Transfering 7TB to my server.......

[Houghton19]

My server running freeNas is a HP ProLiant N40L

General
Brand: Hewlett Packard
Processor
Processor Brand: AMD
Processor Type: None
Processor Speed: 1.5 GHz
Memory
RAM Size: 2 GB
Computer Memory Type: Unknown
Graphics
Graphics Card Description: n/a
Graphics RAM Type: Unknown
Additional Specifications
Wattage: 150 watts


I have 4 2Tb harddrives to transfer over to the system onto the 10tb i have in my server.

Trying to do this over my (meant to be gigabit network from my windows machine is tedious) i am crawling along at 15.1 MB/s

The server nas a built in Esata drive, if i was to get one of the esata caddys is there anyway i could plug this into the server and transfer the data over that way ????


I forgot to mention that i have the data on a second harddrive in my windows machine, the Freenas is set up to 1 raid drive (5x2tb) and i am transfering (copy and paste method) to the drive as a mapped network drive in windows.


Thanks in advance

Tim.

 

[gpsguy]

The first thing you need to do is upgrade your RAM. Since your N40L supports 8Gb, start there.

The minimum requirement for ZFS is 6Gb and the rule of thumb is 1Gb / Tb of storage.

 

[Houghton19]

and would that speed up file transfer though ????

i have a esata to sata wire, would it be possible to boot a version of linex on the Nas, transfer stuff through linex then pop my freenas usb thumb back in or would that not work ?

 

[gpsguy]

Read the RAM section in the Hardware Requirements.

In particular "NOTE: by default, ZFS disables pre-fetching (caching) for systems containing less than 4 GB of usable RAM. Not using pre-fetching can greatly reduce performance."

There are several N40L threads in the forums - read them, if you haven't done so. Also do a search for CIFS - there are several threads that talks about performance.

I still believe the root of your problem is due to insufficient memory.

 

[Houghton19]

And i take that on board, and when i can afford to upgrade my ram to 8gb i will, thanks for the heads up on that. Just wondered if the other way of installing ubuntu would work and still maybe be faster ???
thanks.

 

[survive]

Hi Houghton19,

What exactly are you trying to do...it's not exactly clear from the original post. How is your FreeNAS box configured? I assume you are using zfs?

Do you have 4 2TB drives of data you want to move onto your filer? If so, connecting each drive via esata should be much faster, assuming you aren't hamstrung by the lack of RAM.

Keep in mind that FreeNAS uses FreeBSD, not linux, so trying whatever you want to do with a linux boot disk most likely won't work out to well.

I don't think there's any way around needing to pony up for more RAM if you want decent performance.

-Will