Slow or stopped file transfer to (Cached) m.2 SSD drive?

[huapua]

Hi everyone,

 

I recently started up with Unraid and just wanted to start by saying how amazing this community is, I wouldn’t have had the balls the take this project on without it.

 

I also should say that my post here isn’t exactly a support question, it’s more of a teaching one (I would like to learn more), since my educational background isn’t computer science based and this is more of a hobby that I recently became interested in. My Unraid server is already doing much more than my windows based solution, and doing it more efficiently, and I’m having a lot of fun tinkering with Unraid and trying to optimize it. 
 

I have two M.2 SSD drives, one (500 GB) which is unassigned and still holds my bare metal windows 10 install, and a second one (2 TB) which I recently purchased to be used with my Unraid server. They are installed in two separate slots on my motherboard. The new 2 TB drive is the:

 

Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive R/W 3200/2900MB/s (SB-RKTQ-2TB) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0829DZH2W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_EsKwFbB0SBYYG

 

The reason why I chose this drive was because it’s cost was on par with internal SATA SSD’s with comparable storage capacity. But perhaps choosing a seemingly cheap product was not the best idea?

 

Now here come my questions:

 

When I upload a single or a few number of files at once through the network, using the finder interface (Mac laptop), there appears to be no issue. However, when I try to move a bunch of files (from my laptop to my Unraid server), the transfer will start off such that it appears my network speed is maxed out, but then it will quickly taper down and eventually transfer speeds go to 0.  Individually, these files are not necessarily large, they can be relatively small. If I compress (zip) the folder before transferring the many files within that folder, the fastest transfer speeds are maintained throughout the transfer.  I initially noticed this when I tried to move my Plex metadata and watch history over from an external hard drive to my Unraid cache drive, but it has come back to bite me as I’m attempting to transfer my photos/videos off my Mac (about 500 GB worth of data) and it looks like I would need to compress them all first before transferring them to Unraid. 
 

Can you confirm that this is normal behavior with SSD drives and explain why this happens? Is there a better solution to compressing the files before initiating a transfer of a large number of files.  If this is not normal behavior, perhaps I need to adjust some settings on my motherboard or my SSD drive is faulty?

 

Also, when data transfers are sustained for about 5 to 10 minutes or so, I will get warning messages from Unraid that my SSD drive is hot, at ~50 C. From google searching, it appear that these are reasonable temps for an M.2 SSD under load, so I’m not sure why Unraid is warning me of this? Is it worth attaching some sort of heatsink to my SSD?  I have a large case with a lot of airflow, though the SSD doesn’t have any direct active cooling attached to it. 

 

My motherboard is the ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-H GAMING. 
 

Thank you

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by huapua