October 30, 201213 yr quick question, i dont know if anybody has this card and if so can verify whether drivers are included in unraid (ver 5.0 rc8a) as im thinking of switching from onboard nic to expansion card due to slow writes (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=23268.msg206633#msg206633), the card in question is this one:- Intel EXPI9301CTBLK Gigabit Ethernet Card many thanks.
October 30, 201213 yr Author ok talking to myself again, man i gotta stop this :-). well i did a quick search around and see other people are having success with this nic so i might take the plunge and go for the EXPI9301CTBLK, either that or i might save the pci-e x1 slot and instead got for the intel PWLA8391GT which is a pci slot card, hmm decisions decisions.
November 1, 201213 yr I'm pretty new to gigabit networking myself, but can a NIC installed in the PCI slot deliver gigabit throughput? I'm thinking based on my feeble knowledge that you want a gigabit NIC card to be PCIe x1.
November 1, 201213 yr Author I'm pretty new to gigabit networking myself, but can a NIC installed in the PCI slot deliver gigabit throughput? I'm thinking based on my feeble knowledge that you want a gigabit NIC card to be PCIe x1. hi Chugiak, your right but as long as you dont have multiple pci cards then you should be fine as the pci bus is shared i believe, speeds will top out at around 118MB/s but hey thats pretty damn good, most drives wont read/write at that speed in any case, excerpt from a website:- One Gigabit Ethernet can be used in 32-bit, 33MHZ PCI slots up to the 90-118MB range, but throughputs above this may overrun the 32-bit PCI bus. 64-bit and/or 66 MHZ PCI bus based systems are highly recommended for Gigabit Ethernet. in any case ive gone for the PCIe x1 card so its all smiles :-), plus its turned up so going to fit tonight, fingers crossed it fixes my slow write speeds, im not expecting super fast performance as i know a parity protected array is slow, but im hoping for around 30MB/s, i shall post back. edit - hmm interesting!, looks like the realtek onboard nic's can also cause higher cpu usage than a dedicated nic, this is also a plus point for me as im only running a sempron 145 processor, nice!
November 2, 201213 yr Just curious, are you using a cache drive? Your writes will be slow if you are not using a cache drive and are writing directly to the array.
November 2, 201213 yr Author Just curious, are you using a cache drive? Your writes will be slow if you are not using a cache drive and are writing directly to the array. I have a cache drive but I've not assigned it to the user shares as I want to use the cache only for plugins. I realize writing directly to the array will be slow but I believe I should be getting better than 20MB/s correct? hmm ok new nic fitted and same result, slow write speeds, i can even see the windows progress bar stopping and starting (judder) during copies, just for giggles i enabled cache for one of my user shares, then did a write to the user share, same performance EVEN when writing to a cache enabled share, so then i did a write directly to the cache disk, same result! - it tends to level out around 18- 21 MB/s. so im completely lost as to what to try next, i am tending towards trying another gigabit switch but i dont want to spend any more money if this isnt going to fix it, plus the weird thing is i can write to another device (openelec) and get decent write speeds so that kind of rules out the switch, right? help me ob1 kenobi you're my only hope :-). just so your aware of what i have tried (as posted in my other thread):- copying from source pc (windows 7) to another linux device on same switch result - can write at full speed, thus ruling out source as issue and also switch changed cat6 cable for another cable (cat5e this time) result - same write speed, cannot seem to achieve write speeds above 21MB/s checked source disk can achieve speeds higher than 21MB/s (sata drive) achieved write speeds to another linux device (openelec) of around 56MB/s thus ruling out source drive made sure issue is not related to SMB copied using NFS from another linux device as source, same performance issue, this also strengthens argument that it ISNT related to source pc added the noacpi flag as per suggestion in other threads no change in write speeds updated bios for unraid mobo no change in write speeds
November 3, 201213 yr I'm not sure why you want to use your cache drive for plugins only. The whole reason the cache drive feature was added was to work around slow write speeds. Save yourself a lot of headache and just use it the way it was intended.
November 3, 201213 yr Author I'm not sure why you want to use your cache drive for plugins only. The whole reason the cache drive feature was added was to work around slow write speeds. Save yourself a lot of headache and just use it the way it was intended. Even writing directly to the cache or assigning cache to user share makes no difference to write speeds, still get around 20MB/s
November 3, 201213 yr Author Thank the lord I've solved the issue, was a bug in the bios, updated to latest version which only came out two weeks ago and problem gone phew! Thanks to everybody who posted
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