Spreading data across all disks increasing performance

[Hellomynameisleo]

Would spreading my files and folders seperated on all disk improve the read/write performance?

If I was to copy different files to multiple drives at the same it would spread out the work load and increase the write speed, similarly with reading multiple files but stored on different disks. Does it work this way or is it still the same performance if I was copying/reading to a single drive?

Edited March 11 by Hellomynameisleo

[JorgeB]

If parity is installed write performance will be worse, because of the overlapping writes to parity, read performance can be better if reading simultaneously files from multiple disks.

[Hellomynameisleo]

12 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

If parity is installed write performance will be worse, because of the overlapping writes to parity, read performance can be better if reading simultaneously files from multiple disks.

If I have 0 partiy disk would spreading the files/folder result in improved performance? I'm using UNRAID as my main backup server so I didn't put parity disks

[JorgeB]

57 minutes ago, Hellomynameisleo said:

If I have 0 partiy disk would spreading the files/folder result in improved performance?

Yes, as much as as many disks you are writing to at the same time, source allowing of course.

[apandey]

Just remember that unraid doesn't stripe the files across disks, so a file only exists on one single disk. Any multi disk read/write will only gain a speedup if there are multiple concurrent clients to separate files 

[Hellomynameisleo]

7 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Yes, as much as as many disks you are writing to at the same time, source allowing of course.

Is there a way to setup unraid so it will distribute files across all drives evenly like ZFS does? I imagine the more drives I have the more the I/O performance if setup like this similar to ZFS adding more vdevs if I am correct? I use mostly small file reads and writes transfers.

[JorgeB]

16 hours ago, Hellomynameisleo said:

Is there a way to setup unraid so it will distribute files across all drives evenly like ZFS does?

ZFS doesn't distribute files, it stripes based on blocks for the drives in the pool, if you want that best to wait for v6.12 and use a zfs pool instead of the array.