Hoping someone can shed some light on this issue before I throw my server off my 10th floor balcony onto the concrete pavement below..

 

Running a Dell PowerEdge 800 (P4 3.4Ghz, 1GB of RAM) and 2x500GB SATA drives (1 maxtor and 1 Seagate) that previously had Win2003 Server on it. Just an FYI, transfers with 2003 were fine (i was using different HDs though, 2x80 in RAID0).

 

Anyway, I'll post a result of a dd I did from my ubuntu machine to the unRAID server, both are connected to a GigE switch (linksys SD2005). It should be noted that my unRAID server is mounted to /mnt/vault on my linux machine.

 

WRITE

stokkes@Blackrider:~$ dd if=/home/stokkes/test.mkv of=/mnt/vault/test.mkv
2251690+1 records in
2251690+1 records out
1152865709 bytes (1.2 GB) copied, 371.672 seconds, 3.1 MB/s

 

READ

stokkes@Blackrider:~$ dd if=/home/vault/test.mkv of=/tmp/test.mkv
2251690+1 records in
2251690+1 records out
1152865709 bytes (1.2 GB) copied, 72.0651 seconds, 16.0 MB/s

 

If I test the write speed when doing a telnet, here are my results (which are pretty good):

 

root@VAULT:/mnt/user/VAULT# dd if=/mnt/user/VAULT/test.mkv of=/dev/null
2251690+1 records in
2251690+1 records out
1152865709 bytes (1.2 GB) copied, 22.8794 seconds, 50.4 MB/s

 

So something is going wonky with the network and I'm not sure what it is 3.0MB/s write speed is simply not acceptable, even 16 MB/s read speed, although not horribly bad, isn't very acceptable either. Write should be atleast 10 and read 20-25

 

Thanks for any suggestions, I'm pulling my hair out on this one. Maybe my tests are flawed?

 

A couple of things:

 

1. Post your syslog.  Search for instructions

2. Tell us more about your hardware - NIC chip, etc.

 

 

Bill

Ok..

 

Here's my syslog: http://stokkes.com/syslog

 

As for my specs, It's a Dell PowerEdge 800 server running a P4 3.2Ghz, 1GB ram, NIC is Broadcom BCM5721 10/100/1000. It's an intel motherboard, but probably something generic, definitely not an Asus or MSI or anything like that.

Hard drives are:

1) Maxtor DiamondMax 10 500GB (parity)

2) Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB

 

I've been doing some tests, trying to figure this out all morning and I'm out of options, I don't know what else to do. It's pretty bad when I can transfer the file in the same amount of time over WiFi as I can over GigE

 

 

I'm having the same problem.  I just copied a movie from my unRAID server to my HTPC.  The transfer started out about 3.89 MB/sec and built up (LOL) to 5.19 MB/sec - according to Vista's Task Manager.

 

I have a fairly new Dell with a fresh install (as of Monday) of Vista Ultimate.

 

The on-board NIC is Intel 82566DC Gigabit Network Connection.  I just updated the driver to 9.10.8.0 dated 8/30/2007

 

This is connected to a Gigabit switch which in turn is connected to my unRAID server.  Network cables are CAT 6.

 

The unRAID server runs on an older ASUS PBG8X Deluxe which has a BroadCom Gigabit on-board.

 

The other annoying thing is that my unRAID server rarely shows up in my Network view but the mapped drives work fine...

 

 

Stokkes - Your syslog and hardware look fine, no obvious reasons for slow performance.  You are getting full SATA II and gigabit performance as far as I can tell, and your first parity sync finished with an average speed of 50.1 MB/sec, quite nominal for an all SATA300 system with few drives.  I would expect an 'hdparm -tT' speed test would give results in the 70's MB/sec.  With similar hardware, I get 10 MB/sec or better write speed, to an almost full unRAID disk, which is slower than writing to an empty disk.

 

I'm not yet very proficient with Linux, and this may not be relevant, but I confess to being a little confused by the Read and Write examples you gave.  It looks like the Write was from /home/stokkes/ to /mnt/vault/, and the Read was from /home/vault/ to /tmp/ ?  I'm not sure what is being measured.

