Backup speed issues.

[UrbanFreestyle]

Hi all, i thought i would reach out here as NovaStor haven't even tried to help me.

 

I have a Windows 10 LTSB desktop connected to a Netgear router using GBE ports on both devices. I am using cat5e cable to connect them.
The NAS Is a Buffalo Terrastation 1400D with 4x 2tb Seagate barracuda 7200 drives running in a single RAID5 array. This is also connected to the router using cat5e.
When transferring files to the NAS using Windows Explorer i am getting approx speeds of 35mbps in write however when using Novabackup Server buffalo edition i am getting a max of 12mbps. I ran a backup of approx 533gb and this took a little over 12hrs.

Can anyone advise why there is the speed discrepancy and if this can be improved?

[Mikensan]

So there's a lot that can impact transfer speeds, the most common cause of slow speeds are small files. Anything less than say 100mb and in the thousands = slow slow slow speeds.

 

While using explorer, try to transfer something that cannot be further compressed such as a movie. See if you still get 35mbps.

 

Their software could be attempting to compress and transmit, indexing, or other various backup-related tasks that could be bogging it down to 12mbps.

 

It is possible one (or more) of the disks in your array is dying, which because of partiy would result in the overall performance drop. A parity array is as fast as its slowest disk. I would check if it is possible to get smart data or some form of health check from the buffalo NAS.

 

If the NAS is brand new and you don't care about the data, I would connect the disks to a desktop and stress test them (or at least simply test transfer speeds per disk).

[UrbanFreestyle]

Thanks for the reply. 

So speed tests with manual file transfer (5gb mkv video) seemed to run around 30-35mbps which i think is still a bit slow for gbe connection?

the NAS isnt brand new but only just set up so no real data on there. I have run checks on the NAS itself and SMART is healthy and all within tolerance levels.

I guess it might be worth pulling the drives and checking in Windows.

 

There were a lot of smaller files (as they are photos, previews and thumbnails, metadata etc)

[UrbanFreestyle]

would it be better to pull them an re-raid as raid 0? i have 3 copies of all files so no massive issue if drive fails.

[Mikensan]

honestly JBOD or 4x Raid 0s - you want to narrow which disk is causing the issue (if it is a hardware problem).

[UrbanFreestyle]

ok, thanks, will pull the drives and run a check on each, then pop them back in and raid 0 them to see if that helps. I know being a pre-made NAS there will be speed limitations. but hoping for a bit more.

[Mikensan]

1 minute ago, UrbanFreestyle said:

ok, thanks, will pull the drives and run a check on each, then pop them back in and raid 0 them to see if that helps. I know being a pre-made NAS there will be speed limitations. but hoping for a bit more.

4 disks in raid 5 should max out the 1gb connection (~114mbyte/s) in any NAS solution.