Slow transfer speeds USB 2 disc >> Freenas pool

[unca_NAS]

Finally to managed to set up my 1st Nas-drive.

When copying data from external USB the copy speeds are somewhat slow.
The 4 x 2 TB HD's are setup as ZFS RAIDZ. The server is HP 36L Microserver with 8 GB RAM.

Copying data from USB drive to CIFS-share using command (via PuTTy)

Code:

mount -uv /
ntfs-3g /dev/device /mnt/source
rsync -av --progress /mnt/source/* /mnt/target

Result: (very bursty) write speed some 8-10 MB/S when same data is copied to Windows computer about 3-5 times faster

Is there anything I can do to speed up the copying? Or is there better methods on copying the data from external USB to NAS?

 

[louisk]

It would probably be faster to attach the usb drive to a windows box and copy over the network.

 

[unca_NAS]

Tried that. Also similar, poor speeds. Even with gigabit-router and CAT-6 cables.

150 GB transferred, av speed 1.15 MB/S
Oh boy..

 

[BobCochran]

Can you please describe your exact hardware buildout? That is why so many participants on this forum have their buildouts listed in their signature. Knowing specifically what your hardware is will help others help you.

Cheers,

Bob

 

[unca_NAS]

Of course. Added the sig.

 

[BobCochran]

I tried to do a similar transfer, with an external USB drive connected to a Dell Latitude E6400 laptop running Fedora 14. I didn't use rsync, I did a gui-based cp to the FreeNAS share. My transfer speeds were in the 5-7 Mbps range. Awful. However, that was on my old server setup which simply could not perform under load. I will be trying another external USB drive transfer to a far better quality server build probably in the next 2 days.

With that said, I don't know what to advise you. One thing you might want to do is to carefully inspect your network cable and replace it with a new one if it is cracked or kinked badly. Cables can be the source of some problems. I will keep an eye on this thread to see what evolves and also let you know what happens with my own USB transfer.

Cheers,

Bob

 

[unca_NAS]

Thanks Bob,
However in this case cable is hardly the issue, since it was purhcased two weeks ago along with the switch :)

Somehow I got a feeling that the issue has something to do with ZFS and/or RAIDZ. It played around with the ZFS settings (disabled compression etc) but so far no sicnificant improvement on transfer speeds :(

I've read that one should have at least 1GB RAM per 1GB ZFS Raidz. I was wondering if doubling the RAM could improve the writing speeds on ZFS?

 

[unca_NAS]

FTP seems to give better transfer speeds... still Im a bit puzzled, why the burstiness? After some 5-10 secs of writing the NAS freezes for about 5 secs.

Is this a feature?

 

[unca_NAS]

Boy is my face red now:
enabling Drive Write Cache from BIOS seems to have solved the "freeze-issue"

Well, this is the "noob-section", ainnit? :D

 

[BobCochran]

As long as you have the issue fixed, great. My old server box caused me endless misery and suffering. Did you turn on AHCI in your BIOS as well?

Bob

 

[unca_NAS]

Yupp, I sure did :)