Which hard drives?

[katit]

Hello!

I would like to possibly increase system throughput. I think bottleneck is a hard drives I have. Currently I have 2x WD Black WD1001FALS in a mirror. Max I get is about 85Mbps over gigabit network. Looks like this is limit of drives? Also, they are old, almost 4 years now. And I don't mind getting little more storage as well.

I'm planning on adding another mirror. Probably 2 disks at 2TB each. Storage space is not a problem for me. It's more about reliability and speed.

Which hard drives trending today for NAS application? Let's say I want to max out LAN connection.

I have latest 9.3 FreeNAS running on i5 system with 8Gb of RAM.

 

[anodos]

Hello!

I would like to possibly increase system throughput. I think bottleneck is a hard drives I have. Currently I have 2x WD Black WD1001FALS in a mirror. Max I get is about 85Mbps over gigabit network. Looks like this is limit of drives? Also, they are old, almost 4 years now. And I don't mind getting little more storage as well.

I'm planning on adding another mirror. Probably 2 disks at 2TB each. Storage space is not a problem for me. It's more about reliability and speed.

Which hard drives trending today for NAS application? Let's say I want to max out LAN connection.

I have latest 9.3 FreeNAS running on i5 system with 8Gb of RAM.

I assume that is 85 megabytes per second. Post complete hardware specs (including NIC). I don't think adding a second set of mirrors will increase reliability. Generally, the quickest way to get more performance is to add RAM, but if you have a realtek NIC you may want to consider replacing with an intel NIC first.

If you have budget to improve your NAS, I'd focus on upgrading to a system with ECC memory first (look at hardware stickies for more information) and perhaps adding disks and rebuilding as a RAIDZ2 pool. This won't necessarily make things faster, but it will greatly improve the reliability of your setup.

 

[Bidule0hm]

I don't think the problem is the drives. How do you came to this conclusion?

 

[katit]

It's a G620 CPU with
GIGABYTE GA-H77-DS3H LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
8Gb non-ECC ram

It's Atheros NIC chip

Right now I'm not in a mood to upgrade or build ECC-based system. I did research issue and I'm ok with playing statistics. System I had before (same hardware on Win7 with soft raid) worked fine for many years (since I got it)

Ok, data is already on and I'm using it.

I just realized I have 2 more drives laying around:
1. WD Black 1TB WD1002FAEX
2. WD Green I think, 2TB (not sure of model)

So, if I just want to increate capacity, add another pool to play with and eventually move data out of main pool. What disks do I get this days? I don't have experience with raids other than RAID1

 

[katit]

I don't think the problem is the drives. How do you came to this conclusion?

Don't know :) CPU is low, what else should I look for? Or, more importantly, is there any test available I can run to measure performance of a system?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Your disks are not the bottleneck. It's your network connection and maybe your cpu/nic.

 

[katit]

Ok, I'm not even sure how to check. I understand that reading mirror is probably x2 faster..

But, are those disks in a mirror capable of maxing out gigabit connection on write? I'm talking about TimeMachine backup coming from Mac. Doesn't seem like disks keeping up.

 

[gpsguy]

If you aren't going to replace the hardware, an inexpensive option would be to replace the NIC with an Intel Pro/1000 CT. About $35 USD.

 

[katit]

Ok. But will this give me full speed write? Will those drive handle the speed?

 

[gpsguy]

Probably not, unless you replace all your hardware and even then, it'll be dependent on your workstation, the protocol used, and the type of data.

Using an Intel NIC (as opposed to an Atheros) might be akin to adding a cold air intake on a vehicle, in an effort to gain a few more horsepower.

 

[anodos]

Ok. But will this give me full speed write? Will those drive handle the speed?

Adding a second mirror will increase the amount of IOPs of your pool, which may help. Replacing with an Intel NIC will typically improve overall network stability and performance. Neither guarantees that you'll be transferring files at 1gbps in all situations.

 

[katit]

I guess I'm not asking right question :) What IS the write speed on those drives? I can't find it. Is it higher than gigabit link or not? Thats all I'm wondering about.
I'm wondering about simple scenario. My Mac with gigabit adapter. My NAS with gigabit. Gigabit switch. Can my NAS write data as soon as it comes in on a wire?

Or, to rephrase. I want network to be slower than drives on both read and write. Are those drives capable?

 

[gpsguy]

It would have been helpful if you'd told us about these errors you are seeing.

Code:

Jun 19 07:58:48 FreeNAS-home cnid_dbd[14769]: error reading message header: Connection reset by peer
Jun 19 07:58:48 FreeNAS-home cnid_dbd[14769]: read: Connection reset by peer

 

[katit]

I didn't think it is related in any way. I wanted to know how fast specific model of hard drive is on write, because I didn't find any info. Nobody told me yet if those drives can be faster than gigabit link ...

 

[SweetAndLow]

Yes those drivers are faster than gigabit. That is why everyone told you to fix other things. If you are seeing 80+MB/s then you are getting close to maxing out the network and only are dealing with protocol and TCP overhead.

 

[maglin]

I have the same drives and they top out at 120 mb/s in single disk performance in a read test. I'm pretty sure the write is close to 100mb/s. As it was said your hardware needs upgrading. If I understand correctly adding those slower drives to the pool will slow down all the drives to the slowest drive but has the ability to increase pool speed as a whole. I'd be happy with 85 mb/s write speeds with the hardware you are using.