I am using 4.5.1.

 

I installed an 80 gig cache drive and enabled it through shares. I transfer videos to cache fine and it transfers to the disks fine.

 

Before the cache drive was installed I was geting solid 10MB/sec transfers now they are 11-12MB/sec transfers with the cache drive.

 

Is this the usual performance increase in using a cache drive? They are all SATA drives.

 

How is my transfer performance compared to the average Unraid user?

 

I typically average 35-40 mB/sec transferring to my cache.

 

-JOHN

Are you using gigabit ethernet or 100 megabit?  It sounds like you're using 100 megabit and that's your bottleneck (100 megaBITS per second = 12.5 megaBYTES per second, as the theoretical maximum).

Agreed, 100 mb LAN sounds like the culprit.  You may also be using Cat5 cables.  Upgrade to Cat5e or Cat6.

 

I generally get 50 - 60 mB/s transferring from my Windows desktop to my cache drive over Gigabit LAN.

You guys are awesome! You are right, I am using 10/100, but I have changed all my cables to cat6 and just have to go out and get my gigabit switch and my main computer a new 1 gig nic card. The server already has onboard gigbit conection.

 

Thanks for your reponses I feel much better now.

...I have changed all my cables to cat6...

*Fistbump*

Got my swith and nic card! Transfers to cache now average around 32Mb/Sec compared to my old 11Mb/Sec.

 

I saw that someone posted 50Mb/Sec speed.

 

Is there some tweaking I should be doing to get to those speeds or is my my hard drive the bottleneck? 

I'm guessing your hard drive is the bottleneck, or possibly you have other traffic on your LAN that is interfering with the transfer.  For reference, my cache drive is a 320 GB Seagate 7200 rpm, and like I said above, I get 50 - 60 mb/s transfer speeds.  My source drive (the one I transfer from) is a 640 GB WD Black 7200 rpm.

My cache drive and computer drive are buth sata 7200 rpm drives. Would it help if I went into the bios and change settings? On the onboard sata/ide control mode it is set to default wiich is IDE, should I change it to AHCI?

I only have this advanced bios option on my unraid server board.

My cache drive and computer drive are buth sata 7200 rpm drives. Would it help if I went into the bios and change settings? On the onboard sata/ide control mode it is set to default wiich is IDE, should I change it to AHCI?

I only have this advanced bios option on my unraid server board.

You should change it to ACHI. 

Turned on ACHI in bios and turned unraid back on lost drives. They are all sata drives don't know why only a couple stayed on and 3 went red?

 

Changed back to disable in bios and array booted up back to normal.

I don't think ACHI will solve your speed issues.  All my drives are SATA II drives, but I'm pretty sure they are set to IDE mode.  Again, my transfer speeds are great (50-60 mb/s).

 

Also, I've found that some motherboards don't seem to like ACHI.  I tried setting my desktop to use ACHI so that my hot swap bay would be truly hot swappable, but it causes the computer to hang just after BIOS posts (hangs at the 'verifying DMI pool data' step).

 

So basically, I've never had any success with ACHI.  IDE mode seems to work consistently, and doesn't seem to impact speeds as far as I can tell.

Thanks. Im ok with 35-40 write speeds anyway. Sometimes it peaks at 50. I just upgraded to 4.5.3 today which is suppose to give higher sustained speeds.