Reduced read/write performance

This is a MacOS HFS directory issue almost for sure. Best answer is get the commercial Utility Disk Warrior, it will (very likely) return performance to a more "snappy" condition.

Or, you can try backup/restore.

I agree. I was wondering, though, if somehow there might be an underlying striping issue with how directory blocks are loaded, block size, etc. And over the years I've seen--I think--anecdotal suggestions that HFS/HFS+ doesn't need to be defragged. I've not done a defrag for at least 5 major OS releases. Is that what you're suggesting I use DW for? Or suggesting that a directory repair may be necessary? And perhaps start with macOS Disk Utility?

One outlier point. I use rsync to backup my main RAID 0 to my secondary/backup RAID 0. Both are showing the same symptoms, albeit to a lesser degree on the backup volume. I don't think rsync would propagate a directory error. Then again, definitely possible that both RAIDs are seeing directory issues. They've been used quite a while without routine "maintenance."

Thanks.

@kevinmonahan 

MacOS has built in defrag, but only for the internal drive. this defragmentation for System volumes feature killed the revenue streams for all the defrag applications, and I am not sure any survived. MacOS does NOT perform background defragmentation on non System drives.

Good point about r-Sync. ON a new volume to volume copy, it would not copy damage from directories, Carbon Copy Cloner is a good example (it uses r-sync).

I do not know about maintenance copies. Does r-sync do a file by file copy, with a directory refresh? If it is pushing blocks, instead of files, it may not avoid this issue. I do not know. I am not knowledgeable about r-sync.

RAID is invisible to macOS. the most likely way damage could happen is when improper/incomplete shutdowns, for whatever reason, the directory is the last written. With N drives per volume, this issue would be N times more a factor. The problem may not be RAID, but a side effect of the fact there are more drives that errors on shutdown could happen with.

Hi, I am having the same symptoms as the OP. 

I have been going back and forth with support and am getting frustrated because I have not gotten great responses from the tech that is helping. They mentioned Disc Warrior but seemed like they were pushing me off to figure it out on my own without any real explanation as to why or how. I looked into Disk Warrior and it seems more of a data rescue kinda solution and barely mentions repairing directories, even then it says "may" help.

I like the way it has been explained here by the support tech, more detail instead of "I think". I had the same questions as to using Mac Disk Utility to help and also rebuilding the volume from a mirrored backup(I use rsync also). Thinking about completely reformatting, making a different raid volume and rebuilding from the backup. I have a raid 1+0 now, thinking of a straight 0 instead. 

Thanks in advance.

@moke 

the reason Disk Warrior is recommended, is often volumes with corrupted directories get real slow. it takes a long time to even open a window. Or search, and performance is sluggish. These are often helped by Disk Warrior.

Sudden slow performance is also worth a erase/restore from backup. If you have a clean erased volume and still getting slow performance, then you can look for other causes, but a directory issue is the most common explanation for slow performance on a volume that was performing OK.

Thank you Support,

So I shouldn't even bother with the Mac Disk Utility? I'd try Disk Warrior, however the cost is prohibitive for me. 

One thing I have a question about is when accessing the volume, while the disks are spinning up, is it normal for only one disk to start up at a time? Is this because of the directory issues? 

Thanks again.

@moke 

You can try Disk Utility, but it is not very good at repairing. I guess you need to backup/erase/restore, perhaps this weekend.

Spin up is the enclosure. What enclsure are you using? Most (I believe all) of our enclosures have plenty of power to tell all disks to spin up at the same time. Some may spin up faster, but they are all starting at the same time. Drives take a lot more power at startup. SoftRAID will display them as they appear, so you see one disk at a time show up.

@softraid-support 

I guess I missed the email notification for your reply.

I have a Tunderbay4 with Thunderbolt3(confusing). When I say spinup I mean while the computer and drives are on; the drives will spin down after a while, when trying to access data on the drives, it takes a while to open/ access.

I have since erased/ restored the volume. Rechecked the speeds and they were still the same as before, on an empty volume. 

I am -slowly- working with support. 

@moke 

Thunderbay 4 means 4 drives. Thunderbolt 3 means the third gen of Thunderbolt, 4 is out and 5 is coming. Yes naming is confusing.

Sleep is 100% under the control of MacOS. What you are seeing will happen with any drives. In Ventura 13.3 or later, go to screen lock and disable sleep settings and uncheck put drives to sleep, etc. See if that helps.

there are a couple third party utilities to help with sleep issues, "Caffeine" and "Amphetamine". Give one a try to prevent drives from sleeping, also.

@softraid-support 

Yup, not concerned about sleep here. Purely drive speeds.

@moke 

But your complain was about sleep (spin down), correct?

@softraid-support 

Not sleep issues, but the speed at which the drives/ volume is accessed while in use.

For example; while using Lightroom, opening volume in finder, etc. I know the drives will spin down while the system is in use, controlled by the OS. No problems there. Any other disk, not my TB4, I access spins up fairly instantly. When I try to access my TB4 volume, it takes a long time just to open a folder. 

I know there are programs to keep the drive running, not interested in those.

I have deleted and created a raid 5 volume now and will see how that runs.

I was only looking for further insight into what might be happening.