Fast Initial File Transfer, slow towards the end

[Alex1236]

So I recently installed FreeNAS and it was working fine, but even more recently, my speeds have started at about 80MB/s from explorer on Windows and than they drop down between 7-15MB/s and sometimes even drop to 0 byte/s but pop back up to 15 MB/s. I'm really at a loss here. I'm running FreeNAS on an HP DL380 G5 with 6 146gb 10K SAS drives, 24GB of ram, and 2x quad core Xeon X5450s The total storage amounts to about 600gb or so. I am currently using the HP P400i as a raid card, which means that I have to use hardware raid, I'm saving to get an M1015 or something similar that I can flash to IT mode and act as an HBA.

 

[DrKK]

If you're using hardware RAID, your FreeNAS might be a ticking time bomb. You may peruse at your leisure the hundreds of posts in the forums that tell you the dangers of using FreeNAS on top of hardware RAID.

 

[Alex1236]

If you're using hardware RAID, your FreeNAS might be a ticking time bomb. You may peruse at your leisure the hundreds of posts in the forums that tell you the dangers of using FreeNAS on top of hardware RAID.

I have read about the problems with hardware RAID and yes I know it is not a good thing to do, but in my current situation, it is the only thing I can do. Can you offer any advice on the actual issue I'm having though?

 

[SweetAndLow]

The raid card is the issue. Get a hba and your performs should improve. $100 isn't much when you look at how much everything else costs.

 

[Alex1236]

The raid card is the issue. Get a hba and your performs should improve. $100 isn't much when you look at how much everything else costs.

In what way is the RAID card causing the issue?
I get that it's bad for the SMART stats and all of the things to provide info on whether or not a drive is failing. But is it like a buffer in the RAID card's memory or something?

 

[SweetAndLow]

In what way is the RAID card causing the issue?
I get that it's bad for the SMART stats and all of the things to provide info on whether or not a drive is failing. But is it like a buffer in the RAID card's memory or something?

Correct the way your raid card buffers writes and lays them out on disk can be slower. You are basically do everything twice when writing to disk.

 

[Alex1236]

Correct the way your raid card buffers writes and lays them out on disk can be slower. You are basically do everything twice when writing to disk.

Ok, that makes more sense. Which RAID card would you recommend for me?

 

[SweetAndLow]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

 

[gpsguy]

The M1015 that you are saving up to buy. It's about $100 on eBay.