File transfers slowing down, W10

[Mussels]

Top image is 2TB (M: ), USB 3.0 RAID 0 to SSD1 (C: )
Bottom image is SSD2 (D: ), to HDD1 (E: )

No antivirus while this is happening (incl windows defender)

Task manager shows the mech drive is saturated (makes sense) but doesnt explain the super slow speeds. Resource monitor will show 400MB/s spikes, that drop to 15MB/s, repeating.

It's just stupidly inconsistent, so i'm struggling to figure out why


Edit: Heres the slow 2TB drive in benchmarks (hint: not very slow)

 

[Melvis]

I also get this and have no idea why it does it, just another W10 bug I guesss?

 

[Mussels]

I can pause a transfer, wait a minute and unpause it and the speeds fly... but inevitably slow to a crawl.

I'm starting to wonder if its a caching/indexing thing.

 

[Melvis]

I can pause a transfer, wait a minute and unpause it and the speeds fly... but inevitably slow to a crawl.

I'm starting to wonder if its a caching/indexing thing.

Hmmm yes true that indeed could be the cause.

Over network I find this to be not present anywhere near as much.

 

[Mussels]

i'm watching these files transfer from an SSD to a mechanical, and seeing speeds vary from 15MB/s to 80MB/s.

Windows reports the drive is at 100%, but i'd love to know what metric it's using to determine that, especially since its transferring large files (~500MB average)

 

[Shou Miko]

All Intel SATA Controller drivers up-2-date?

I haven't personally experienced this on my gaming rig with a Z170 board.

 

[Mussels]

All Intel SATA Controller drivers up-2-date?

I haven't personally experienced this on my gaming rig with a Z170 board.

Windows 10 doesnt give you much choice, its MS drivers or MS drivers. just went through the tedious process of installing the latest updates to 14393 RS1, didnt change squat.

for about 2 minutes i see 140MB/s throughput (a bit too high, probably cached to ram), then its ~70MB/s (believable for sustained) then POOT, 20MB/s for no reason.

 

[newtekie1]

but i'd love to know what metric it's using to determine that

I'm pretty sure it uses the average response time to determine the load on the drive. Once the average response time goes up past what I guess is about 50ms, it just pegs the drive as 100% loaded.

How are all the drives connected?

Is E connected with SATA, or is it in that USB RAID enclosure with M?

 

[Mussels]

I'm pretty sure it uses the average response time to determine the load on the drive. Once the average response time goes up past what I guess is about 50ms, it just pegs the drive as 100% loaded.

How are all the drives connected?

Is E connected with SATA, or is it in that USB RAID enclosure with M?

SATA, i've tried intel SATA II and Asmedia Sata III - no change.

file transfer is still going on... user reviews of this model drive show people getting 70MB/s writes for small files, so my results are way slower than they should be.

 

[Melvis]

For me its only slow from a Sata HDD to a USB thumb drive (USB3.0) through a USB 2.0 Port. HDD to HDD is fine and this includes over a network.

 

[Mussels]

the file transfer is STILL going, 13MB/s

this is ridiculous, i cant believe the hard drive is the cause of the problem here.

 

[Melvis]

Trsut me Mussels 13MB/s is fast! compared to what mine came down to (kb/s) Took me 30mins to move a 200MB File from the HDD to the Thumb Drive.

 

[Mussels]

i just found an intel SATA driver i could manually install over the top of the MS one, i'll see if that helps with a second transfer.

(I highly doubt it as i tested on the Asmedia port too, but its not impossible)

 

[Kursah]

So in Resource Monitor, for your mechanical drive, what does it say for Disk Queue? It'll be under the Disk tab, then expand the bar labeled Storage, far right column.

If it's reading above 1.0, your HDD is pretty damn busy and struggling to keep up with its queue. I've seen some go above 50 during some intense read/write transfers.

Being an Intel chipset, are you running Intel Rapid Storage Technology and if so, is the power management enabled?

