Hi All -

Very much fumbling through this but I've recently moved hardware for my unraid server from an old junky box to a new (to me) Dell R710 server.  I've gone through the difficult of getting an H200 card and flashing it to IT mode and updated the SBR to work in the integrated slot.

 

I've moved over my unraid boot stick and all six disks and the array is up and running, but I'm seeing some very slow speeds as I am trying to empty a disk to replace it and I'm not sure where to start.

I noticed the slowness when I was using the unbalance plugin - here's an example of what type of speed was being reported in that process.

 

 

It seems like that plugin is a little unreliable though at reporting transfer metrics since the elapsed time is way off, so next I tried to get stats at the terminal and got this:

 

root@UNRAID:/mnt/disk2/VIDEO/Kids# pv -pra /mnt/disk2/VIDEO/Kids/Cinderella\ \[2015\].mkv > /mnt/disk1/VIDEO/Kids/Cinderella\ \[2015\].mkv
[ 246KiB/s] [23.0MiB/s] [=====================================================================================================================================================>                       ] 87%

 

These speeds seem very slow to me but maybe it's supposed to take several days to clear the contents of a 2TB drive?  Mover is off, no parity check is in process - not sure what else might be contending other than two docker images for transmission and plex.

 

I've got diagnostics as well if that helps: 

 

Please don't assume anything - there could be several very rookie missteps in this process that I've done.  I'm not good with linux and I'm not good with hardware either

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions...

Edited December 10, 20214 yr by falloutboy12

2 minutes ago, falloutboy12 said:

trying to empty a disk to replace it

Why? Replace will rebuild the contents.

Why are you still on ReiserFS?

4 minutes ago, trurl said:

Why? Replace will rebuild the contents.

I'm using the clear then remove method to preserve parity.

Just now, falloutboy12 said:

I'm using the clear then remove method to preserve parity.

 

8 minutes ago, falloutboy12 said:

trying to empty a disk to replace it

You said you were replacing it, not removing it.

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

 

You said you were replacing it, not removing it.

right - I'm out of disk slots for my license - I'm moving all the files off this disk, swapping in the new disk so I can preclear and all that which will be several days from what I can remember.  As for why I'm on Reiser, I think that was the default when I set up this server ten years ago?

12 minutes ago, falloutboy12 said:

As for why I'm on Reiser, I think that was the default when I set up this server ten years ago?

Of course but I was asking why you are STILL on Reiser.

 

12 minutes ago, falloutboy12 said:

I'm moving all the files off this disk, swapping in the new disk so I can preclear and all that which will be several days from what I can remember. 

You don't have to have the original disk installed to do all that. You can just do it without starting the array, or even start the array with the disk unassigned though that would mean you have no protection while emulating the missing disk since you only have single parity.

 

Personally I don't bother with preclear.

On second thought, maybe your approach is a good one, as long as you take the opportunity to format the new empty disk as XFS. Then you could start the process of emptying another disk to that one so you could reformat it to XFS, etc.

Right - so that gets me back to my slowness question - as I'm facing the prospect of moving several TB several times to try to convert these disks, the rates I'm getting right now are going to make this take several months if I'm doing the math right...

 

I don't use unBALANCE, having always worked with mc (Midnight Commander) since Unraid 4.7

 

If I understand those screenshots, you are moving from disk2 to disk1. Is that correct?

I don't see any I/O errors in syslog. Are there any in the Errors column on Main - Array Devices?

 

Do any of your disks have SMART warnings on the Dashboard page?

Disk2 has quite a few reallocated, maybe that's why you chose it to replace. Parity has 45 reported uncorrect, probably OK for now. I notice parity and disk1 are both SMR disks, which may not perform as well in some situations, but I have several in my array also.

 

Of course, moving files between disks on the array requires writing destination (and updating parity) then deleting source (and updating parity). Might be quicker to copy instead of move, then you could just reformat the source disk to get it ready for clearing.

 

 

Mostly moving Disk 2 to Disk 3 since there are errors on a couple disks:

 

#ATTRIBUTE NAMEFLAGVALUEWORSTTHRESHOLDTYPEUPDATEDFAILEDRAW VALUE

Parity:

187Reported uncorrect0x0032055055000Old ageAlwaysNever45

Disk 1:

199UDMA CRC error count0x003e200200000Old ageAlwaysNever4

Disk 2:

5Reallocated sector count0x0033095095036Pre-failAlwaysNever236

 

Main Errors column shows all zeros.

Edited December 9, 20214 yr by falloutboy12

Disk1 (and parity) are SMR, they can be much slower than CMR disks.

The CRC errors on disk1 are just (old?) connection issues no need to worry about that one.

OK so until I get the parity drive off SMR, I can expect to see 20/mb and under?  I didn't realize it was that bad and I got those drives before I knew about the SMR problem.  Time to spend more money I guess...

4 minutes ago, falloutboy12 said:

OK so until I get the parity drive off SMR, I can expect to see 20/mb and under? 

It can vary, but yes, under 20MB/s is normal, I get as low as 5MB/s for a few seconds/minutes with one of my SMR based arrays.

Another factor is the speed at which ReiserFS deletes files. I always recommend copying instead of moving if you are planning to erase the source disk anyway. 2 reasons, you can compare the results of the copy if desired, and ReiserFS file deletions can take eons, especially if the filesystem is larger than 2TB and has seen a good amount of file activity over its lifetime.

 

When ReiserFS was current many moons ago, I would routinely copy the entire content of regularly used drives to other drives, allowing me to format a drive fresh. A newly formatted ReiserFS filesystem is MUCH faster than an experienced one.

I should button this up - replaced all SMR disks and I'm entirely on XFS now and have seen a much better speed and all around more functional server.  Thanks for all the help!