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Extremely slow transfer speeds over ethernet
I have had my ReadyNAS for a few years now and have always experienced slow network speeds.
I have always just assumed that the ReadyNAS was just slow, however I have been researching recently and discovered that most people get much faster speeds.
So I have been trying to move large media files over my network.
Both the PC and the NAS are connected via gigabit ethernet via a Virgin Media Superhub.
I stated doing an rsync transfer via ssh and it started off at about 1MB/s and dropped to about 200kB/s after a few minutes. The 6GB file was still transferring 3.5hrs later.
I have read reports of ~20MB/s speeds.
It seems my transfers are really quite shocking compared to this!
Please can you offer me any help on speeding up my NAS transfers?
7 Replies
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I have to say, I'm NOT a fan of these type of Combo UNITS. I have no experiance with the Virgin Media Superhub. I've ran into issues with Motorola's Cable Modem with built in Wifi someone at work got, and I told him not to, and he had slow Wifi to his devices. A problem fixed once he returned that and got a seperate Cable Modem and Wifi Router.
Is that your issue? I will say my OLD ReadyNAS NV+ V2 with a ARM CPU was sslllllooowww over my Gigabit Network. I wired up my house with Cat6 cable a few years ago. It all ends up at my 24 port Gigabit Switch. My new ReadyNAS 516 with a much faster Intel CPU, Network speeds are 4-5 times faster. I can basically max out that Gigabit speed transfering large files. Where as I would see around 20 or so MB/s on my old NAS, I'm in the 90-100+ MB/s with this newer NAS. That's what Windows is showing me transfering to/from it. When I got the new NAS I did get a new Managed 24-port Switch so I could bond the 2 Ethernet ports on the NAS. That shouldn't have any effect on a single large file transer though.
200kB/s is really BAD Do you have any issues with the HDD? One going bad? Lots of errors on a transfer? It could be a bad Switch with your so called Superhub! You may want to try a differnt switch to plug your devices in and see if you can get better speed that way. Maybe it's a cable or connector issue. It's a trial and error type thing unless you have access to costly testing equepment. You should be getting around 20MB/s.
Let me time how long it takes to to transfer a 6GB file from my NAS to my Windows 10 PC. Well it'll take a while to find a file around 6 GB, so I'm timing one that's just over 9GB in size. It took 1:35.87. Or about 1 minute and 36 seconds!!! For a file that is 3GB larger in size. But again I'm doing 90-100+MB/s. You should still be getting around that 20MB/s. Hopefully you can figure this out. All anyone can else can do is guess. Has it always been this slow or did it happen a few weeks or months ago? Or you just happen to notice the speed and why it was taking so long to do things? What kind of speed are you getting going from your NAS to your Computer and back again? Is it the same as doing rsync?
So again, you have to narrow down issues it could be. NAS? Switch? Cables? etc. Something is clearly wrong. 3.5 hours and still going is crazy long. It shouldn't take more then say 5 minutes for you to transfer that 1 6GB file.
- Ok well I did some tests.
I use hdparm to do read speeds on both units and got around 100MB/s
So then I used dd to do a write speed test, around 55MB/s on the PC and 30MB/s on the NAS.
So all seems ok there.
So I did rsync on the PC to a different partition, got around 40-50MB/s
Did rsync on the NAS from one partition to the other, only 4MB/s.
Hmm there is the issue...
I have checked the SMART stays on the drive. That seems fine. Any ideas?So you are using more then 1 partition. Is it 2 partitions with 2 drives each? In a RAID1 setup for each? 1 Data drive the other a clone with each partition? OR because you're going this 2 partition way, you're going with RAID0, and taking advantage of both HDD for each of the 2 partitions because you are backing up onto the other 2 HDD's, which in effect is a backup.
Going this route can makes sense, ,but you lose 1 HDD for storage space and using RAID5. On the other hand, you have a full backup always instead of having to do some type of backup externally. So my guess is you're going the RAID0 route?
