Done the tests - Slow speeds on high spec kit - stumped

[jack20121]

Hi,

I've read through many of posts here to try and resolve this issue myself, but have hit rock bottom and need some help.

I'm getting very slow transfer speeds between my PC and ReadyNas when transferring 17Gb+ files.

Read = approx 5MB/s
Write = approx 9MB/s
(I dont have my IOmeter results to hand but will update above info with them a bit later.)

My setup:

Win 7 64bit - Corsair 120GB Force 3 SSD 2.5" SATA-III 6Gb/s ---> Gigabit NIC in PC ---> 5m Cat 5e ---> Netgear GS108 ProSafe 8-Port Gigabit Switch ---> 5m Cat 5e ---> ReadyNas Duo v1

In the ReadyNas is 2 x Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 64MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green

And at above rates Im getting 1hour+ to transfer a 17GB file from NAS to SSD.

ReadyNas Jumbo Frames enabled (MTU 7096 on ReadyNas, MTU 9000 on PC NIC)
ReadyNas Jounalling Disabled

Now, when i transfer using my Macbook Pro over AFP, i get probably double the above performance - and that's writing to a 2.5" HDD, not an SSD! But still nowhere near the 20-30Mb/s others are getting.

When I download via FTP on the PC I get a read speed of about 7.5MB/s.

Im sure this is a transfer protocol issue. Or some settings on my PC NIC are messed up. Unless im missing something, the above kit spec should give me good gigabit performance.

If anyone could offer some advice on what else to try, would appreciate it.

Thanks

Jack

[mdgm-ntgr]

What version of the WD20EARS e.g. WD20EARS-00S8B1 (the one on the Hard Disk HCL)

If you download your logs (Status > Logs > Download all Logs) and extract the zip contents what does partition.log look like?

What performance do you get with Jumbo Frames disabled on the Windows machine and the NAS?

Do you have the latest NIC drivers for your PC's NIC installed on the PC?

[jack20121]

Thanks for quick reply mdgm, am not at setup atm but will get all the above info and get back to you. Thanks. Jack.

[StephenB]

Also it might be useful to look at the network stats on the NAS

[jack20121]

mdgm wrote:
What version of the WD20EARS e.g. WD20EARS-00S8B1 If you download your logs (Status > Logs > Download all Logs) and extract the zip contents what does partition.log look like? What performance do you get with Jumbo Frames disabled on the Windows machine and the NAS? Do you have the latest NIC drivers for your PC's NIC installed on the PC?

My harddisks are WD20EARS-00MVWB0 which is not the one you quote on the HCL. There is http://www.readynas.com/?p=3690

I rolled back my NIC driver as windows update had replaced it with one other said had been causing them problems. However this didnt make any difference.

This is my partition log (doesnt look good on first glance, not researched it yet):

Disk /dev/hde doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/hdc: 2000.3 GB, 2000388448256 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243200 cylinders, total 3907008688 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdc1              32     4096031     2048000   83  Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdc2         4096032     4608031      256000   82  Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdc3         4608032  3906992335  1951192152    5  Extended
/dev/hdc5         4608040  3906992335  1951192148   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hde: 2000.3 GB, 2000388448256 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243200 cylinders, total 3907008688 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Stephen, which network stats are you referring to? On interface errors i have this:

Auto-negotiation 0
Bad packets 0
Disconnect 0
False carrier 0
Idle errors 0
Link failures 0
Receive errors 0
Symbol errors 0
VLAN tags 0
TCP Retransmits 3
Unrecovered TCP Retransmits 0

Any thoughts?- Partition table is something ill look into now. I'd be surprised if the disk model was the cause of this as - I have managed to write to the NAS at decent speeds previously

[StephenB]

jack2012 wrote:
Stephen, which network stats are you referring to? On interface errors i have this: ...

That was what I meant. It looks like you aren't seeing any network issues, though regrettably the stats don't show fragmented packets.

