Why does changing the NIC affect NAS TX speed

[berrick]

I have been a noob user of FreeNAS for sometime.

After reading some articles about performance I changed the NIC on a FreeNAS box I use, went from a 10/100 to a 1Gig NIC and carried out a performance test. This was just a windows copy of large files from one folder to another on the NAS but the increase over the test before the NIC change was significant.

So why would changing the NIC affect data transfer which isn't going over the network?

Thanks muchly

 

[Rand]

How did you perform the copy?
on command line?
via Share?

 

[dlavigne]

Did the NIC driver change (from ifconfig)?

 

[berrick]

Thanks for the replies.

@Rand, no not from the command line via a share

@dlavigne, Yes the driver changed from nfe0 to msk0. The nfe0 is onboard, the msk0 is a PCIe.

Still why should the NIC driver have an impact on data transfer between folders on a disk?

 

[Rand]

Because the data your're copying goes all the way to your workstation and back and thats way faster with Gigabit:)
Unless you are running newest FreeNas and Win8 on your client with Server-Side copy that is;)

 

[dlavigne]

Still why should the NIC driver have an impact on data transfer between folders on a disk?

Some drivers (or their hardware) are crap. I've never seen Google say anything nice about the msk driver :-(

 

[berrick]

Because the data your're copying goes all the way to your workstation and back and thats way faster with Gigabit:)
Unless you are running newest FreeNas and Win8 on your client with Server-Side copy that is

Nope I'm not, just wasn't thinking :(

I've never seen Google say anything nice about the msk driver

It was all I had to hand that was PCIe and gigabit. I'm beginning to think the bad press the msk driver gets is founded. I have had a couple of strange occurrences since it went in.....

Just before we wind this up. Would using the driver that came with this card be any better than the one already supplied with FreeNAS ?

 

[dlavigne]

Just before we wind this up. Would using the driver that came with this card be any better than the one already supplied with FreeNAS ?

Nope. Find an Intel NIC and install it