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Since OS 6.4.x, my full backup towards USB 3 drive takes extremely long with very low throughput and slows down the NAS Admin GUI to the point of being unsuable. The symptoms are very similar to what has been described on this site for the Anti-Virus issue on 6.4.x. However these symptoms occur even with AV switched off, so this is a different use-case all together.
Is the extremely slow speed for full backup on USB 3 a known issue? Is Netgear working on fixing this issue?
Theoretical max throughput of USB3 is 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0#Speed_and_compatibility ). On RN516 I'd hoped be able to achieve 80 MB/s or more during full backup to a WD MyBook (WDBFJK0060HBK-EESN), without responsiveness of other processes being degraded. On OS 6.4.2, in real live, a full backup to rear USB3 on RN516 of 4.5 TB takes over 4 days resulting in an average throughput of roughly 12 MB/s. On 6.4.0 and earlier, the same full backup only toke 10 hours. So there is a significant drop in performance in 6.4.1 and 6.4.2. Doing the same full backup with OS 6.5.0-T338 next, to see if things have improved or not.
During the full backup, testing the USB3 througput (writing and reading a large file), reveals only 6.4 MB/s write and 11.2 MB/s read. CPU usage is 11% and is mostly used by usb-storage process.
FWIW, the backup job log has more precise information on how much it copied.
I can't find any information on the total size of the files that have been copied in the status mail. I know there is a line like "sent 1,041,278 bytes received 23,268 bytes 425,818.40 bytes/sec total size is 11,156,467,159 speedup is 10,480.02" when you would use RSync, but I'm not using that for backup to USB. The message for standard backup doesn't show the total size.
The logs in Admin GUI only show one line with no details, like this:
Re: USB3 full backup slow to the point of unusable
I'm running it now on 6.5.0-T338. I don't see improvement in the throughput sofar. The backup is still roughly 10 times slower than it was with 6.4.0 or earlier. Only 1/4th of the total amount of the data has been copied after more than a day. If the problem was fixed, the full backup should already have finished. But can't be fully sure until I get the mail notification. It will probably be another 3 days before I can analyze the duration and size of the full backup.
One thing that is improved, is that the Admin GUI is back to normal response. It no longer hangs up and does show all the icons and usage bars and is updated relatively quickly when clicking refresh.
Re: USB3 full backup slow to the point of unusable
/dev/sdg1 on /media/USB_HDD_3 type ufsd (rw,noatime,nodiratime,nls=utf8,fmask=0,dmask=0)
/dev/sdg1 on /run/nfs4/media/USB_HDD_3 type ufsd (rw,noatime,nodiratime,nls=utf8,fmask=0,dmask=0)
Are you able to check a different filesystem on the USB drive?
I was able to see a significant performance increase with EXT4 (over the NTFS).
No, I will not change the file system on the USB drive. NTFS is a supported file system. And I need to be able to access the drive if connected to Windows.
Moreover, I've used the same drive from OS 6.2.x upwards and the throughput has been acceptable for me until OS 6.4.1, where the througput decreased 10-fold.
I've been struggeling for months now to troubleshoot this issue, keeping me away from the actual purpose of having the NAS, that is to create content for my website.
It's now up to Netgear to find the root cause and come up with a solution to get the throughput back to the way it was on OS 6.2.x.
Re: USB3 full backup slow to the point of unusable
I was suggesting the EXT4 to make sure that you are not running into the same issue as I was in the lab.
I am suspecting there is a possible change that would be needed in the proprietary that is not owned by NETGEAR, Inc.
We are still looking into the issue. I can see if there is an alternative NTFS driver that you are able to use, but I would like to run some testing on that driver before suggesting it as a viable option.
Not that it is relevant at this time, but it will be nice for some of this divide in the OS's will be a little bit more blurred with the Canonical working with Microsoft.
We are still looking into the issue. I can see if there is an alternative NTFS driver that you are able to use, but I would like to run some testing on that driver before suggesting it as a viable option.
Good to know the issue is being researched. I'm willing to test alternatives, if you feel that they are viable options. My "benchmark" would be for a full backup of approx. 4.5 TB to take 8 to 10 hours (and not 4 days) on my system. Then I would be back to comparable throughput available in 6.2.x.
Not that it is relevant at this time, but it will be nice for some of this divide in the OS's will be a little bit more blurred with the Canonical working with Microsoft.
I was suggesting the EXT4 to make sure that you are not running into the same issue as I was in the lab.
