Slow Write Performance on 3ware controller

[Jonathan Horne]

On Sunday 23 July 2006 06:04, Richard Collyer wrote:
> Nikolas Britton wrote:
> >> Would moving the top card to the bottom slot and putting the 9500S-12 in
> >> the top slot screw with FreeBSD in anyway or will it just accept the
> >> changes and keep on going?
> >
> > I don't see any problem doing that... FreeBSD would only care if it
> > was the boot drive AND if it also changed the device name in /dev. So
> > yes... try it... if it changes the /dev name just edit /etc/fstab with
> > the new settings.
>
> Oh yes, had fun with fstab in single user mode yesterday ... I'd put a
> spelling mistake in /etc/fstab that was fun as it was my first venture
> into single user mode. Took me 20 mins to realise that only / was
> mounted and that /use wasn't hence no editors or shells.
>
> As this is a production server (its only my home file server) and the
> card was an ebay special at sub $200 I'm happy with the performance.
>
> I may play around with moving them when some more routine maintenance
> comes up but as I am only writing to it over the 100Mbit network
> 50MB/sec is more than enough for what I am looking at.
>
> Many thanks for the help.
>
> Cheers
> Richard
>

all this 3ware discussion inspired me to check out my 6.1-releng server and 
see how its 3ware card stacks up to the previously posted scores.

[root at zeus ~]# diskinfo -t /dev/twed2
/dev/twed2
        512             # sectorsize
        360099151872    # mediasize in bytes (335G)
        703318656       # mediasize in sectors
        43779           # Cylinders according to firmware.
        255             # Heads according to firmware.
        63              # Sectors according to firmware.

Seek times:
        Full stroke:      250 iter in   5.702448 sec =   22.810 msec
        Half stroke:      250 iter in   3.484361 sec =   13.937 msec
        Quarter stroke:   500 iter in   5.728894 sec =   11.458 msec
        Short forward:    400 iter in   2.178793 sec =    5.447 msec
        Short backward:   400 iter in   3.040917 sec =    7.602 msec
        Seq outer:       2048 iter in   0.502034 sec =    0.245 msec
        Seq inner:       2048 iter in   0.521798 sec =    0.255 msec
Transfer rates:
        outside:       102400 kbytes in   2.872447 sec =    35649 kbytes/sec
        middle:        102400 kbytes in   2.996709 sec =    34171 kbytes/sec
        inside:        102400 kbytes in   2.341439 sec =    43734 kbytes/sec

ive been a 3ware fan for many years now.  this pic was taken in 2001...
http://www.dfwlp.org/~jhorne/pics/computerroom/raid01.jpg
heh, you want to talk about pci placement based on fit of ide cables... lol 
try mine.  in the end, after 5 years, im impressed mine is still chugging 
away, at albeit the performance numbers of yesteryear.  oh, incase anyone 
would ask, my /dev/twed2 is a 4x120GB RRAID5 with seagate's (ST3120026A), in 
a dual 1ghz thats almost as old as the card.

i would love to go out and buy a new 3ware... but this one wont die!   :)

an btw to richard (and other 3ware users too), do you have the sysutils/tw_cli 
port installed?  very useful!

cheers,
jonathan