I have seen slowed writes to my 960GB SSD due to it running out of cache on larger file copies...but it only slows to 70MB/s. 13 seems ridiculous even for older hardware and drives. But could still be some sort of cache issue...but also could be a disk queue issue. SMART shows all drives good?

Do you have write-back cache enabled on any of the drives? Device Manager > Disk drives > select drive, Right click, Properties > Policies tab.

Usually enabling this helps with performance.

So I do see ASRock has a driver for this..you mention it didn't matter before but have you tried them? http://asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77 Extreme4/?cat=Download&os=Win1064

If prompted that you are attempting to install older drivers, click past it. Maybe you already have...worth a shot either way.

 

[Mussels]

I'm installing intel drivers + IRST now, but i doubt they're the issue as the problem was also present for USB 3.0 (intel + asmedia USB 3 chipsets) to intel + asmedia sata ports.

i tried disabling the write back cache as it was shown in google to be related, but that was not an option for the USB 3 RAID enclosure - i did try disabling it for all my other drives however.

Everythings fine in SMART.

 

[slozomby]

whens the last time you defragged the mech drive?
does resource monitor show other activity?
are you trying a multithreaded copy or a single copy?
does robocopy show the same results?

when using robocopy do you use the /mt: flag? /mt:1 for single thread /mt:8 for 8 threads.

 

[Mussels]

whens the last time you defragged the mech drive?

its brand new, was freshly formatted (full format) to do the transfer.

I literally did it to empty the RAID enclosure so i could switch the drivers over to 2x2TB instead of 2x1TB.

 

[slozomby]

I'm installing intel drivers + IRST now, but i doubt they're the issue as the problem was also present for USB 3.0 (intel + asmedia USB 3 chipsets) to intel + asmedia sata ports.

i tried disabling the write back cache as it was shown in google to be related, but that was not an option for the USB 3 RAID enclosure - i did try disabling it for all my other drives however.

Everythings fine in SMART.

for the usb thingi: in device manager> drive> properties> policy. is it set for quick removal or best performance?

 

[Mussels]

for the usb thingi: in device manager> drive> properties> policy. is it set for quick removal or best performance?

quick removal for that one - that only affects write speeds and its the read drive in this situation (and i unplug it a lot, so i want that kept 'safe')

 

[biffzinker]

Looks to me like background file system/metadata housekeeping is causing the slow down since your moving files in the thousands. Remember hard disk drives are terrible at small random file copies plus the added file system meta data maintenance/updating going on in the background as the files are moved.

 

[Mussels]

May have found something related, although it could be unrelated.

transfer finally finished and drive 2 in the RAID enclosure will not format to work as a standard drive any more - it works in RAID and JBOD modes, but even in various PC's it will not let me format.

"All NTFS boot sectors are unwriteable. Cannot continue."

I'll investigate if this issue was related (slowing down the reads/writes somehow? correctable corruption?)

 

[Mussels]

"well, there's your problem"

The HDD was inside a hot-swap HDD dock in my DVD bay. This bay has been in use for years, and apart from a hard wired SATA cable it might as well be directly connected to the motherboard.
I guess that SATA cable died, because directly connected i'm seeing 100MB/s transfers now, vs 1.5MB/s as in the bay.

1TB drive that cant be formatted just seems to be a secondary shit splatter hitting a tertiary fan, and is unrelated.

 

[biffzinker]

Good job on the detective work Mussels. What kind of SATA data cable was it? Bundled with a new motherboard?

 

[Mussels]

Good job on the detective work Mussels. What kind of SATA data cable was it? Bundled with a new motherboard?

the problematic one is attached to the hotswap bay.

Think this, but with a non-removable cable (this is what i'm replacing it with)

Spoiler: bonus pics for the curious

 

[slozomby]

if you have spare 5 1/4 slots you might consider going denser:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGZ42SM/?tag=tec06d-20

whats goofy is the 3 drive 2bay enclosures are significantly more expensive. go figure