I've got a system that's been running for quite a while now.  I'm about to add a new drive.  I want to preclear the new drive to burn it in for a while.

 

While the preclear script is running, the system pauses now-and-then.  I have a ton of movies as iso files; playing any of them will pause for 20 seconds or so every 30-60 seconds (just guessing on these times; they're subjective...).  This occurs whether I'm playing the movie on my media center (Patriot Box Office), or on my notebook using VLC.

 

I run preclear in screen, via telnet from my (Win7) notebook.  If I drop out of screen (ctrl-A D) then type ps -AH repeatedly, the ps response also pauses when the movie pauses.

 

If I issue kill -STOP `pidof dd` then the pauses stop occuring - of course, the preclear is paused too.

kill -CONT `pidof dd` continues the preclear.

 

I don't remember this happening when I was preclearing my last set of drives, but that was a long time ago; maybe I wasn't watching movies at that time.

 

I presume this isn't common behavior, is it?  Anyone have any idea why it happens, and what I can do to allow preclearing without these pauses?

 

 

My system is pretty old; only PCI cards.  I tried moving the new drive from a PCI-bus SATA interface onto a motherboard SATA but that didn't change anything.

 

I've attached a system log in case that's helpful.

2011-07-23-2325_syslog.txt

What spec is the machine?

 

The PCI bus might just be overloaded trying to preclear and steam data as well.

Is the drive on the same raid card as the drive the movies are streaming from?

It certainly can be common if you are running off of the motherboard SATA ports or just PCI cards.  I had similar behaviour when I was running on motherboard ports.  Since adding the Supermicro AOC card it doesn't seem to be a problem anymore.

wow!  quick responses!

 

I just realized I forgot to mention I'm running unRaid version 4.7.

 

 

I wondered if the PCI bus was overloaded, too; that's why I moved the drive being precleared to a SATA interface on the motherboard.

It's possible the system is still being overloaded...

 

The machine is old; the motherboard is an Intel D865PERL, 1GB memory.  There's a Promise 300 TX4 with 4 drives on it and some other Silicon Image controller with 2 drives.  One drive on motherboard SATA.  The new drive is also on the motherboard SATA.

The gigabit network card is also PCI.  FWIW I think only the Promise is SATA II; motherboard and SI card are SATA I.

 

The movies are not on the same card the preclear drive is on.

 

Sounds like the system is just overloaded. 

 

I'm planning on upgrading eventually, but it'll have to wait for the budget...  New motherboard means  new CPU and new memory, and new PCI Express controllers...  Can't budget it all right now.  (ah, the days when I was single and had loads of disposable income... 

 

Thanks for the quick responses!