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Forum Discussion
Justin_S
Sep 18, 2011Aspirant
Performance halved at a stroke (ReadyNAS Duo, 4.1.8) ...
In a busy few weeks, my little ReadyNAS Duo's performance seems to have halved at a stroke. The problem seems to be a consequence of upgrading to RAIDiator 4.1.8 (release) and performing a full factory reset but ... just in case ... here's a full rundown of its recent life ...
* After swapping my ageing PC for a shiny new iMac (really shiny, by the way), I noticed a very modest (but welcome) *increase* in performance from the ReadyNAS.
* Running Windows 7 (directly through Boot Camp, fully Windows Update'd) and RAIDiator 4.1.8 beta (for Lion compatibility) the little Duo could saturate my Gigabit Ethernet to 25-30% (transferring data at around 250-300Mb/s, then). Everything was running great ...
* Then a mini-disaster ... after three years use the ReadyNAS power supply gave up. The unit shut down without warning and wouldn't power up again.
* Some excellent online support put me back on track. "Some time later" and with a new power supply connected (an identical Netgear part) I was up and running again.
* The unit started first time and all was well ... everything was accessible and usable ... but restarting the unit once more (from front-view) the ReadyNAS unexpectedly froze on boot.
* Blue light flashing at 1Hz, fan at medium-volume, no activity or drive lights and invisible to RAIDar, I gave it four/five hours ...
* Not responding to physical (power) button presses, I had to pull the plug. Fortunately, the unit picked itself up and booted without issue. Scouring downloaded log's I could see *no trace whatsoever* of the failed boot.
* To eliminate any possibility of data corruption or similar badness (and with a new release-version of RAIDiator 4.1.8 now available) I updated the unit firmware, performed full factory reset and reconfigured the unit to match its old settings (all from front-view). Perhaps this was a beta glitch?
* Now running solidly and without issue, I copied data back to the unit using Windows Explorer and a local backup. It should have close to zero fragmentation, then.
Doing this, it was clear performance had halved. The unit now saturates just 10-15% of the network ... transferring at around 100-150Mb/s only (no RAIDar or front-view pages open).
This doesn't look like a hardware problem ... the drives look fine (a matched Seagate ST3500630AS pair, their SMART reports look good and their temps are normal), the network looks fine (private LAN, both Mac (on-board Broadcom NetXtreme) and NAS are wired to the same Netgear WNDR3700 (gigabit router, latest firmware), no concerning errors ... a few TCP retransmits which are not unusual) and there are no errors or warnings in the logs. But for a new power adapter, nothing has changed hardware-wise.
The old and new front-view settings match near-exactly (same network settings, same shares, same users and access rights, one or two *fewer* services running than before, no bittorrent/photo's/remote/vault, full data journaling, oplocks enabled, fast CIFS writes enabled, jumbo frames disabled), the unit isn't resynching or indexing media, there are no scheduled backup jobs (internal or time machine) and ... to be absolutely sure ... I've also confirmed performance several times over the last week to eliminate any other invisible, transient activity ... no luck :?
Performance seems to have halved at a stroke with no clear reason.
It looks very much like a RAIDiator 4.1.8 issue but I'm happy to help troubleshoot. Any chance a Jedi (or other expert) can help?
Thanks,
Justin
* After swapping my ageing PC for a shiny new iMac (really shiny, by the way), I noticed a very modest (but welcome) *increase* in performance from the ReadyNAS.
* Running Windows 7 (directly through Boot Camp, fully Windows Update'd) and RAIDiator 4.1.8 beta (for Lion compatibility) the little Duo could saturate my Gigabit Ethernet to 25-30% (transferring data at around 250-300Mb/s, then). Everything was running great ...
* Then a mini-disaster ... after three years use the ReadyNAS power supply gave up. The unit shut down without warning and wouldn't power up again.
* Some excellent online support put me back on track. "Some time later" and with a new power supply connected (an identical Netgear part) I was up and running again.
* The unit started first time and all was well ... everything was accessible and usable ... but restarting the unit once more (from front-view) the ReadyNAS unexpectedly froze on boot.
* Blue light flashing at 1Hz, fan at medium-volume, no activity or drive lights and invisible to RAIDar, I gave it four/five hours ...
* Not responding to physical (power) button presses, I had to pull the plug. Fortunately, the unit picked itself up and booted without issue. Scouring downloaded log's I could see *no trace whatsoever* of the failed boot.
* To eliminate any possibility of data corruption or similar badness (and with a new release-version of RAIDiator 4.1.8 now available) I updated the unit firmware, performed full factory reset and reconfigured the unit to match its old settings (all from front-view). Perhaps this was a beta glitch?
* Now running solidly and without issue, I copied data back to the unit using Windows Explorer and a local backup. It should have close to zero fragmentation, then.
Doing this, it was clear performance had halved. The unit now saturates just 10-15% of the network ... transferring at around 100-150Mb/s only (no RAIDar or front-view pages open).
