Raid 10 read slow

Try the latest SoftRAID beta. Let me know if anything changes. Also, post a support file, there may be a clue.

http://www.softraid.com/sr_beta

Did you try disable Spotlight on the volume? (excempt it)

@softraid-support 

yes I have disabled spotlight, ironwolf drives was spell corrected to ironwood....  will check beta tomorrow.  Quite late in Australia now....  zzzzz...  as these are 7200 rpm drives I expected a good read speed.  

On my old Red NAS slow drives 5400rpm variable- 400 MB/s write 500 read was delivered - fair enough.  This has been a bit of a journey for many of us, my new M1 max Studio has had errors with the old Red NAS 10 raid, and OMG problems with the raid 5 NAS  - hopefully Ventura will come to the rescue.  

My plan at the moment is to get a stable raid10 running to on the MacPro laptop to transfer to the M1max studio ....  someone might say "good luck with that!"  cheers, all help welcome.  

Softraid has been brilliant for many years - doing it tough now[on M1], Drobo was deadly for data, Promise ok? but had many limits,   go Softraid!

@kevsull 

You have lots of volumes.

Note that the last volume on your drives will be much slower than for example the first volume created. But see what happens when you disable spotlight when you test. Also, you need to get the latest app if you are using AJA/ Black Magic for example, otherwise it will give false (slow) results.

1. Spotlight disabled for all volumes

2. Latest Black Magic used [also ran Disktester Diglloyd -same result ]

3. First volume speed write about 800 MB/s, read about 230 MB/s and noisy vibrations on read.  Stripe 128kb, deleted volume and restricted 64kb, same result.

4. Tried the soft raid beta you suggested, no change, same results.

5. Put into 2 TB4 enclosures and retried, slightly faster write 900 MB/s read 250 MB/s and rattles on read.

6. This makes the read about the same as a single disk.    Have you ever seen this behaviour before?  

Hi, I have deleted all volumes [start again] and added a new volume 4disks Raid 0 size 8TB in a single TB4 enclosure as a sanity check.  

The write was ~900MB/s and read ~990MB/s very quiet no rattles, which is exactly what is expected for these drives.  

Is there a problem with the raid 10 using 8 drives?  

Maybe I should use one enclosure as raid 0 [4 volumes x12TB] and the second enclosure and a daily non-raid drive backup [4disks x12TB with CCCloner]??

Thanks for your comments.

@kevsull 

I have seen slow reads reported on some drives or combinations. Did you try the latest SoftRAID beta? It probably wont make any difference in the slow performance area, but it could.

If you label the disks with SoftRAID enclosure 1/2 for example, then make the secondary disks all in one enclosure, you split the raid between two in the most optimal way. Try that also.

This stuff is weird. The SoftRAID driver is very fast, it is not the issue. Something else occurs to limit performance in some scenarios.

Tried the softraid beta, no change.  Will try a few things as suggested, and get back to you.  Agreed, it's weird.

Hi, I have tested a softraid 4 and softraid 5 volume on the Intel MBPro, and had great writes ~700MB/s, and reads ~900[raid5]-1000[raid4] MB/s very quiet during r and w.

So these Ironwolf NAS HDDs don't like softraid 10, or even softraid 1, all very slow reads and rattles/vibrations - strange.  

Regarding raid 4, I haven't found any dart/panic problems in the forum related to raid 4.  Is this a good one to use with the Studio M1 max?  

As a side issue, I have a thunderbay8 raid5 that is unstable on the Studio M1 [panics, reboots, some dart related, etc, but OK on an older intel laptop] so raid 5 is not an option on the Studio M1.

Hoping you will tell me that raid 4 is all good on the Studio M1.....

@kevsull 

The RAID 5 issue is fixed in Ventura. Yes you can use RAID 4, it avoids this issue also.

Let me clarify:
You are getting good performance with Intel, RAID 4/5?

But on the same computer, RAID 10 is awful?

Hwo do they both do on the M1?

Iron Wolf are good drives, they generally have excellent performance profiles.

@softraid-support 

Q: You are getting good performance with Intel, RAID 4/5?  A: Correct.

Q: But on the same computer, RAID 10 is awful?  A: Yes, 2019MBPro, Monterey 12.6. Also checked on 2013 MBPro intel Catalina, essentially the same results, how strange.

Q: Hwo do they both do on the M1?  A: Will check the Raid4 later on the M1, now that you have confirmed raid4 is not upset by the M1.  Will also check the raid10 on M1. will get back to you tomorrow. [Raid5 is unusable on the M1 - panics, reboots, ultimately killed a disk on the raid5 which I have now replaced and rebuilt the volumes using the MBPro.]

Just an update. I have ultimately used Raid 4 using the Ironwolf 12TB NAS drives, used 5 drives to give 48TB stripe as 4 volumes of 12TB.  3 remaining drives are for BackUP in the TB8.

This has been running reliably for ~2weeks, write ~800MB/s read over 1000MB/s. Fantastic!!

Only one panic [watchdog] when I shut the computer down without unmounting ALL the TB8 volumes, so it restarted after the panic.  

Startup can be with the raid attached, no problems. Shutdown unmount all external volumes and drives.

I hope this workaround continues to be reliable as I cannot upgrade to Ventura until Canon printer drivers are available, [and other print utilities] probably ~Feb next year.

Also tried Raid 10 and it was awful on the M1 using the Ironwolf drives. Hence went for Raid 4.  I see Softraid 7 is available - is this of value for Monterey or is it best to wait for a bit???

Thanks for you help.

@kevsull 

SoftRAID 7 is a bug fix release in addition, so it may be worth upgrading, but not critical.