I do suggest turning off jumbo packets as a test (not sure why you set the NAS to 7K and the PC to 9K either),

[mdgm-ntgr]

So incompatible disks but at first glance partition.log looks fine. Do try disabling jumbo frames as suggested.

[jack20121]

Im going to back track a bit, analysed on my ssd and was getting read/write speeds direct to the C: of 100MB/s and 30MB/s! After updating a few drivers and firmware ive got it up to 200MB/s but it should still be running at about 500MB/s.

Also, I forgot to mention the SSD was Trucrypt WDE'd - so there's about a 20% write performance drop with that.

I've still got a few more things to play with but have to say, despite decrypting the drive and updating the ssd firmware, NAS-PC transfer rates have only marginally improved (about 8-9MB/s now)

Also seems to be no difference with Jumbo Frames on/off

I still cant believe it's the WD disks though as write speed transfer to NAS from macbook pro can get up to 17MB/s.

[StephenB]

Have you tried disabling any security software (anti-virus and/or firewall)?

Also, I was wondering if you have a GS108T or a GS108?

[jack20121]

hi stephen,

it's the GS108, I think the "T" is the managed version - which i dont have

have disabled anti-virus, didnt make any difference.

Reckon im going to do a clean win 7 install, make sure my ssd is up to full performance and look at this issue from the ground up.

By the way, if i wanted to swap the HDDs in the ReadyNas for ones definitely on the HCL, can i just take one disk out, swap it and it'll rebuild from the other? Then do the same again?

[mdgm-ntgr]

jack2012 wrote:
By the way, if i wanted to swap the HDDs in the ReadyNas for ones definitely on the HCL, can i just take one disk out, swap it and it'll rebuild from the other? Then do the same again?

Yes, though for isolating cause of the issue it'd be best to backup your data, do a factory default with new drives in place then restore data from backup.

[StephenB]

jack2012 wrote:
it's the GS108, I think the "T" is the managed version - which i dont have

Ok. The "T" would let you see the stats on each switch port, plus it has some settings that could be tweaked.

There is nothing pointing to the switch. However, you could try a direct connect of the NAS to the PC before rebuilding it. Probably won't learn much new, but it would potentially confirm that it is not a network issue.

[jack20121]

Back again.

I have just done another test using filezilla downloading via ftp an 18Gb file from NAS to two difference machines over the same Cat5e cable.

Copying to PC with SSD drive transfers @ 5MB/s

Copying to Macbook Pro with a standard HDD transfers @ 23MB/s

Surely this rules out incompatible drives in the NAS? Or does it?

Im going back to thinking this is a PC NIC issue again - any other thoughts?

Thanks again

[StephenB]

jack2012 wrote:
Im going back to thinking this is a PC NIC issue again - any other thoughts?

I agree that the problem is most likely in the PC. The NIC is what I'd look at next.

[jack20121]

Ok, progress (sort of).

I disabled and uninstalled the NIC, deleting all driver software. Then "Scanned for new hardware" and let windows re-install it.

Now when I ftp from PC it starts off at 40MB/s and levels out at 21MB/s for about two minutes.

After that, transfer rate gradually declines to about 10MB/s (i then stopped it)

Transfer rate of Drag-and-Drop from a mapped drive on the NAS to PC desktop does not seem to have had measurable increase in speed though (which is CIFS, right?).

I reckon this is an MTU issue somewhere.

[StephenB]

I don't think an MTU problem would gradually degrade speed over minutes.

Though if you want to check for that, set the MTU to 1500 on the NAS, turning off jumbo frames, and do the same on the PC.

[Sereniity]

May have been already checked but this fixed my issue, my LAN was gigabit but my pc wasn't negotiating in gigabit, you can check it here, may be your issue:

Device Manager > Network Adapters > (your adapter) > Advanced > Speed & Duplex

Mine was set to auto negotiation and it stupidly set it at 10mbps

Set it to 1.0Gbps Full Duplex, speeds went up from 10mb/s to 120mb/s (with 9k Jumbo Packet).