my question is what are the most basic, easy things I can do to speed this up given my old hardware? 

 

Motherboard: m2n61-ax http://www.findlaptopdriver.com/motherboard-m2n61-ax-specs/

Currently has 4 Gb of DDR2 ram. Some of these boards apparently can take 8 Gb, but Dell (this was originally from a Dell Inspiron 531) only ever officially supported 4 so it's hit or miss.

Old Nvidia 8800GTS that I probably don't even need to have in there. I wasn't sure what I would need as I tried different OS solutions and I had it so I put it in.

CPU: AMD Athalon X64 4000+ https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K8/AMD-Athlon 64 X2 4000%2B - ADO4000IAA5DD (ADO4000DDBOX).html

I have three 4Tb WD Red Pro "NASware 3.0" hard drives I found used and cheap for the size still under warranty. WD4003FFBX.

I also had from some very old previous builds because I'm kinda a hardware hoarder and people give me old parts when I upgrade or repair stuff for them: One 1Gb WD Caviar Black, 2 old seagate drives of 500 Gb and 750 Gb, and something like 5 2.5" laptop hard drives ranging from 300 Gb to 750 Gb. This is one reason I really like Unraid. I can cobble these drives together and have them doing something actually useful while being out of the way in another room and don't have to look at them.

I also have a single PNY CS900 SSD coming in at 250 Gb that I figured I can use for a cache drive which will be useful once this initial transfer is done and I am just backing up random files as I download them, yeah?

I also have a 4 port PCI (Not PCI-e) Sata controller. Specifically this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CHBM29K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 which I have not installed yet.

So, I know I am using really outdated stuff here and I'm ok with that. I am not expecting to have blazing fast transfers or backups or anything, but this 11.5 MB/s seems pretty slow to me, and there is probably something relatively easy I can do, fairly inexpensively, to help it out some. As I was writing this I noticed the Ethernet on this old board is rated as 10/100 MB/s. Should I just get a newer card to stick in a PCI-e slot? Recommendations on that, keeping it reasonably cheap?

 

My worry is I will end up spending so much on added cards for more sata ports and better ethernet and whatever else I might want that I may as well just get a cheap B450, find a used really low tier AM4 processor and like 8 Gb of ram and come out spending probably slightly more, but with significantly more capabilities, then sell this old system for $100 or something. Would I be better off that way? Even if so please still recommend good upgrades for the old system if you can.

 

Thank you.

 

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The motherboard you quoted has a NIC that is only capable of 100Mbps, so your transfer speed is being limited by that.   You need to either get a faster NIC (any Intel NIC should be OK) to do it faster over the network. 

 

Alternatively plug the drives directly into the Unraid server bypassing the network.   You could either use any spare SATA ports or use a USB adapter/dock for direct connection and then mount the drives using the Unassigned Devices plugin and do the copy locally within the server.   

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Yeah that's what I thought. Still unsure its worth the sata controller plus new network NIC and whatever else vs just a newer motherboard. Maybe when CPU prices aren't twice what the msrp is on them.

Would this work, do you think? https://www.amazon.com/10Gtek-Gigabit-Ethernet-Converged-Network/dp/B01LXTF48X/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=link+aggregation+network+card&qid=1610223696&sr=8-5

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