November 27, 2025Nov 27 Hi all,I'm trialling Unraid 7.2.2 on an old HP N54L Microserver, 16GB ECC Ram, SAS2008-IT controller. I fitted 4x2TB HDDs which are old and not entirely reliable apparently but they were working ok with TrueNAS on the same machine. I'm just testing Unraid to decide what to install in the end.I think I've managed to create an array of drives and I can access it from macOS. However when I start copying files, I see 100% network activity for a few seconds and then it stops, then a minute later I see another burst of activity and then it stops. Eventually the copy fails altogether. I would like to find out what's going on, can someone point me to the right direction please?ThanksTony
November 27, 2025Nov 27 Author Thanks.I tried again, it didn't fail but it's been hours and it's barely moving. I hope this is enough to highlight the problem. I stopped the copy just before extracting the diagnostic package which is attached. Thanks again n54l-diagnostics-20251127-1515.zip
November 27, 2025Nov 27 Community Expert There's nothing relevant logged, suggesting more of an external issue. Post the results of a single stream iperf test in one direction, then the other one (-R)
November 27, 2025Nov 27 Author From PC to NAStony@Antonios-Mini ~ % iperf3 -c 192.168.0.216 Connecting to host 192.168.0.216, port 5201 [ 5] local 192.168.0.186 port 52036 connected to 192.168.0.216 port 5201 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 107 MBytes 892 Mbits/sec [ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 107 MBytes 899 Mbits/sec [ 5] 2.00-3.01 sec 106 MBytes 888 Mbits/sec [ 5] 3.01-4.00 sec 106 MBytes 894 Mbits/sec [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 107 MBytes 897 Mbits/sec [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 81.0 MBytes 680 Mbits/sec [ 5] 6.00-7.01 sec 107 MBytes 893 Mbits/sec [ 5] 7.01-8.00 sec 79.6 MBytes 668 Mbits/sec [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 106 MBytes 893 Mbits/sec [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 106 MBytes 893 Mbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 1013 MBytes 850 Mbits/sec sender [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 1013 MBytes 849 Mbits/sec receiver From NAS to PCtony@Antonios-Mini ~ % iperf3 -c 192.168.0.216 -R Connecting to host 192.168.0.216, port 5201 Reverse mode, remote host 192.168.0.216 is sending [ 5] local 192.168.0.186 port 52163 connected to 192.168.0.216 port 5201 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 109 MBytes 915 Mbits/sec [ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 110 MBytes 921 Mbits/sec [ 5] 2.00-3.01 sec 110 MBytes 916 Mbits/sec [ 5] 3.01-4.00 sec 109 MBytes 915 Mbits/sec [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 110 MBytes 916 Mbits/sec [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 109 MBytes 916 Mbits/sec [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 111 MBytes 926 Mbits/sec [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 108 MBytes 910 Mbits/sec [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 110 MBytes 918 Mbits/sec [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 110 MBytes 921 Mbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 1.07 GBytes 920 Mbits/sec 7666 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.07 GBytes 917 Mbits/sec receiver I have another NAS on the same switch, on Open Media Vault. I run some transfer and noticed a similar behaviour so I turned off all my IP-based camera and the OMV NAS started transferring at full speed with no glitches, see belowThen I tried the same with the Unraid server - it's mostly identical, a bit faster, and somehow the transfer slows down after a few secondsWeird behaviour for sure. any ideas?
November 27, 2025Nov 27 Community Expert It appears to me to be the normal slowdown of data transfer after the available RAM cache has been filled. and the that speed is about the normal write speed directly to the array. You could try using the 'reconstruct write' mode. You can fin this on the SETTINGS >>> Disk Setting tab:
November 27, 2025Nov 27 Author Interesting. And this doesn't happen on a more traditional RAID-5 or TrueNAS because Unraid is not striping the data across multiple drives?Update: So the issue where the transfer pauses for quite some time only happens in macOS. While it's paused, I do see activity on the array but not necessarily at full speed.The tunable didn't make a difference, at least in macOS.This is what my Ethernet looks like when transferring. Sometimes it does slow down as in Windows but most of the time it just stops! That graph is pretty slow, I reckon there are 1-2 minutes between those chunks! Edited November 27, 2025Nov 27 by Tony359
November 28, 2025Nov 28 Community Expert 7 hours ago, Tony359 said:because Unraid is not striping the data across multiple drives?Yes, plus there is an extra read when using read/modify/write which drops the transfer speed. You can also avoid this by using a cache type drive as the 'Primary' drive (and the array as the Secondary drive) as long as all of the files being uploaded are less than the available space on the cache.
November 28, 2025Nov 28 Author I can understand the speed drop but transfer stopping altogether for like a minute when transferring? This is only happening in macOS apparently.
November 28, 2025Nov 28 Community Expert This is not normal, but if there's still nothing logged on Unraid, it suggests an external problem.
November 28, 2025Nov 28 Author This is the very same server with the same drives - I just unplugged the USB stick with Unraid on it and booted from the SSD where I was testing TrueNAS from. I re-created a pool and a share and transferred similar files - they're video files so pretty large. Same macOS computer of course. There's something with Unraid - either macOS doesn't like it or Unraid doesn't like the HW of my little NAS.
November 28, 2025Nov 28 Community Expert I also have a Mac and can transfer large folders without interruption using stock settings, and many other users use them, so it's not a general issue, but without anything logged, not sure what it could be. See if this helps: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/146818-optimal-samba-settings-to-get-better-macos-to-unraid-performance/?&do=getNewComment
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