File access pitiful on SVR but rapid on PC?

FatRakoon · 17 Nov 2020 at 22:36

This is something that has been bugging me for some time, but my Server accessing its files is fairly slow. Annoyingly slow in fact. However, when I use a PC that is connected to its drives, its rapid as if the drives were on the PC itself.

It is therefore vastly quicker, to use a PC over the network to do whatever I need to do, to the files n the server, rather than simply use the server directly.

Is this normal?

The Server is a Supermicro H8QGI-F with 4xOpteron 6380 and 512GB RAM
Running Windows 10 currently, it was running Win SVR 2016 and it did the same with that
C: is a 120GB SSD
D: is a 4TB WD Black
M: is 5x10TB WD RED ( On a RAID Card )
P: is 4x8TB WD RED ( On Motherboard )

The other PC is normally my main PC ( Win10 ) but its no different with any of my other PC, and even if they are MAC or Linux.

Its quite annoying because I want to use the Server for a numbner of other things but its disk access is rotten.

Yet, when other computers are accessing its files, they are lightning quick. What the heck is that about?

AGTDenton · 17 Nov 2020 at 22:52

Very odd

One thing that could hamper local access is a piece of software doing a realtime scan in the background as you access the data like some sort of Internet Security or hardware monitoring app.
Any 3rd party software we should be aware of?
Are all drives slow or just some? Just thinking if any RAID drivers/firmware are out of date.
Have you ever had good local disk access performance? Did it start happening after a certain time?

Weirdly I've experienced the opposite conditions, drive access locally was fast but over network would cause the server to crash, turned out to be a dodgy RAID card

sja360 · 18 Nov 2020 at 08:57

Could be a drive on its way out? If you're accessing the storage drives over the network it will be fast, if you're using the SSD say for Windows 10 perhaps their are issues in with it? Is the SSD drive full or ?

FatRakoon · 2 Dec 2020 at 10:45

No the SSD is not full.

Its only the O/S drive too so itnever gets avcessed over the network.

The syorage drives are also nowhere near full plus its done this kind of since day 1 its just getting on my pip cos the server has cost a fair whack to knock up.

I was considering using this setup as my main pc for a while purely cos of the number of cores and how much ram it has but it was not that responsive and so i left it as the server but i didnt tealise just how sluggish it