QNAP TS-451 - slow RAID-5 build times? It's the Seagate 5TB 5900 drives!

[VirtualLarry]

I am doing the initial RAID-5 build. I put the NAS together this morning, around 9-10AM, and ran the "Smart Setup" routine, which started the RAID build.

It's now 9PM, and has progressed around 7.5%.

Does it really mean that it takes 10 DAYS to re-built a RAID-5? As far as I know, these are not SMR drives.

Not quite sure why it's that slow, it's got an Intel Atom CPU, as opposed to the ARM or MIPS CPUs.

It took nearly 10 minutes to boot, too, after I rebooted after updating the firmware to newest.

(I wonder if the CPU was poorly pasted, and is overheating?)

Also, like another Newegg commenter, mine didn't come with a warranty card or install CD.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/8298/qnap-ts451-bay-trail-nas-performance-review/8

12 TB RAID-5 Rebuild (4D) 9h 14m 48s 54.37 W

Similar to the Seagate NAS 4-bay we saw last week, the rebuild process takes much less time compared to the RAID expansion process. The time taken for the various RAID modifications are amongst the lowest of all the four-bay NAS units that we have evaluated so far. Starting with the next review, we will have comparison graphs for these aspects.

Edit: I had some more links, but suffice to say, the problem is likely NOT to be my NAS unit, but rather, my drives.

Seagate 5TB DM desktop 5900RPM drives. There's a bunch of Amazon.com reviews, a Reddit thread, and a LegitReviews article, all taking about how these drives that are sold as "OEM" on ebay and Amazon, are ripped from cheaper external enclosures, and have inconsistent (at best) to poor (at worst, and fail) performance.

Guess I should have gone with 6TB Hitachi NAS drives. My main unRAID server is all Hitachi drives, and they perform well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ofDuKF4Xy0

 

[XavierMace]

While I agree there's something wrong in your case, that's still why RAID-5 is basically gone the way of the dodo. Rebuilds on large arrays simply take too long and the odds of another failure during the rebuild start getting high.

 

[Pandasaurus]

While I agree there's something wrong in your case, that's still why RAID-5 is basically gone the way of the dodo. Rebuilds on large arrays simply take too long and the odds of another failure during the rebuild start getting high.

Don't forget that he's building a ~15TB (usable) RAID5 array with 5TB platters spinning at laptop speeds, a dual core Celeron and 1GB RAM. I would have expected a message box to just pop up at array creation that says "You want me to do WHAAAAAAT?!?!".

 

[sdifox]

Did you buy the Seagate Archive SMR drive?

edit: just saw you said it's dm series and not smr drive. Looks like these were shucked thus you dont get warranty from seagate.

 

[XavierMace]

Did you buy the Seagate Archive SMR drive?
Looks like these were shucked thus you dont get warranty from seagate.

But I'm sure he saved like $5 a drive over retail drives so it was worth it.

 

[grimpr]

Get rid of hardware raid, especially Raid-5 and go all software with ZFS,Unraid and Drivepool.

 

[VirtualLarry]

But I'm sure he saved like $5 a drive over retail drives so it was worth it.

Nah, I knew that they were shucked, I bought the externals for $110 ea for 5TB, and shucked them myself. Saved like $60-70 ea. over buying an internal.

I just was unaware of the poor reputation that these drives had when used in a NAS.

So far so good, I was able to copy files from my other NAS to this one at 55MB/sec. over gigabit.

 

[sdifox]

Nah, I knew that they were shucked, I bought the externals for $110 ea for 5TB, and shucked them myself. Saved like $60-70 ea. over buying an internal.

I just was unaware of the poor reputation that these drives had when used in a NAS.

So far so good, I was able to copy files from my other NAS to this one at 55MB/sec. over gigabit.

should have bought the WD ones and get a HGST He drive :awe:

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Nah, I knew that they were shucked, I bought the externals for $110 ea for 5TB, and shucked them myself. Saved like $60-70 ea. over buying an internal.

I just was unaware of the poor reputation that these drives had when used in a NAS.

So far so good, I was able to copy files from my other NAS to this one at 55MB/sec. over gigabit.

It's not the drives, it's the RAID-5 and the NAS.

Put four of them on RAID-10 in a big-core NAS/Server and you'll get close to line speed for GbE. 8 is better.