jimbobulator Posted February 15, 2020 Share Posted February 15, 2020 (edited) Hello, I'm trying to preclear some 12TB drives in external enclosures over USB. Currently pre-reading at ~20MB/s. Yikes, should be ~200MB/s. lsusb indicates that it's a 480Mbps interface, and there's not any usb 3.0 interfaces shown at all. A one point a few years ago I was having difficulty passing through USB devices to VMs, and spent some time messing around with BIOS settings for xHCI/EHCI handoff, perhaps I've left this setting in a weird state and it's disabled usb3 capability? I don't remember ow I left it. Kids are streaming a movie at the moment and I need to drag up a monitor/keyboard to check BIOS settings. Will update when I get a chance. Thanks! Edited February 16, 2020 by jimbobulator removed diagnostics Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted February 15, 2020 Share Posted February 15, 2020 Well 20MBps is 200mbps so you are getting nearly 50% of the maximum theoretical throughput of USB2. When you add in the overheads of the USB stack I doubt you are going to get much more than you are getting unless you can get a USB3 connection working. Quote Link to comment
testdasi Posted February 15, 2020 Share Posted February 15, 2020 I agree that something is probably wrong with your BIOS. Your USB is being detected as 2.0 EHCI. Quote Link to comment
jimbobulator Posted February 15, 2020 Author Share Posted February 15, 2020 (edited) I couldn't get a video output working to get into the BIOS, so I had to open the case and reset it manually. I went through all the settings, including enabling the xHCI/EHCI handoffs. Now lsusb is showing 5Gbps connections for my connected USB drives (success?), but the preclear is proceeding at the same speed as before (fail!). Argh. Edit: removed diagnostics Edited February 16, 2020 by jimbobulator removed diagnostics Quote Link to comment
jimbobulator Posted February 15, 2020 Author Share Posted February 15, 2020 It's late here so I'm calling it a day. The pre-read speeds are slowing creeping up, started around 20MB/s and now at 30MB/s. If it gets past 60 I guess it's not stuck at high speed / usb2, but not sure why it would be this low. Could it be that it's just reading at the middle of the platters and it's naturally slower, and will speed up over time? That still seems crazy slow though. Cheers! Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted February 15, 2020 Share Posted February 15, 2020 The preclear normally starts at the outer (fastest) tracks and gradually slows down as it moves towards the inner (slower) tracks assuming the connection to the server is fast enough. Are you sure the enclosures are USB3? 1 Quote Link to comment
jimbobulator Posted February 15, 2020 Author Share Posted February 15, 2020 (edited) I just looked up my last preclear report, 6TB from a couple years ago, this one was connected on SATA. This one was slow too! Oof. Is this normal? I remember pre-clearing my first unraid drives back in 2013 and seeing 180MB/s. Maybe I should post in the preclear thread.... ############################################################################################################################ # # # unRAID Server Preclear of disk # # Cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64. # # # # # # Step 1 of 5 - Pre-read verification: [41:50:01 @ 39 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 2 of 5 - Zeroing the disk: [41:52:52 @ 39 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 3 of 5 - Writing unRAID's Preclear signature: SUCCESS # # Step 4 of 5 - Verifying unRAID's Preclear signature: SUCCESS # # Step 5 of 5 - Post-Read verification: [63:14:18 @ 26 MB/s] SUCCESS # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ############################################################################################################################ # Cycle elapsed time: 146:57:14 | Total elapsed time: 146:57:14 # ############################################################################################################################ ############################################################################################################################ # # # S.M.A.R.T. Status default # # # # # # ATTRIBUTE INITIAL CYCLE 1 STATUS # # 5-Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0 0 - # # 9-Power_On_Hours 0 147 Up 147 # # 194-Temperature_Celsius 43 57 Up 14 # # 196-Reallocated_Event_Count 0 0 - # # 197-Current_Pending_Sector 0 0 - # # 198-Offline_Uncorrectable 0 0 - # # 199-UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0 0 - # # # # # # # # # # # ############################################################################################################################ # SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED # ############################################################################################################################ --> ATTENTION: Please take a look into the SMART report above for drive health issues. --> RESULT: Preclear Finished Successfully!. Edited February 15, 2020 by jimbobulator Quote Link to comment
jimbobulator Posted February 15, 2020 Author Share Posted February 15, 2020 6 minutes ago, itimpi said: The preclear normally starts at the outer (fastest) tracks and gradually slows down as it moves towards the inner (slower) tracks assuming the connection to the server is fast enough. Are you sure the enclosures are USB3? Yes, it's supposed to be USB3. I can't imagine someone making a 12TB enclosure that didn't support USB3! Quote Link to comment
jimbobulator Posted February 16, 2020 Author Share Posted February 16, 2020 8 hours later, one is reading at 130MB/s and one at 137MB/s. Quote Link to comment
testdasi Posted February 16, 2020 Share Posted February 16, 2020 10 hours ago, jimbobulator said: I just looked up my last preclear report, 6TB from a couple years ago, this one was connected on SATA. This one was slow too! Oof. Is this normal? I remember pre-clearing my first unraid drives back in 2013 and seeing 180MB/s. Maybe I should post in the preclear thread.... Something seems odd with that 6TB preclear. Below is my slowest drive a Seagate 5TB preclear. It's a SMR + 5400rpm + 2.5" so I don't expect anything to be slower. ############################################################################################################################ # # # unRAID Server Preclear of disk WCJ0A3LV # # Cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64. # # # # # # Step 1 of 5 - Pre-read verification: [13:07:25 @ 105 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 2 of 5 - Zeroing the disk: [16:44:07 @ 83 MB/s] SUCCESS # # Step 3 of 5 - Writing unRAID's Preclear signature: SUCCESS # # Step 4 of 5 - Verifying unRAID's Preclear signature: SUCCESS # # Step 5 of 5 - Post-Read verification: [14:26:44 @ 96 MB/s] SUCCESS # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ############################################################################################################################ # Cycle elapsed time: 44:18:31 | Total elapsed time: 44:18:32 # ############################################################################################################################ ############################################################################################################################ # # # S.M.A.R.T. Status default # # # # # # ATTRIBUTE INITIAL CYCLE 1 STATUS # # 5-Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0 0 - # # 9-Power_On_Hours 0 44 Up 44 # # 183-Runtime_Bad_Block 0 0 - # # 184-End-to-End_Error 0 0 - # # 187-Reported_Uncorrect 0 0 - # # 190-Airflow_Temperature_Cel 27 32 Up 5 # # 197-Current_Pending_Sector 0 0 - # # 198-Offline_Uncorrectable 0 0 - # # 199-UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0 0 - # # # # # # # ############################################################################################################################ # SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED # ############################################################################################################################ --> ATTENTION: Please take a look into the SMART report above for drive health issues. --> RESULT: Preclear Finished Successfully!. 1 Quote Link to comment
jimbobulator Posted February 16, 2020 Author Share Posted February 16, 2020 6 minutes ago, testdasi said: Something seems odd with that 6TB preclear. Yeah it's odd. I checked my old 3TB 7200rpm reports from 7 years ago and they took 30h. I didn't shuck this 6TB, so I'm assuming that I precleared over SATA. But I do have a bunch of USB3 enclosures kicking around, maybe I used one for the preclear, and was affected by the same USB2 issues above. I have no way to know, unfortunately! Drive is working fine, read/write speeds are fine in the array. The 12TBs are on track to complete preread in 20-30 hours, I think, which seems ok. Not sure why they started slow. Quote Link to comment
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