Transfer Speeds Limited to 10MB/s on Gigabit Network When Recovering to Original Location on NAS
I purchased a new NAS over the weekend to replace a home-built NAS that was at the end of its life. I did a file backup of my old NAS using Acronis True Image. I then attempted to recover the files to their "Original Location" on the new NAS. The recovery process began and proceeded normally, with the exception that the maximum transfer rate never exceeded 10MB/s. This was much slower than I expected given that my network is capable of Gigabit speeds. Assuming the problem was with my NAS settings or one of my network components, I spent the afternoon playing around with my network to see if I could pinpoint the problem. I found that when I copied files between the computer and the NAS manually transfer rates were around 110MB/s in both directions. In addition I if I did a True Image backup of files on the NAS, transfer rates to a HDD attached to my computer's USB 3.0 port were around 100MB/s. However, when restoring the files to their "Original Location" on the NAS I could not get transfer rates to exceed 10MB/s.
At one point I changed the recovery location option to "New Location" and manually pointed True Image to the shared folder it was supposed to be recovering to. The recovery process began and proceeded normally at the expected transfer rates of 100MB/s. After the files were recovered successfully, I attempted to do a recovery to "Original Location" one last time. Transfer rates were once again capped at 10MB/s.
Any insight as to why the recover to "Original Location" and "New Location" options would behave differently with respect to transfer speeds across a Gigabit network would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Echantech. I'm fairly certain I've been through most of the hardware angles at this point. That being said, I did not see this behaviour when restoring files on my old NAS. So I can't completely rule out a hardware issue.
I did my recent testing with my PC connected directly to the NAS using a patch cable to remove the router and switch from the equation. I was able to get Gigabit speeds both to and from the NAS for all file transfers except those using the True Image recovery to "Original Location" feature. So I'm fairly certain a defective Ethernet cable isn't at fault either. The fact that I can get Gigabit speeds using True Image recovery if I manually select the restore location on the NAS is what lead me to zeroing in on the restore to "Original Location" option as being the potential source of the problem. Restoring files using that option is the only time I see my network transfers capped at 10/100 speeds. Backup has a performance option to limit network transfer speeds. Although I can't find a similar option for recovery, I thought there might be an undocumented feature somewhere.
Here are the rest of my system specs:
PC - Asus Rampage IV Extreme mobo (on-board Intel Gigabit NIC), Intel i7-3930 CPU, 32GB G.SKILL RipjawsZ DDR3-2400 Quad Channel Memory, 2 Intel Series SSDs (X25-M and 520), 2-2TB WD Black HDDs, 2-1.5TB Seagate Barracuda HDDs
OS - Windows 8.1 Update 1 (UEFI)
External Backup Drive - 3TB Seagate Barracuda Connected to PC using USB 3.0 Docking Bay
NAS - Synology DS414
I am going to assume that you are running Win7 or above. I briefly looked at your NAS specs and found that as I suspected it uses SMB/CLIS for data transfer between itself and Windows. One known problem that exists between Windows and SMB is the way in which data is handled between the two. Below is a suggested settings change to alleviate this a bit. If the change results in no improvement or worse then reenable the setting. Be advised that changing this setting will increase CPU utilization on your PC.
Open Device Manager in Windows
Expand Network Adapters and right click on the NIC
Choose Properties then Advanced tab
Choose Large Send Offload in the list and then disabled from the drop down box on the right. Do this for each instance in the list.
Looking further down the list if you find Receive Side Scaling choose this as well and disable.
I am attaching a link that may provide some help especially as related to Direct Cache Access, Net DMA State, Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level, and Congestion Control Provider. Making these suggested changes one at a time and testing may prove or provide some beneficial results.
http://betanews.com/2011/01/20/use-hidden-windows-tweaks-to-speed-up-yo…