Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

sweetthdevil · 2021-02-27 11:34:06

Hello all,

I have Archlinux install on a NAS with a WD Red Plus 2TB 3.5" SATA NAS Hard Drive - WD20EFRX (CMR). I just realised I am getting slow write speed especially whilst downloading files using wget or when transferring file through the network using samba.

If downloading a file via wget I get an average of 3.8MB/s (downloading from uptobox) However, downloading the same file from the same server through my desktop (also running arch of course) I get about 8.8MB/s - my broadband has an average speed of 65 to 70Mbit/s (test ran both on NAS and desktop (to make sure there is no issue with internal network speed.

Running test on the NAS to see the write and read speed of the Hard drive I get those figures:

Write test:
sync; dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024; sync
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 17.9825 s, 59.7 MB/s

Read test:
dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 11.0121 s, 97.5 MB/s

The drive is mounted as follow in /etc/fstab

/dev/sda3     /mnt/hd           ext4             defaults,auto   0   0
/dev/sda2     swap              swap            defaults           0   0

Reading those hard drive read/write speed and the broadband capacity I should be able to download or transfer at higher speed? Searching online or the wiki I can't find any direction to start looking into?

Thank you for reading, your interest and your time.

Looking forward to your replies

seth · 2021-02-27 14:08:22

How fast if you download the file "wget -O /dev/null"?
How's the wget performance when chosing a speedtest mirror from https://linhost.info/2013/10/download-test-files/ ?

sweetthdevil · 2021-02-27 16:58:33

Thank you for your reply.

See below result from the speedtest.

wget -O /dev/null http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
--2021-02-27 16:55:47--  http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
Resolving proof.ovh.net (proof.ovh.net)... 188.165.12.106, 2001:41d0:2:876a::1
Connecting to proof.ovh.net (proof.ovh.net)|188.165.12.106|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 12500000 (12M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: '/dev/null'

/dev/null                    100%[==============================================>]  11.92M  8.42MB/s    in 1.4s    

2021-02-27 16:55:48 (8.42 MB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [12500000/12500000]

Right, I am now confused. How come I can download the file faster on my pc than my NAS from the same server within 1 minute difference and it's always the same thing?

seth · 2021-02-27 19:49:07

Did you run that speed test on the desktop or the NAS? (Fits the speed you indicated for the Desktop in #1)

sweetthdevil · 2021-02-28 09:40:59

That was definitely ran onto the NAS (goflex)

[sweetth@goflex ~]$ wget -O /dev/null http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
--2021-02-28 09:37:41--  http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
Resolving proof.ovh.net (proof.ovh.net)... 188.165.12.106, 2001:41d0:2:876a::1
Connecting to proof.ovh.net (proof.ovh.net)|188.165.12.106|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 12500000 (12M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: '/dev/null'

/dev/null                    100%[==============================================>]  11.92M  8.57MB/s    in 1.4s    

2021-02-28 09:37:43 (8.57 MB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [12500000/12500000]

That's from the desktop

[sweetth@Archlinux ~]$ wget -O /dev/null http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
--2021-02-28 09:40:11--  http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
Resolving proof.ovh.net (proof.ovh.net)... 188.165.12.106, 2001:41d0:2:876a::1
Connecting to proof.ovh.net (proof.ovh.net)|188.165.12.106|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 12500000 (12M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘/dev/null’

/dev/null                    100%[==============================================>]  11.92M  8.34MB/s    in 1.4s    

2021-02-28 09:40:12 (8.34 MB/s) - ‘/dev/null’ saved [12500000/12500000]

seth · 2021-02-28 12:44:57

So the network performance (and for wget) is comparable.
Yoru previous test suggested a decent disk performance, so how's

wget -O ~/100Mb.dat http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat # ie. to a location on the actual disk

on the NAS doing?
How big is the file from uptobox (in comparism to the 100Mb testfile) and is this a free or premium account?

sweetthdevil · 2021-02-28 12:51:15

Hi Steh,

Well, saving the actual file onto the drive behave same as previously.

[sweetth@goflex Download]$ wget -O http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
wget: missing URL
Usage: wget [OPTION]... [URL]...

Try `wget --help' for more options.
[sweetth@goflex Download]$ wget http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
--2021-02-28 12:49:31--  http://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat
Resolving proof.ovh.net (proof.ovh.net)... 188.165.12.106, 2001:41d0:2:876a::1
Connecting to proof.ovh.net (proof.ovh.net)|188.165.12.106|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 12500000 (12M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: '100Mb.dat'

100Mb.dat                    100%[==============================================>]  11.92M  8.38MB/s    in 1.4s    

2021-02-28 12:49:33 (8.38 MB/s) - '100Mb.dat' saved [12500000/12500000]

The file from uptobox was about 250mb and yes it's a premium link generated by Alldebrid.

seth · 2021-02-28 13:03:19

The only thing I could imagine (if the uptobox download speed wasn't a one-off) would be the disk cache being relevant, try the 1Gb.dat (nb. that is giga-bits, the file is ~120MB in real megabytes and not that SI garbage ;-)

sweetthdevil · 2021-02-28 15:39:33

The largest file I could find in the link provided was the 500MB - below the result.

[sweetth@goflex Download]$ wget http://speedtest.ams01.softlayer.com/downloads/test500.zip
--2021-02-28 15:37:30--  http://speedtest.ams01.softlayer.com/downloads/test500.zip
Resolving speedtest.ams01.softlayer.com (speedtest.ams01.softlayer.com)... 159.253.132.18, 2a03:8180:1001:68::2
Connecting to speedtest.ams01.softlayer.com (speedtest.ams01.softlayer.com)|159.253.132.18|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 524288000 (500M) [application/zip]
Saving to: 'test500.zip'

test500.zip                  100%[==============================================>] 500.00M  7.58MB/s    in 64s     

2021-02-28 15:38:35 (7.79 MB/s) - 'test500.zip' saved [524288000/524288000]

Last edited by sweetthdevil (2021-02-28 15:40:06)

seth · 2021-02-28 18:19:36

So this is really not the problem.
If the uptobox download is reproducibly slow on the NAS but not the desktop, this is between your system and that specific server.
This should™ not be a problem, but what's

sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control # should™ be "cubic"
ip a # notably the MTU value is interesting

sweetthdevil · 2021-03-01 09:37:15

Hi seth,

Cubic on both desktop and NAS. Will monitor the NAS and see if it varies in speed.

Thanks again for your time and assistance, much appreciated.

Arch Linux

#1 2021-02-27 11:34:06

Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#2 2021-02-27 14:08:22

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#3 2021-02-27 16:58:33

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#4 2021-02-27 19:49:07

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#5 2021-02-28 09:40:59

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#6 2021-02-28 12:44:57

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#7 2021-02-28 12:51:15

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#8 2021-02-28 13:03:19

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#9 2021-02-28 15:39:33

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#10 2021-02-28 18:19:36

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

#11 2021-03-01 09:37:15

Re: Slow Hard Drive speed Copy/Write

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