Slow file transfer TO Windows

[GeoffH]

Hi, this is my 1st post here.

I have only been using Unraid for about a year, and there's one thing I'd like to say.

A cache drive can be implemented to speed up transfers TO Unraid, but when it comes to copy FROM Unraid to some other pc, it's pretty slow, as it comes straight off the array.

How could this be sped up, as speed BOTH ways is important.

Please advise.

 

[Dataone]

How slow are you talking? The only way I can see of improving speeds from the array would be pre-caching files you use often.

 

Assuming you have a 1Gbit connection, the array should be saturating that, unless you have slow drives or some other array issue.

Edited November 30, 2019 by Dataone

[itimpi]

3 hours ago, GeoffH said:

A cache drive can be implemented to speed up transfers TO Unraid, but when it comes to copy FROM Unraid to some other pc, it's pretty slow, as it comes straight off the array.

Reading FROM the array is always going to be limited to the speed of the disk you are reading from since Unraid does not use striping.   However any modern disk should be fast enough to saturate a 1 Gps network without problems.    It is only if you have 10 Gps networking that the network will not be the limiting factor.

[Frank1940]

IF you are transferring a large number of small files, the file creation overhead, disk-head transit time, and disk latency (all on the PC end) will seriously impact the average transfer rate.  On the server end, you will have the file allocation read process, more disk-head movement time and disk latency also. 

[GeoffH]

22 hours ago, Dataone said:

How slow are you talking? The only way I can see of improving speeds from the array would be pre-caching files you use often.

 

Assuming you have a 1Gbit connection, the array should be saturating that, unless you have slow drives or some other array issue.

Well, it varies, but it's generally no where near 1Gbe saturation

And as I don't have any files that I access regularly, as it's mainly semi long term storage, how would I pre-cache ??

[GeoffH]

20 hours ago, itimpi said:

Reading FROM the array is always going to be limited to the speed of the disk you are reading from since Unraid does not use striping.   However any modern disk should be fast enough to saturate a 1 Gps network without problems.    It is only if you have 10 Gps networking that the network will not be the limiting factor.

Most of my HDD's are "modern", but of course they can vary a lot.

I am on a 1Gbe LAN, tried 10Gbe, but couldn't get a consistant "speed", due to I'm sure, the HDD's.

So it seems that one of the BIG advantages of Unraid, is also one of it's biggest DISadvantages

I know it's pretty easy for LimeTech to add the advantage of a Cache drive for uploads to the server, but in the other direction (which is just as important), there is nothing !!!

[BRiT]

No. There is a lot more than nothing. Make the shares that you need the over 120 MB/s reads to be CACHE ONLY on your SSD(s) and setup a 10 Gigabit network.