Read Speed seems slower than write speed on noobs FreeNAS box.

[Chris Gallardo]

Hey Bros,
I recently built a my first freenas box to just use as a home file server.
I absolutely LOVE it, and for the most part it is running very well, but I am left with some questions as to whether I am maximizing what I could be getting.
I used a bunch of old parts I had laying around.
The setup is
EVGA x58 motherboard.
i7 920
12 Gigs of ram
8 drives 2tb's each. Not all drives match. 6 are WD greens, and the other 2 are a Toshiba and a Seagate. All connected using motherboard SATA.
I am connected using a single Gigabyte Ethernet connection.
All devices in my home are connected through an asus ac66u router.
Most of my settings are still at default from the initial installation.
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I created a single Raidz2 pool out of all 8 disks. In this pool I created folders and stored my data there. I created cifs shares to those folders.
I believe now that I made a mistake here and probably should have created a data set within this pool before transferring data and beginning to use it. How much of an issue will this be for me?

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My next issue seems very odd to me. When I copy data from any pc on my network to my FreeNAS box I get speeds of anywhere from 110MB/s to 130MB/s and I am very happy with this. But when I copy files from my FreeNAS box to any PC on my network I am only getting 60-70 MB/s which seems very slow.
I am copying only to fast SSD's on my computers. If I transfer from usb 3 drives to my machines I can get upwards of 90 - 100 MB/s.
So should I be getting faster speeds than this? If so, any insight into what I need to fix?

IF I am getting as good as I can hope for, with my old parts, I am fine with hearing that too.


Any help would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if/what other information I should post.

 

[pirateghost]

Please do not cross post.

 

[Ericloewe]

With that vague information, my first guess is "Realtek".

 

[IonutZ]

at 130MB/s you're above spec of a 1gbps line lol that's pretty gnarly.

 

[cyberjock]

One thing I'd do Chris is get rid of the i7-920 and go with ECC RAM. Get a used Xeon from ebay that will work in that board (there's some that are like $10). I have an E5520 in my test system and it's pretty fast. You can buy them in lots of 2-4 CPUs for anywhere from $20-40 dollars (yes, $10 per CPU). Then drop in some ECC RAM. Not sure what board you have but every X58 I've tested will work with registered RAM, this means you can get the cheaper registered RAM that is also higher density.

 

[Chris Gallardo]

One thing I'd do Chris is get rid of the i7-920 and go with ECC RAM. Get a used Xeon from ebay that will work in that board (there's some that are like $10). I have an E5520 in my test system and it's pretty fast. You can buy them in lots of 2-4 CPUs for anywhere from $20-40 dollars (yes, $10 per CPU). Then drop in some ECC RAM. Not sure what board you have but every X58 I've tested will work with registered RAM, this means you can get the cheaper registered RAM that is also higher density.

Thank you for the help cyberjock. Would changing the hardware you are suggesting increase performance or just stability/data security?

Could the parts you are suggesting be related to my issue of getting slower speeds copying from my NAS than I do writing to it?

 

[Chris Gallardo]

at 130MB/s you're above spec of a 1gbps line lol that's pretty gnarly.

I was estimating there, but yes, I am very happy with my transfer speeds to the FreeNAS box. After doing more testing It usually settles in around 112 MB/s on large files. I see some transfers spike higher into the 120's.

I still can't figure out why my speeds transferring FROM the NAS box is so much slower though. Between 60 and 75 MB/s.

 

[Chris Gallardo]

With that vague information, my first guess is "Realtek".

I am using the onboard Ethernet for my PC and the FreeNAS box. They are both Intel controllers. Is this a problem?

 

[Jailer]

No that was Ericlowes subtle way of saying that you didn't read and follow this post before you requested help on the forum.