Is one slow Hard drive slowing my server down ?

[KentBrockman]

I ran a disk speed test on all my drives and here are the results:

 

I noticed one of my drives, an older 500GD maxtor  is significantly slower than the rest.

 

If I swapped this drive out for a newer 1TB drive (maybe a WD green) would I see a significant increase in read/write performance?

 

I read somewhere that the server is limited by the slowest drive, but I'm not sure that's the case.

 

Thanks,

Kent

[BRiT]

That depends on what you're looking for.

 

During a parity check, all drive speeds matter, but usually only the read speeds matter.

 

When writing to the array, only the speed of parity drive and data drive being written to matter.

 

If you don't write to your 500G drive, then it wont be a factor in the performance of your server.

 

 

[KentBrockman]

Thanks for the quick response Brit.

 

I guess I'm ok then.

I plan on replacing that drive in the near future anyway cause I'm running out of space.

 

I'll have to figure out why one of my 1 TB WD  green (EADS) drives is slower than the rest.  It's sitting at 84 MB/sec and all my other drives are > 100.

 

 

Cheers,

Kent

[Joe L.]

When writing to the array, only the ROTATIONAL speed of parity drive and data drive being written to matter.

You are limited by the rotational speed of the disks when writing to the array. 

That limit is much lower than the "read" speeds you are describing, it is closer to 40MB/s.

 

Joe L.