I'm not looking to use EXT4. I was happy with NTFS performance in OS 6.2.x and am hoping for a solution to get back to that throughput.
He was asking you if you could test with ext4. You could test it on a different USB3 drive if you want to maintain ntfs for the backup.
But the truth is you will always get faster speed with ext on a linux system. You can get ext support on Windows from paragon for $20 (free if you use the personal version). It might be worth considering, given the small expense.
Not that it is relevant at this time, but it will be nice for some of this divide in the OS's will be a little bit more blurred with the Canonical working with Microsoft.
It would be nice if Windows-10 got ext (and btrfs) file system support, and maybe even the RAID tools needed to mount the ReadyNAS data volumes in windows.
He was asking you if you could test with ext4. You could test it on a different USB3 drive if you want to maintain ntfs for the backup.
But the truth is you will always get faster speed with ext on a linux system. You can get ext support on Windows from paragon for $20 (free if you use the personal version). It might be worth considering, given the small expense.
It would be nice if Windows-10 got ext (and btrfs) file system support, and maybe even the RAID tools needed to mount the ReadyNAS data volumes in windows.
Thanks for pointing out the these changes for Win 10. I was not aware of that. I understand and accept that EXT4 will be faster than NTFS on a Linux system. I can live with that. I have always used NTFS anyway. There has been an unacceptable drop in performance of backup to NTFS USB 3 drive since 6.4.1. I would clasify that as a bug that needs to be solved.
And I'm using Windows 7 and intend to stay on it as long as possible, so EXT support in Win 10 doesn't affect me. And for Win 7 I still require NTFS on the USB drives. 6 TB USB3 drives are not cheap and I don't have any spares just lying around. I still don't see the point of me spending time (=money) on testing EXT4 that I'm never going to use. The issue brought up in this post is slow backup speed to NTFS USB 3 drive and testing and solutions should focus on that. As far as I know NTFS is still a supported file system on RN OS, right? So it should work properly.
The issue brought up in this post is slow backup speed to NTFS USB 3 drive and testing and solutions should focus on that. As far as I know NTFS is still a supported file system on RN OS, right? So it should work properly.
Obviously it should, and OOM-9 is clearly looking into it. He asked "Are you able to check a different filesystem on the USB drive?" He wanted to confirm that the NTFS drivers in the NAS are the root cause of your issue - ruling out the possibility that your performance problem is somehow different from what he's seeing in the lab. You are over-reacting to that request.
You can of course stick with NTFS. If I were in your shoes I'd try the paragon ext drivers for Win7 (even if I tested performance using a smaller share on a USB 2 drive). It'd be free to try, likely gives you an immediate fix, and would improve backup speeds even after Netgear fixes the NTFS problem. But I'm not in your shoes, I don't use USB drives for backup.
Re: USB3 full backup slow to the point of unusable
Maybe I'm over-reacting, still I feel that I'm doing a lot of test work for Netgear for free. I'd rather spend this time on working on my website content.
I'm sticking to NTFS for reasons eplained earlier. Did manage to borrow a USB 3 drive for addtional testing on RN312.
When doing a basic NTFS throughput comparision I noticed a large ("ten-fold") difference between two different drives.
Since both rear ports on RN312 are USB 3, the difference shouldn't be this big, I think. Can't really explain why this happens. Maybe the NTFS driver has problems with a specific make or model or disk size (e.g. > 4 T)?
WD:
model: WD MyBook WDBFJK0060HBK-EESN
size: 5.5 T
format: NTFS (preformatted from factory)
port: top rear USB3 port on RN312
read: 19.2 MB/s
write: 19.6 MB/s
Seagate:
model: ST4000DM000-1F2168
size: 3.7 T
format: NTFS (freshly formatted on Win 7)
port: bottom rear USB3 port on RN312
read: 104 MB/s
write: 180 MB/s
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Test on RN312 WD MyBook WDBFJK0060HBK-EESN.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
# df -h
/dev/sdc1 5.5T 53G 5.5T 1% /media/USB_HDD_1
# lsblk
sdc 8:32 0 5.5T 0 disk
└─sdc1 8:33 0 5.5T 0 part /media/USB_HDD_1
# cd /media/USB_HDD_1/
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/USB_HDD_1/.largefile bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 54.7125 s, 19.6 MB/s
# sh -c "sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"
# dd if=/media/USB_HDD_1/.largefile of=/dev/null bs=8k
131072+0 records in
131072+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 56.0367 s, 19.2 MB/s
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Test on RN312 Seagate ST4000DM000-1F2168.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
# df -h
/dev/sdd1 3.7T 203M 3.7T 1% /media/USB_HDD_2
# lsblk
sdd 8:48 0 3.7T 0 disk
└─sdd1 8:49 0 3.7T 0 part /media/USB_HDD_2
# cd /media/USB_HDD_2/
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/USB_HDD_2/.largefile bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 5.96359 s, 180 MB/s
# sh -c "sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"
# dd if=/media/USB_HDD_2/.largefile of=/dev/null bs=8k
131072+0 records in
131072+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 10.344 s, 104 MB/s
I was suggesting the EXT4 to make sure that you are not running into the same issue as I was in the lab.
