NV+ Transfer rates

I disabled Flow Control on the Realtek NIC and repeated the read/write tests with the same 2.5GB file. Read speed averaged 20MB/s, Write speed averaged 15MB/s. A big difference. Still not great on the write speed, but certainly a lot closer than when I started.

Then I did a test with 158,000 small files (4.2GB), average write speed was between 2.0MB/s and 4MB/s. I let it transfer for about 1 hour before cancelling. 3GB had transferred by that stage.

Deleting the small files from the NAS took just as long and was just as slow too.

There are no signs of any resyncing and no discernible smart errors on any of the drives. The X-Raid array reports as Redundant. 3055 GB (55%) of 5533 GB used.

Running RAIDiator 4.1.8

I have iTunes Streaming server and ReadyDLNA server with Tivo support enabled. (I don't actually have a Tivo, but thought it wouldn't hurt with my current Probox PVR)

Bonjour and UPnP are running. No additional add-ons installed and no other standard add-ons running.

Original Shares (Backup & Media) were deleted and 2 shares added with CIFS only.

BTW the cable that came with the ReadyNAS is Cat5e. It was marked on the cable but it was hiding amongst all the other specifications on the cable ... lol

It is interesting that disabling flow control helped. That suggests to me that you should try increasing the number of receive and transmit buffers on the Realtek. Flow control shouldn't really be kicking in on a direct connect (particularly on reads, since the PC should be able to keep up).

You might also try turning off "interrupt moderation", and see if that helps or hurts.

BTW, if your original firmware was 4.1.6 or earlier, you might not have 4K sector alignment on the NAS. 4K alignment is needed to get good performance with 2 TB drives. Here is info here on how to confirm alignment: http://www.rnasguide.com/2011/06/22/why ... -readynas/

If you don't have 4K alignment, you would need to do a factory reset to get it.

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been a bit busy with other things.

I tried with 'Interrupt Moderation' disabled, no change.

I checked 4K sectors but I'm using 16384. I think I had 4.1.6 installed from the start. The first thing I did though was to update the firmware to 4.1.8. It may have been part of the install procedure, not sure now.

Went through all the logs looking for clues. Only thing I found was that the NTP servers, time-e.netgear.com & time-h.netgear.com, don't work in my neck of the woods, so I changed to time.microsoft.com.

There are quite a few errors in httpd_errors.log though.

With the NAS back on the network, I'm seeing around 12MB/s Read and 14MB/s, but nothing I have tried has improved things from there.

block size and sector alignment are two different sections in the link I posted. You didn't go far enough down.

All systems that started with 4.x have 16384 block size. System that started with 4.1.7 or later also have 4K sector alignment.

Thanks Stephen, I really appreciate your help. OK I can't remember exactly what firmware was on The ReadyNAS when I switched it on, so I have gone ahead and done a Factory Reset. That will take some time and I will have to restore the files that were on there and that's gonna take some time :(

Took me 3 Days before, so if it's any faster it should show ... lol

I'll let you know when everything is back up and I'll see if any settings make a difference this time also.

Fingers crossed ;)

Well, after doing the factory reset and waiting for the volume to resync (9 hours), I am finally starting to upload the files back onto the ReadyNAS. The bad news is that there is absolutely no change. Write speed is averaging between 12MB/s & 14MB/s, don't know about read speed but I suspect it will be just as dismal as it was before :(

It appears that this is the best I'm going to get from this particular NAS :(

Turn jumbo frames off. Try turning journalling off too. Then reboot the NAS and test again. You should be able to get higher speeds than you're getting.

How are you measuring read/write speeds? An hour at even 2MB/sec is 7.2GB - far more than your data set, indicating your file copy speed isn't very accurate. Have you tried replacing it with something more accurate like TeraCopy? (Free for personal use.)
http://codesector.com/downloads/

BikeHelmet wrote:

Turn jumbo frames off. Try turning journalling off too. Then reboot the NAS and test again. You should be able to get higher speeds than you're getting. How are you measuring read/write speeds? An hour at even 2MB/sec is 7.2GB - far more than your data set, indicating your file copy speed isn't very accurate. Have you tried replacing it with something more accurate like TeraCopy? (Free for personal use.) http://codesector.com/downloads/

He started by saying he had tried jumbo frames on and off, and that it made no difference.

Journalling slows write speeds, but I don't think it will slow read speeds. Since both his read and write times are on the slow side, that doesn't seem likely. In any event, it is a bad idea to turn off journalling unless you have a UPS.

I agree that the speed for his transfer of 160,000 small files is not correct - 3 GB per hour is actually less than 1 MB/sec. Not sure that means his other speeds are off - the numbers in the 160K test are clearly approximate.

TeraCopy or other copy accelerators could well speed things up, though he should be getting faster speeds with straight windows drag-and-drop.

BikeHelmet, I did try turning on Jumbo Frames, but that had no effect on the transfer rates at all. Full Journaling is off, Journaling is on. I have turned off Optimise for OS/X also, but that has made no difference either.

I do have an MGE Nova 1100 AVR UPS and it is on the compatibility list, but I don't have the NAS plugged into it, not enough receptacles on the UPS for the NAS. I have the Main Computer and 2 Monitors plugged into the UPS so that I am able to shut down all programs before shutting down the main computer if the power fails.

When transferring a lot of small files, getting an accurate transfer rate is difficult because there is a lot of fluctuation in actual speeds. I use Sysmetrix to gauge the throughput of the network and it reports the average transfer speed. But as you and Stephen have both pointed out, my transfer rates are even more dismal than I thought.

I started uploading 1898 files totalling 1.51TB at 5:30am Saturday, it is now 7:45am Sunday and so far only 1522 files have been transferred totalling 1218 GB - 546MB for the system files already on the NAS before I started the file transfer.

It's not hard to see why I am disappointed in the transfer speeds I am getting with this particular NAS, especially when you consider that I can achieve, and regularly do get 90MB/s transfer speeds between my Main computer upstairs and the second computer downstairs, which indicates that there is nothing wrong with my overall network setup.

With all the settings that I have enabled/disabled by now I would have thought that I would have stumbled upon the magic combination that would allow this NAS to transfer at better speeds than I am seeing.

I may have to contact Netgear and see what their take is on this matter, they were quite helpful when I contacted them about the 3TB drive issue I had. That was my fault though, I was looking at the wrong compat. list when I bought the drives. Luckily, I already had 4 2TB drives on hand so it was simply a matter of swapping them for the 3TB drives I had bought for this NAS.

Jumbo Frames slow the NV+ down. You definitely want them off.

Are your PCs all running Windows 7?

Using these options I get 35MB/sec read speeds, 15-20MB/sec write speeds:





Have you updated to the latest Realtek NIC drivers, by any chance?

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/dow ... Down=false

What firmware version is your NAS running?

Have you tinkered with any of the options in the Device Manager? (Advanced tab for your NIC) That's where Flow Control is listed at. I didn't have to tweak anything in there, but I did raise the buffer counts to the max possible.