[alexondrums]

I run regular backups from my PC to my NAS. This goes via a Gigabit router/switch. My NIC and NAS are both gigabit, and I'm using Cat5e cable.

As you can see from the image, my network transfer never gets above 50%.

The NIC is set to 1000 Mbps Full Duplex, but still won't saturate 100% of the bandwidth.

I've tried enabling Jumbo Frames, but it makes no difference.

What can I try to get the transfer speed up to 100%?

 

[LMiller7]

I don't think the network is limiting the speed. Unless you are using SSds in both the PC and NAS the hard drives are likely to be the limiting factor.

 

[JimE]

In the case of backups, you are limited by the source drive read speed. And you won't get even that full speed as the backup software is compiling the data on the fly, so there is processing overhead.

Do a comparison by simply copying data to the NAS from the same PC. That will give you a baseline for your hardware (ie: HDD read speed).

 

[alexondrums]

Thanks both for the replies.

I am using normal HDD's - a mixture of WD 7200RPM HDD in the PC and WD Red's in the NAS.

The PC and NAS are connected via a router/switch using Cat5e. All have gigabit ethernet.

I tried the file copy, to take the backup program out of the equation as suggested.

As you can see from the screengrab, the transfer speed was around 30MB/s. The was a 3.07GB file and took just over 1 minute to copy.

Is that as good as can be expected for HDD's? I was hoping for closer to the SATA max (SATA2) of at least 100MB/s+.

It actually seems slower than when the backup was running, this achieved around 50% of the full bandwidth in the network monitor.

The backups that runs is around 800GB, and last time took about 9-10 hours).

I have been considering playing with Jumbo Frames for this, but will be doing some research first to avoid any dropped frames etc. I'm 80% sure all my hardware supports it.

 

[Superion]

Just out of curiosity, have you maximized your paging file?

 

[alexondrums]

Just out of curiosity, have you maximized your paging file?

This is set to automatic. I have 4GB RAM, paging is at 4095MB

 

[JimE]

My transfer speeds vary, but I typically see 60 - 90. But it's often not a sustained speed, it will increase and decrease as noted in your graphs above. The higher numbers are typically from SSD.

It can be affected by other activities running on the computer (source and destination), other network activity (source and destination), and of course the drive itself (source and destination).

In regards to what I stated in my first reply, for backups, as all of the files are processed before being sent out, you are limited by the source drive and the processing overhead. For a file copy, you are limited by the destination drive write speed. A gig network can transfer data faster than it can be written to disk, so you will see traffic peaks and valleys as the write buffer is filled on the destination device.

So yes, I would expect higher numbers than what you are seeing. You shouldn't need to do any NIC tweaking. My machines are running at default settings. You have verified that you are connecting at 1000/Full on both devices? Auto negotiate doesn't always connect at the highest speed.

 

[JimE]

So just as a reference, I did a quick copy using my media server.

A 3.2gb file copied internally from drive to drive averaged about 84.

The same file copied from the server to my PC (to an SSD) was about 102.

You can see the spikes in my network traffic meter and the usage of the NIC.

 

[alexondrums]

Thanks alot JimE for the info.

It might be a combination of resources and the HDD throughput then?

I will shortly be moving to an SSD and Windows 10, where I will hopefully be able to set this up / test more consistently and take some of the hardware related issues out of the equation.

I should be able to test from SSD > SSD as I have a laptop running one, although need to verify if the NIC is gigabit. Assuming this is, hopefully I’ll get a better idea of if the HDD’s are the bottleneck.

I’m still intrigued by Jumbo Frames, but having done some reading I’m a bit apprehensive, e.g:

Need To Know: Jumbo Frames in Small Networks - SmallNetBuilder

 

[Fred Garvin]

What can I try to get the transfer speed up to 100%?

Your network is fine and you are misinterpreting the network resource monitor. At 100% utilization, you would have no connectivity on your network.