New install really slow transfer speeds

[Lacehim]

Hi,

 

Total noobie with unraid, but i'm finding my way around and struggling to get a decent network speed to copy my data over to the server.

 

Hardware is HP N40L Microsever, 2Gb ECC RAM with 2x1Tb Samsung HD103UJ Hardrives, and the 250Gb drive that came with the HP (Seagate using HP firmware I think).  I've got 1x1Tb assigned to parity, but not turned on, just waiting for my data to copy over first before turning it on (I remember reading that with parity on it's can be slower).  Only 1x1Tb and the 250Gb drive are active in the array.

 

Copying from my Win7 PC to the N40L is very very slow about 200KB/s using explorer.  A test video I tried to copy 135Mb was going to take 15mins!!!!  My old buffalo was faster, and it crawled along at 12MB/s so I'm assuming something is wrong somewhere.  Tried a new network Cable, copying from a difference harddrive on the PC, to a different harddrive on the server.  I found the 250Gb ran slightly faster at 200KB/s.  I've tried another Win7 laptop and same result.  The PC & Server are on the same Netgear GS608 switch which is connected to my Billion 7800N.

 

I installed unraid 5.0 Beta 14, and installed unmenu, that's it.  My network runs on fixed IP.

 

Can anyone suggest where to start looking?  Just remember total noobie with unraid, I know how to access the web interface, and via telnet though.

 

Thank you

 

Edit: added syslog

sysloglacehim.txt

[Lacehim]

I've been digging around trying to answer this question and ran a ifconfig eth0 via telnet.

 

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

RX packets:171185 errors:15643 dropped:17 overruns:0 frame:12206

TX packets:147881 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:242848805 (231.5 MiB)  TX bytes:14043938 (13.3 MiB)

Interrupt:18

 

RX is full of errors.

 

I moved my PC & Server over to the Billion, and turned off the netgear switch, and my speeds where well up to just under 20MB/s areas (lots of small files) and slightly faster for big single 1.5Gb files.  No errors.

 

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

RX packets:697733 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:128204 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:1026139278 (978.6 MiB)  TX bytes:9800715 (9.3 MiB)

Interrupt:18

 

Problem solved?

[nickcardwell]

for windows 7 , i also had to:

disable remote differential compression

run “netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled”

and disable flow control on the NIC

 

speeds went much faster.

 

[gordongraham]

Sorry for the threadjack OP, but I recently disabled the remote differential compression in Win 7 which (seems to have) fixed an error I was having where any transfer would hang on "calculating" the first time it was initiated.

 

Nick, can you clarify what you mean with your second two points above? ie where would the command be run (set in go script in unraid?) and also, which NIC did you disable flow control, unraid or Win7 machine and how? I am running an HP Microserver N40L (4.7 Stable, 2GB RAM) and a Win 7 box, all now through gigabit and struggling to reach above 25MB/s even with a 7200rpm cache drive in use. Wondering if maybe any tweaks could speed it up. Jumbo frames are not an option at the moment as the NIC in the HP doesnt support them and im not keen enough to put in a new NIC at present!

[nickcardwell]

run “netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled”

and disable flow control on the NIC

 

all done on the windows 7 box.

 

start >run >cmd

type in netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

 

Then disable flow control on the windows 7 machine.

 

Doing the above, im getting 60Mb/s (with cache disk)

 

nick

 

[Lacehim]

Gordongraham,

Found instructions for setting flow control.

 

On your computer, click the Start button , click Control Panel, type view network connections in the search box, and then click View network connections.

Right-click your network connection, and then click Properties.

 

On the Networking tab, click Configure.

 

Click the Advanced tab, and in the list under Property, click Flow Control.

 

Under Value, choose an option to enable/disable flow control.

 

I'm going to give it a go too, so thanks for asking. I'm getting similar speeds, but only running the non cache version at the moment. If everything I want to do works I'll buy it and use the 250gb drive as cache.

 

Also re my Netgear switch uses jumbo frames by default, maybe that was the problem if the HP doesn't support it and hence loads of errors. Might investigate that! Anyone know how to turn jumbo frames off on a network? The switch is a basic unmanaged switch.

[chip]

This is great info - I added it to my little guide as I just setup a temp unraid system and keep looking for any tips.

 

Also how to turn off RDC

 

http://www.windowsreference.com/windows-7/slow-network-file-copy-issues-in-windows-7-caused-by-remote-differential-compression/

[gordongraham]

I did those two things, ran "netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled" and disabled flow control. Neither seems to have had any positive effect on my xfer speeds. Still maxing out at 25MB/s write, 50MB/s read.

 

Im guessing there must be some other bottleneck in my setup.

 

Cache drive is 80GB 7200rpm WD, both ends gigabit NIC, running through a gigabit router, cat5e cables throughout. Anyone any thoughts on how to test where the bottleneck is?

[Lacehim]

I got the same results gg.

 

flowcontrol was already disabled for me, and I then ran that cmd command, and also followed chips link information to turn it off with the check box.  I'm not sure if I had to do both, but did anyway.

 

I got no improvement.  I'm running 2 drives, no cache, and I haven't turned parity on yet, and I'm getting around 21MB/s at the moment copying over about 400Gb of video files.  It is faster than my old Buffalo Linkstation which maxed out at 12MB/s which everything turned off so I'm not complaining.  I'm not sure if adding a cache drive will make it faster though.

 

Is 20MB/s write speed any good, I'm not sure.  I might do a search to see what others are averaging.

[gordongraham]

There are plenty of threads with average speeds covering many different setups.

 

From what I understand, adding a cache drive only benefits xfer speed by delaying the parity calculation until later (default 3:40am when the array is less likely to be in active use). Since you're not currently running a parity drive I doubt adding a cache drive for your current setup would show any improvement.

 

Im going to double check that all my cables are at least cat5e tonight. Im pretty sure they are, but just another thing to rule out.

 

Writing to the server at 25MB/s isnt brutally slow, but it pains me that I should be able to get higher with my current hardware!