WHS issues

GJSNeptune

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Mar 31, 2004
Messages
12,372
When I first assembled my WHS box, I had decent transfer speeds between WD Green drives, about 40MB/s. Recently my transfer speeds would be like 10MB/s. I swear I had set my WHS box to a static IP, but for some reason it was dynamic. In addition, whenever I had an active file transfer, my main computer (Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit) would be jittery, similar to low FPS in a game. So I set the WHS box's IP to static, and then set both Gigabit controllers to Jumbo Frames.

Transfer speeds are back to 40MB/s, and I no longer have the jitters. But what the heck happened?
 
Hmmm you shouldn't need Jumbo Frames for 40mb/s plus the green drives should move around 70-80mb/s..
 
What else should I look into?

Main rig:
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
E8400 @ 3.6
Asus P5Q Pro
2x2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800

WHS:
WHS w/ SP1 I think
MSI 770-C45
AMD X2 Regor 245
2x1GB Kingston DDR3-1066

Router: D-Link DIR-655
 
When I move files to or from a system drive in Windows 7 I'll get about 40-45 MB/s but if I move the files from a secondary drive to a secondary drive like from a 1.5TB Seagate to another 1.5TB Seagate I'll get anywhere from 80-100MB/s with 85MB/s being the norm. That's using a D-Link DGL-4300, which does not support jumbo frames.

Make sure you have at least Cat5e or Cat6 cables in good shape, without any kinks or sharp bends. Also make sure they aren't running parallel to any power lines.
 
Ugh, I'm transferring files from a WHS HDD (not yet in the pool) and my computer is stuttering again.
 
Are you running any other applications (IE, WMP, etc.) while transferring? What about services?

Any driver issues on the server (see device manager)?
 
Maybe Firefox. Is it normal for file transfers to raise CPU usage to 55-60%? And should 60% CPU usage be enough to make Windows stutter?
 
One thing I have noticed and I believe its what youre seeing is when I transfer files to a fresh WHS with no other drives but the boot drive and its allotted partition after the OS is, my WHS seems slow also. Once I add a few TB of Sata drives in , it seems to straighten out. As far as why your Win7 machine stutters, I havent a clue.

To clarify, if all you have in WHS is the one drive your booting from, once you add some drives other than that one, it should speed up some.
 
It's not to the boot drive. When I created this thread, I was transferring files from a drive outside of the WHS pool to drives on my main machine. That transfer went fine at 40MB/s after I set each machine to Jumbo Frames. Yesterday I added the drive to the pool and transferred the files back to it. I still got around 40MB/s, but my main machine was a little jittery.
 
OP:

I've had a similar experience transferring to my WHS from my Win 7 x64 Pro PC.

How many physical hard drives do you have on your Win7 PC? Are you transferring data from your OS drive or from a secondary physical drive?


This issue ONLY occurs when I am running the Zune software AND trasnferring data to/from the server.

Might be a quirk of my system (driver issue, or maybe the Zune software, etc.).


Resolved this by not running Zune software while trasnferring.


Try transferring without running Firefox, see if it makes a difference.
 
Maybe one of the drives is in PIO mode? That'll hit you up there in CPU usage..
 
Main rig:
WD6401AALS - OS
WD1001FALS - storage
WD6400AAKS - (leftover files from previous system)
WD6400AAKS - (leftover files from previous system)

WHS:
WD2500AAKS - OS
WD10EADS
WD10EADS
WD10EADS (now in pool)
WD10EADS (not installed yet)

All four HDDs have data on them, so I had to transfer files to my main rig. I transferred files to the WD1001FALS, added the drive to the pool, then transferred the files into the pool.

With the last drive, though, I had to split the data between the WD1001FALS, my OS drive, and one of the AAKS drives, so maybe that did something.
 
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