eSATA or USB Connection from Windows 7 to Freenas

[swissdude]

I have been running freenas 8 successfully for several months now. The freenas box is connected though my network to the one other machine on the network, my Windows 7 box. Is there a way in freenas to connect to the Windows 7 box through USB or eSATA? I figure I could get better speeds by using something other than Ethernet.

Thanks,

 

[jgreco]

No, FreeNAS is intended as network attached storage. Sorry. Assuming gigabit ethernet, USB2 is only 480Mbit/s max, so ethernet's twice as fast (or four times if you go and do a link aggregation, easy to do these days!). eSATA is of course faster than that, and the 10Gbps stuff isn't really affordable (at least compared to SATA).

Are you pushing more than 100Mbyte/sec to and from your filer?

 

[swissdude]

Currently I'm only getting speeds of like 10MB/s to the NAS. I have Gigabyte Cards on both my Desktop that I'm doing all transfers to and the FreeNAS box. My router is also Gigabyte and I'm using Cat5e for all connections. My thought was connecting through eSATA would just give me better speeds. However I haven't heard of the link aggregation. My other thought for my speed is that it could be the drives. I have 4 drives with single drive redundancy on Raid Z with each drive spinning at 5400RPM. Would doing some link aggregation speed up the connection to my one Windows 7 machine or is it possible to aggregate links for both machines to speed it up? Would I need another piece of hardware such as a dedicated switch instead of my consumer router?

Thanks,

 

[ProtoSD]

Swissdude, take a look at the unofficial FAQ in my signature. There's a question about network / transfer speed that might be helpful. You need to check your network interface is actually detected/configured as Gig (from the command line).

Link aggregation is nice, but you need a switch that supports it (more expensive), and aggregating the links from your NAS may improve the speed that IT can transfer at (~2GB), but if your Windows machine doesn't also have 2 aggregated links, than it's only going to go as fast as the controller in it can go.

10MB/s tells me that your network controller/switch is only set for 100Mb/s.

Hope that helps

 

[swissdude]

I think I found what you're talking about:
ifconfig -a grep media
ifconfig em0 media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex

after running the second command I get the error:

ifconfig: SIOCSIFMEDIA (media): Device not configured

Could my card not be recognized for gigabite support?

Didn't know if the following would help:
freenas# pciconf -lv
hostb0@pci0:0:0:0: class=0x060000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07c310de rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = bridge
subclass = HOST-PCI
none0@pci0:0:0:1: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07cb10de rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none1@pci0:0:1:0: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07cd10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none2@pci0:0:1:1: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07ce10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none3@pci0:0:1:2: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07cf10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none4@pci0:0:1:3: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07d010de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none5@pci0:0:1:4: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07d110de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none6@pci0:0:1:5: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07d210de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none7@pci0:0:1:6: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07d310de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none8@pci0:0:2:0: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07d610de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
isab0@pci0:0:3:0: class=0x060100 card=0x0ad519da chip=0x07d710de rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = bridge
subclass = PCI-ISA
none9@pci0:0:3:1: class=0x0c0500 card=0x0ad519da chip=0x07d810de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
device = 'nForce 7100-630i (MCP73PV) (nForce 7100-630i (MCP73PV))'
class = serial bus
subclass = SMBus
none10@pci0:0:3:2: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07d910de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
none11@pci0:0:3:3: class=0x0b4000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07da10de rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = processor
none12@pci0:0:3:4: class=0x050000 card=0x00000000 chip=0x07c810de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = memory
subclass = RAM
ohci0@pci0:0:4:0: class=0x0c0310 card=0x0ad519da chip=0x07fe10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = serial bus
subclass = USB
ehci0@pci0:0:4:1: class=0x0c0320 card=0x0ad519da chip=0x056a10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = serial bus
subclass = USB
atapci0@pci0:0:8:0: class=0x01018a card=0x0ad519da chip=0x056c10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
device = 'MCP73 PATA (MCP73)'
class = mass storage
subclass = ATA
none13@pci0:0:9:0: class=0x040300 card=0x437b174b chip=0x07fc10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
device = 'High Definition Audio Bus (Possibly nForce 610i)'
class = multimedia
subclass = HDA
pcib1@pci0:0:10:0: class=0x060401 card=0xcb7310de chip=0x056d10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x01
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = bridge
subclass = PCI-PCI
pcib2@pci0:0:11:0: class=0x060400 card=0x000010de chip=0x056e10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x01
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = bridge
subclass = PCI-PCI
pcib3@pci0:0:12:0: class=0x060400 card=0x000010de chip=0x056f10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x01
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = bridge
subclass = PCI-PCI
pcib4@pci0:0:13:0: class=0x060400 card=0x000010de chip=0x056f10de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x01
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
class = bridge
subclass = PCI-PCI
ahci0@pci0:0:14:0: class=0x010185 card=0x0ad519da chip=0x07f010de rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
device = 'MCP73 SATA(IDE mode) (MCP73)'
class = mass storage
subclass = ATA
nfe0@pci0:0:15:0: class=0x020000 card=0x0ad519da chip=0x07dc10de rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
device = 'nForce 7100-630i (MCP73PV)asdf (nForce 7100-630i (MCP73PV)asdf)'
class = network
subclass = ethernet
vgapci0@pci0:0:16:0: class=0x030000 card=0xcb7310de chip=0x07e310de rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
device = 'NVIDIA GeForce 7050 / NVIDIA nForce 610i (C73)'
class = display
subclass = VGA


Thanks,

 

[ProtoSD]

Yes, that's the command I'm talking about. The 'em0' needs to be changed to match what your card is. If you just do 'ifconfig -a' you should see the name for your network interface in the output. Sorry, the 'pciconf -lv' doesn't show what it's called.

 

[swissdude]

Yes, I ran the command with the correct name of my card:


[@freenas /]$ ifconfig
nfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=82008<VLAN_MTU,WOL_MAGIC,LINKSTATE>
ether 00:01:2e:23:db:e2
inet 192.168.0.198 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
status: active

It shows it currently running 100baseTX.

Running the command to change this I get:


[@freenas /]$ ifconfig nfe0 media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex
ifconfig: SIOCSIFMEDIA (media): Operation not permitted

I also tried:


freenas# ifconfig nfe0 media 1000baseTX
ifconfig: SIOCSIFMEDIA (media): Device not configured


With no success either.