This doesn't look like a hardware problem ... the drives look fine (a matched Seagate ST3500630AS pair, their SMART reports look good and their temps are normal), the network looks fine (private LAN, both Mac (on-board Broadcom NetXtreme) and NAS are wired to the same Netgear WNDR3700 (gigabit router, latest firmware), no concerning errors ... a few TCP retransmits which are not unusual) and there are no errors or warnings in the logs. But for a new power adapter, nothing has changed hardware-wise.
The old and new front-view settings match near-exactly (same network settings, same shares, same users and access rights, one or two *fewer* services running than before, no bittorrent/photo's/remote/vault, full data journaling, oplocks enabled, fast CIFS writes enabled, jumbo frames disabled), the unit isn't resynching or indexing media, there are no scheduled backup jobs (internal or time machine) and ... to be absolutely sure ... I've also confirmed performance several times over the last week to eliminate any other invisible, transient activity ... no luck :?
Performance seems to have halved at a stroke with no clear reason.
It looks very much like a RAIDiator 4.1.8 issue but I'm happy to help troubleshoot. Any chance a Jedi (or other expert) can help?
Thanks,
Justin
87 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- jasonsbxAspirant"I don't think anyone's cursing Netgear yet"
I am a bit:-)
I arrive here because my NAS went slow after upgrading and that after receiving email saying upgrade available.
I really hate when there is a known issue and companies continue on as if nothing is wrong. They bother to list 2TB drives as a limitation the least they could do is also list probably halving your performance as a limitation. - Justin_SAspirant
Chewbacca wrote: I was able to reproduce the issue. Will have our engineers take a look into the issue.
Hi Yoh-dah and Chewie,
It's been 3 weeks since we last heard from you guys ... can you offer an update on this, yet?
Thanks,
Justin - Rocketrobo99AspirantI'm one of those that bought a Duo and immediately loaded up 4.1.8; I've never been overwhelmed by the system performance. I failed at a memory upgrade, so I'd be interested in hearing if a downgrade did help those who gave it a shot. I'm sure the engineers are looking at a .x version upgrade, but it would be nice to hear if there is something in the works.
- SnowSTiAspirantWell you guys can count me in as another user that updated to 4.1.8 and the had terrible performance. I went from 28 Mb/s reads with 4.1.7 to 10 Mb/s reads with 4.1.8.
I have rolled back to 4.1.7 now and have restored the performance back to what it should be. Hopefully we hear something soon. - Pip_JonesAspirantI've rolled back to 4.1.7 too.
Write has increased to 18.81 MB/s (+2 MB/s higher than 4.1.8 )
Read has increased to 34.6 MB/s (+10MB/s higher than 4.1.8 )
NAS performance tester 1.3 http://www.808.dk/?nastester
Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on drive P: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 18.32 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 18.99 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 18.98 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 18.79 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 18.98 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W): 18.81 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on drive P: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 34.9 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 35.42 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 33.72 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 34.42 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 28.96 MB/sec *** LAUNCHED FRONT VIEW DURING TEST ***
------------------------------
Average (R): 33.48 MB/sec
------------------------------ - PBobbenBAspirantSame problem here!
Using an iMac C2D connected to a Netgear WNR3500 gigabit router.
All speeds are with AFP.
With 4.1.8:
10.6.8: about 15Mb/s write and about 30Mb/s read
10.7.2: about 15Mb/s write and between 3 - 30Mb/s read (the speed is varying widely)
With 4.1.8 T9:
10.6.8: about 19Mb/s write and about 40-45Mb/s read
10.7.2: about 19Mb/s write and between 3 - 30Mb/s read (the speed is varying widely)
Incase of Lion the read speed seems to get worse over time, as I'm writing this I made a quick test and only got around 150Kb/s read speed!
Write speed is unaffected.
Something is definitely iffy here, either with Lion or Netatalk or both. - Justin_SAspirant
yoh-dah, Fri Oct 14, 2011 wrote: Thanks for the detailed feedback. I'll have someone take a look. Chewbacca, Fri Oct 21, 2011 wrote: I was able to reproduce the issue. Will have our engineers take a look into the issue.
Hi Yoh-Dah and Chewbacca,
Thanks again for confirming this issue.
Can you offer an update on progress, any insight into the cause you might have (if it relates to configuration, some or all of us may be able work around it temporarily) or an ETA for the next beta firmware which will address the problem?
It's been over a month since we heard from you :(
Thanks,
Justin - sfritz313AspirantIs there any resolution to this issue? I haven't backed up to the Duo in several weeks and I'm starting to feel a little desperate.
- yoh-dahGuideGuys, appreciate it if you can try 4.1.9-T2 beta and give us feedback on whether the performance issue is fixed for you.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=59222 - PBobbenBAspirantWell, with 4.1.9T2 the performance is as good as with 4.1.8T9. The write speed is quite stable at about 19Mb/s but the read speed is varying widely, after a fresh boot of the Mac the read speed is quite stable at 20Mb/s, moments later it can be between 3-30Mb/s and after that suddenly jump to a stable 58Mb/s and then a logout and login on the Mac and read speed is back at 20Mb/s again (same with 4.1.8T9) so there seems to be some issue in either Lion or Netatalk...
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