I have a new 8TB Seagate drive, extracted from a USB3 "Backup Plus" drive and installed on a SATA3 connector. It has a single partition on it.
The actual disk is a "ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z" which is an archive drive so I'm not expecting stellar performance, but even so it feels very slow.
For example, running up a Windows VirtualBox VM from that disk feels like it's being dragged through treacle (the host PC is an i7-6700k with 32GB RAM so it should run comfortably).
I'd speculate I may have poor disk alignment but I don't know how to check; the results of Googling got me to sudo parted /dev/sda "align-check optimal 1" which reports "1 aligned".
Am I just pushing the drive in a direction it doesn't want to go?
Would it actually perform better if returned to the USB3 case? It seems unlikely but then maybe Seagate hobble the drives for direct SATA to discourage them being taken out?
I book from SSD and the purpose of the drive is actually archiving anyway (the VM on it was only there temporarily) so if it's just how it's supposed to be then I'll live with it.
On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 06:43:09PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
I have a new 8TB Seagate drive, extracted from a USB3 "Backup Plus" drive and installed on a SATA3 connector. It has a single partition on it.
The actual disk is a "ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z" which is an archive drive so I'm not expecting stellar performance, but even so it feels very slow.
It's a shingled drive, which means random writes are going to seriously suck but large sequential writes should be ok, as should reads.
For example, running up a Windows VirtualBox VM from that disk feels like it's being dragged through treacle (the host PC is an i7-6700k with 32GB RAM so it should run comfortably).
I'd speculate I may have poor disk alignment but I don't know how to check; the results of Googling got me to sudo parted /dev/sda "align-check optimal 1" which reports "1 aligned".
Am I just pushing the drive in a direction it doesn't want to go?
Would it actually perform better if returned to the USB3 case? It seems unlikely but then maybe Seagate hobble the drives for direct SATA to discourage them being taken out?
No, it's not a suitable drive for a VM workload. It's a suitable drive for throwing large amounts of data on which is then going to be read lots, or rarely touched again.
J.
On 11 August 2016 at 19:17, Jonathan McDowell noodles@earth.li wrote:
It's a shingled drive, which means random writes are going to seriously suck but large sequential writes should be ok, as should reads.
Interesting, thanks for that.
No, it's not a suitable drive for a VM workload. It's a suitable drive for throwing large amounts of data on which is then going to be read lots, or rarely touched again.
The VM is now back on SSD where it belongs, so from the sound of it I just have to accept that high capacity (at least in this case) comes with a performance hit and live with it?
If so I'll be selective about what I store on it but otherwise just suck it up!
Hi,
On 12 Aug 14:41, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 11 August 2016 at 19:17, Jonathan McDowell noodles@earth.li wrote:
It's a shingled drive, which means random writes are going to seriously suck but large sequential writes should be ok, as should reads.
Interesting, thanks for that.
Yup - that's exactly our experience with those archive drives.
No, it's not a suitable drive for a VM workload. It's a suitable drive for throwing large amounts of data on which is then going to be read lots, or rarely touched again.
The VM is now back on SSD where it belongs, so from the sound of it I just have to accept that high capacity (at least in this case) comes with a performance hit and live with it?
If so I'll be selective about what I store on it but otherwise just suck it up!
Not all high capacity drives are shingled. There are now WD Red drives of the 8T variety. They are Much More Expensive. (I have 2, along with a pair of 6T drives and 4T drives).
Thanks,
On 12 August 2016 at 15:17, Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote:
Not all high capacity drives are shingled. There are now WD Red drives of the 8T variety. They are Much More Expensive.
The main purpose of the drive is to act as off-site backup storage for files from work. Once the initial copy is complete it'll be maintained via our work's VDSL line so write speed will become almost irrelevant assuming it can keep up with our uplink speed (not sure what it is but I'd guess around 20Mbps). Of-course the initial copy is painful.
I also have data on other non-shingled drives which I'm moving onto the 8TB temporarily so that they can be reformatted and have the data transferred back - again painful now but once done it won't be an issue any more.
From what I've read, shingled drives are no more or less reliable than
non-shingled, is that about right?
-
Brett Parker -
Jonathan McDowell -
Mark Rogers