First RAID 5 volume...
 
Notifications
Clear all

First RAID 5 volume in SoftRAID - speeds seem low

71 Posts
2 Users
0 Likes
2,861 Views
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

@guygamer

You won't have an issue with the Exos, they are good consistent performers.

 

 
Posted : 18/06/2021 12:01 am
guygamer
(@guygamer)
Posts: 43
Eminent Member
Topic starter
 

@softraid-support

Hi, just wanted to give a quick update on where I'm at with this. I got my returns completed this week and refunds issued.  The company selling the drives completed their RMA today on the Ultrastars today and interestingly the message they sent to me stated:

TEST RESULTS:
Many thanks for returning your Western Digital hard drives to us recently. The support department has tested the unit and confirmed that it is faulty. Units failed the manufacturer software diagnostic test.

Obviously that doesn't give much to go on but it's interesting that the drives failed their tests.

In terms of the order for the 12TB Seagate EXOS it's still just a waiting game really.  They've been give a date of 12 July by their supplier but that date slips back each day so it looks like I'm going to have to (not so) patiently wait for them turning up and hope that it isn't too long.

 
Posted : 25/06/2021 4:04 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

@guygamer

I wonder what that was also. Good luck withi the drives, hope they show up soon. Seems to be though that Seagate is back in the quality game the past few years.

 
Posted : 25/06/2021 5:02 pm
guygamer
(@guygamer)
Posts: 43
Eminent Member
Topic starter
 

@softraid-support The EXOS arrived earlier today so I got straight to testing them.  Ran the same tests with the same settings as the previous drives and the difference in results is quite stark, especially on the 8 drive tests:

EXOS ThunderBay 8 test 20 July 2021

 

Write MB/s

Read MB/s

Single non-RAID volume

227

229

2 drive stripe

428

432

4 drive stripe

731

748

8 drive stripe

1119

1196

4 drive RAID 5

538

554

8 drive RAID 5

742

1036

7 drive RAID 5

735

937

Obviously they seem like a huge improvement to and far beyond what I've seen previously but I wanted to check with you that those are optimal and as you'd expect.

I've set the certification process going for them which is currently estimating around 86 hours remaining so it'll be a while before I can do anything with them.

I see there's a beta for SoftRAID 6.1 available.  Is that worth installing before I get to the point of creating volumes?  I think I saw mention of that being able to create the volumes with APFS instead of HFS+.  Would there be any downside to doing that?  I saw some reference to the future RAID 6 implementation that I think may have mentioned APFS so I wasn't sure if I'd need to use that to be able to convert the RAID 5 to RAID 6 with the addition of the eighth drive.  With the size and amount of data involved recreating volumes in future won't really be an option so I want to make sure I get it all setup right and future proofed from the start.

 
Posted : 20/07/2021 3:23 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

@guygamer

there certainly does seem to be a issue with some specific drives. Glad the Exos are working as expected. That is what we would expect. We intend to tweak performance on RAID 4/5 in the future, but need to catch up on some other features first.

APFS is still slower on volumes with HDD's, so you may want to hold off on that. 6.1 beta 3 may fix (with Apple's assistance) a kernel panic issue with encryption, so we may finally be able to support encryption on SoftRAID volumes, we are still testing this.

But any RAID 6 we implement will not matter whether HFS or APFS.

 
Posted : 20/07/2021 11:47 pm
guygamer
(@guygamer)
Posts: 43
Eminent Member
Topic starter
 

@softraid-support Thanks, glad these ones are looking good.  I'll stick to HFS+ then if it's going to perform better than APFS.  Just to double check there's been no change to the plans for RAID 6 - if I want to be able to create a RAID 5 now and upgrade it to RAID 6 when it's added (without wiping and starting over) I need to create the RAID 5 with 7 drives, hold back the eighth and then add that one to convert it when RAID 6 arrives?

With the certifying a similar thing happened to last time - 7 drives had completed and one was still finishing with about 45 minutes left.  Whilst I was interacting with the software to clear the completed dialogues it gave an error saying it hung reading the remaining disk.  In the log it says:

Jul 25 04:55:38 - SoftRAID Application: The certify disk command for disk disk14, Label: "Olympus - APOLLO", SN: XX, SATA bus 0, id 0, lun 0 (Thunderbolt) hung while reading (offset 11,795,607,584,768, i/o block size = 16,777,216).  This disk should be replaced immediately.
Jul 25 04:55:40 - SoftRAID Application: The certify disk command for disk disk14, Label: "Olympus - APOLLO", SN: XX, SATA bus 0, id 0, lun 0 (Thunderbolt) failed because this disk has unreliable sectors.  It should be replaced immediately (error number = 206).

The exact same thing happened with the last set of drives and I ended up redoing them.  It's taken 4.5 days to get to that point with these though and it's just the one drive right at the end so I'd prefer not to start over as there was no option to resume from where it was at. I clicked certify and just did the Random Access Test which it passed.  Is it likely to be that I was interacting with the SoftRAID app whilst it was still working?  Should it be okay or should I really be running it again on that drive?

 
Posted : 24/07/2021 11:32 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

@guygamer

What was the point of failure on the prior run? Are these 12.0TB drives? and this drive is failing 11.8TB into the disk? Was it the same sector as last time?

 

There is an issue with some drives on the very last sector read, but this is 200GB short of that.

 
Posted : 26/07/2021 12:32 am
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

@guygamer

Also, yes we still do intend to allow users to add a disk to a RAID 5 to convert to RAID 6. First lets get APFS shipping, which should show real progress in the next couple beta versions.

 
Posted : 26/07/2021 12:37 am
guygamer
(@guygamer)
Posts: 43
Eminent Member
Topic starter
 

@softraid-support These are the 12TB drives this time.  I think the moment of failure was when I removed one of the completed drives from the enclosure (the eighth which I'm holding back). With those 8TB Ultrastars I had it was a similar distance from the end - some of the drives had done and I think I was actively looking at the preferences in app and when I clicked check update the outstanding drives failed.  Couldn't say what sector those drives were at but it wasn't the last sector on them I believe just two or more failed simultaneously when I hit check update on that occasion.  With those I reran certification but on one pass instead of three and they all passed successfully as I left the software alone until they were all done.

I've done a swap and designated the one that didn't complete as the eighth drive so if needs be I could re-run something on that without holding up progress.

 
Posted : 26/07/2021 7:39 am
guygamer
(@guygamer)
Posts: 43
Eminent Member
Topic starter
 

@softraid-support Thanks for confirming, I was expecting that to still be the case but figured it was best to just confirm before creating it all.  Glad APFS is coming along well.  I may need to utilise that myself soon I think.  Once all data is migrated to the RAID 5 and I've waited a while to ensure the setup is running smoothly I was planning to run certify on my old collection of drives and wipe them.  I use a single 8TB drive for TimeMachine at the moment but was thinking of using two 8TBs as a mirror pair.  From what I've read they will need to be in APFS format and I think the public release won't be able to mount / unmount those if I've understood correctly.

 
Posted : 26/07/2021 7:45 am
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8006
Member Admin
 

@guygamer

That is correct, although DIsk Utility can and soon, SoftRAID will be able to also.

 
Posted : 26/07/2021 1:23 pm
Page 5 / 5
Share:
close
open