I am suspecting there is a possible change that would be needed in the proprietary that is not owned by NETGEAR, Inc.
We are still looking into the issue. I can see if there is an alternative NTFS driver that you are able to use, but I would like to run some testing on that driver before suggesting it as a viable option.
Hi OOM-9, that's interesting.
Are you suggesting there could be a viable alternative through, as example, the ntfs-3g (open source) filesystem driver instead of using the ufsd (closed source) filesystem driver for mounting NTFS partitions of external drives?
Was the ufsd filesystem driver changed/updated in some way - considering various ReadyOS 6 releases (ReadyOS 6.2.x, 6.3.x, 6.4.x and actual Beta 6.5) - to justify observed performance degrading in specific case?
Re: USB3 full backup slow to the point of unusable
Hmm, it get's even weirder. I ejected the drives and reconnected each on a different USB port and ran the exact same tests again. Both are now showing comparable throughput, as I had expected in the first place.
WD: write 171 MB/s, read 106 MB/s
Seagate: write 184 MB/s, read 105 MB/s
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ejected drives and switched ports
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Test on RN312 WD MyBook WDBFJK0060HBK-EESN.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
# df -h
/dev/sdd1 5.5T 54G 5.5T 1% /media/USB_HDD_1
/dev/sdd1 5.5T 54G 5.5T 1% /run/nfs4/media/USB_HDD_1
# lsblk
sdd 8:48 0 5.5T 0 disk
└─sdd1 8:49 0 5.5T 0 part /media/USB_HDD_1
# cd /media/USB_HDD_1/
# rm .largefile
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/USB_HDD_1/.largefile bs=1M count=1024
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/USB_HDD_1/.largefile bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 6.29124 s, 171 MB/s
# sh -c "sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"
# dd if=/media/USB_HDD_1/.largefile of=/dev/null bs=8k
131072+0 records in
131072+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 10.1405 s, 106 MB/s
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Test on RN312 Seagate ST4000DM000-1F2168.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
# df -h
/dev/sdc1 3.7T 1.2G 3.7T 1% /media/USB_HDD_2
/dev/sdc1 3.7T 1.2G 3.7T 1% /run/nfs4/media/USB_HDD_2
# lsblk
sdc 8:32 0 3.7T 0 disk
└─sdc1 8:33 0 3.7T 0 part /media/USB_HDD_2
# cd /media/USB_HDD_2/
# rm .largefile
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/USB_HDD_2/.largefile bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 5.82328 s, 184 MB/s
# sh -c "sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"
# dd if=/media/USB_HDD_2/.largefile of=/dev/null bs=8k
131072+0 records in
131072+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 10.1985 s, 105 MB/s
It might make sense to copy a larger share, so you can see if the performance is sustained.
Yes, my thoughts exactly. Will compare a backup of almost 1TB of data from the Picture share to both Seagate and WD USB drives. The picture files come in many different sizes, ranging from a few kB to 300 MB. Should be a representative test.
Re: USB3 full backup slow to the point of unusable
Meanwhile, after 4 days and 18 hours, the 4.5 T full backup on RN516 has finally finished, resulting in an effective and disappointing througput of 11.3 MB/s on 6.5.0-T338 with WD MyBook.
Re: USB3 full backup slow to the point of unusable
dsnpevl writes.
Meanwhile, after 4 days and 18 hours, the 4.5 T full backup on RN516 has finally finished, resulting in an effective and disappointing througput of 11.3 MB/s on 6.5.0-T338 with WD MyBook.
Wow you have a very fast backup there. I have been backing up my 4.2 TB of data from my NAS516 to a 5 TB Toshiba drive for 8 days and it has finished 3.8 TB of data so far. I am using the rear usb 3.0 so called faster port.
Must be caused by firmware 6.5.0-T338 that i'm running also.
And by the way I also agree with using NTFS so you can actually see the data on any PC or Mac computer without having to install special software.