Still doesn't explain the rsync issue. I looks like you do get some performance hit uisng rsync over just copying for example because of the overhead, but it shouldn't be 4MB/s slow. I don't have a way to test myself and see what happens. Looking at this post:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS/slow-rsync-transfer-speeds-NV-gt-NV/td-p/844551
Copying he's getting around 25 MB/s, and using rsync it's dropping down to 1.4MB/s. That's even worse then you! I couldn't imagine taking that big of a performance HIT just using rsync. Is this a issue with a ARM processor? I would think far more people would be complaining if this was a big issue.
You need to check your Logs and see if you're having backup errors. What way is your HDD's formated? You wan to go into the NAS to System/Logs and click on Download Logs. You'll get a lot of Data this way. May want to look at the backup file logs. Maybe the disc_info log. Maybe network_settings and look and see if you're getting any RX or TX packet errors. smart_history looks like a good one. allso volume looks like a good log. You should see things like Latest Self Test: Passed on all the HDD's.
All I can do at this point is offer the few tips above.
- Thanks for the reply.
I can try using a different method other than rsync, do you know one that shows the progress?
I don't have anything as complicated as you suggest. I only have one drive (2TB) set up with the default netgear raid (think called flex raid or something).
The partitions seem set up by default when I made the shares.
The back up is what I am currently doing using rsync so there should be no backup errors.
I'll have a look at the other logsCan you tell us your ReadyNAS model (and the firmware it is running)? I'm guessing a duo v1 running 4.1.x firmware, but it would be helpful to know for certain. It would also be useful to know if you have jumbo frames enabled. You could also check the ext journalling setting.
On the old sparc-based NAS, rsync is CPU bound. It's still generally the best method for incremental backup, but not for full copies. That said, you should still be seeing rsync speeds around 4 MB/s with that NAS.
NFS is the fastest way to transfer data to/from a v1 NAS.
Note that the v1 systems are a lot slower than JBDragon1's v2.
Spacedementia87 wrote:
The partitions seem set up by default when I made the shares.One would be the data partition, the other the OS partition. The OS partition would be only 2 GB - be careful not to fill it.
.
- Sorry I thought I already had that in my title!
Yes it is a Duo V1 running 4.1.13
I am doing this because the system will not accept firmware upgrades or shutdown without a command through terminal so obviously something is messed up!
I get that rsync is CPU bound, but I am running the command from the desktop PC with the NAS share mounted via NFS so this shouldn't use the NAS CPU at all?
I am currently getting about 4MB/s, this seems pretty slow considering it should not be involving the NAS CPU.
When you say transfer over NFS, do you mean using a cp command? The problem with that is not ability to resume a failed transfer.
I do not have jumbo frames enabled and the max MTU my router seems to support is 1500. I also don't know how to test if my Linux PC can support jumbo frames.
I have journalling enabled because I don't have a UPS and we have been having a few power cuts recently.
Spacedementia87 wrote:
Sorry I thought I already had that in my title!
I get that rsync is CPU bound, but I am running the command from the desktop PC with the NAS share mounted via NFS so this shouldn't use the NAS CPU at all?That's correct, and you should be getting NFS speeds. I agree they should be faster.
Spacedementia87 wrote:
When you say transfer over NFS, do you mean using a cp command? The problem with that is not ability to resume a failed transfer.That is what I meant, but I missed the fact that you are aleady mounting as NFS.
Spacedementia87 wrote:
I do not have jumbo frames enabled and the max MTU my router seems to support is 1500. I also don't know how to test if my Linux PC can support jumbo frames.I didn't mean to suggest that you enable them. Often turning them on will cause the speeds to drop (esp if your router or PC doesn't support support them).
Spacedementia87 wrote:
I am doing this because the system will not accept firmware upgrades or shutdown without a command through terminal so obviously something is messed up!This might be the key.
Have you checked for a full OS partition (e.g., df . -h and df . -i from terminal)?
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