 

boyce1 - Your problem sounds like the Vista read problem, mentioned in several threads elsewhere.  There are many reports of Vista users having extremely slow read performance from any networked drive.  Try copying a similar movie from another Windows computer to your Vista HTPC.  If your test is much faster from the non-unRAID machine, then it sounds like an unRAID issue and I suggest starting your own thread and include your syslog.  As to your unRAID server rarely showing up in the Network view, that seems quite unusual, since the mapped drives are working.  Perhaps a very slow refresh problem in the Network view?

 

The soon-to-be-available Vista release is supposed to fix poor file transfer speeds.  Whether or not this addresses this specific type of file transfer is a question I can't answer.

 

 

Bill

 

I'm not yet very proficient with Linux, and this may not be relevant, but I confess to being a little confused by the Read and Write examples you gave.  It looks like the Write was from /home/stokkes/ to /mnt/vault/, and the Read was from /home/vault/ to /tmp/ ?  I'm not sure what is being measured.

 

 

His read and write copies look correct to me.  He isn't using the same location for both of the not-Unraid pieces, but they are both on his "PC".  However, the telnet piece confuses me though it looks like is moving files within the Unraid, not across the network.  Maybe I haven't had enough coffee ....

 

 

Bill

I did a bit of poking around in google and there seems to be some issues with that particular broadcom chip and Linux.  I suggest buying/borrowing a different GigE card to see if the problem goes away.

 

 

Bill

The soon-to-be-available Vista release is supposed to fix poor file transfer speeds

 

Billped: in case you mean a new release of unRAID, is there a more detailed announcement of this somewhere on the site? Or, do you mean Vista SP1?

Vista SP1

hey all,  as you knowfrom the other board I have been fighting this for a while. I can now confirm that this not only is a vista bug, but it is fixed in sp1 rc1.

 

I went from 3MB/sec to 40MB/sec on the same hardware.

 

Hope this helps some of you!

Yes, well, I'm not using vista or XP

 

This is all *NIX boxes (unRAID, Ubuntu, OSX)..

 

Grrrrrrrr.....

Have you tried a different GigE NIC yet?

 

 

Bill

My plan is to go pick one up tomorrow at BestBuy, unfortunately, my choices are limited, they only have a D-Link in stock (DGE-530T), so i'm hoping it works (if not i'll just return it).

 

I had two more concerns today when copying a file over the network (8.7GB file).

 

First error:

cp: writing `/mnt/vault/test.mkv': Input/output error

 

when I retried, I got:

`test.mkv' -> `/mnt/vault/test.mkv'
File size limit exceeded (core dumped)

 

Not good.

 

 

Stokkes

 

I had similar errors when I mixed Seagates and Maxtor drives. Both were listed as 500 gig. As long as I had the Seagate as the Parity drive and only Seagates for data, all was well. Once I added a few 500 Gig Maxtors, I started having slower network and errors like yours.

 

When I reconfigured the system, so that one of the newer Maxtors was Parity, all those problems went away.... I noticed your post mentions the Maxtor as parity. So maybe in your case the Seagate is the larger drive. Maybe it is a cache issue...

 

Check the main Unraid screen and see if the bytes/ disk size column are the same. I suspect the geometry is slightly different, and despite the fact that both appear to be the same, they are not.

 

Frys has a generic card that appears to work well.

 

 

Hope this helps you get it all together.

 

 

 

First error:

 

Code:

cp: writing `/mnt/vault/test.mkv': Input/output error

 

when I retried, I got:

 

Code:

`test.mkv' -> `/mnt/vault/test.mkv'

File size limit exceeded (core dumped)

 

 

 

 

I've attached an image...

 

The maxtor/seagate drives are identical in terms of size (you'll see from the image), so I doubt that would be the case. Good idea nonetheless.

 

I'm thinking I may just do a linux software raid (using mdadm) at this point. Things seem a bit flakey and I'm worried that if I copy all my data to the unRaid server that I'd have to spend hours doing hash checks to make sure there weren't any CRC errors while copying.

 

hey all,  as you knowfrom the other board I have been fighting this for a while. I can now confirm that this not only is a vista bug, but it is fixed in sp1 rc1.

 

I went from 3MB/sec to 40MB/sec on the same hardware.

 

Hope this helps some of you!

 

i also just installed vista sp1 and the transfer speeds went from 6mb reads too 45mb  write speeds are the same also.