Solved Hyper Backup - one external USB drive is very slow

[martinb0820]

I just started using a DS218+. I have three WD EasyStore 4gb drives. Two of them work fine on the NAS; a full backup takes about 45 hours. With the third drive, I cancelled a similar backup after it only reached 70% after about 30 hours.

All three drives seem to work fine when connected directly to a Windows 10 PC.

I "quick formatted" the "bad" drive, turned off indexing and used a USB cable known to have worked with the good backups. None of this helped...

Any ideas about why this is happening?

Are there any Linux console commands in the NAS that can give me status information on the USB connection?

I'm now executing a full format of the drive and will then run error check and will try another backup. Anything else I should try?

Thanks!

 

[akahan]

I'm confused by your post. I'm pretty sure you mean you have EasyStore 4TB (not 4gb) drives, right?
If a full backup takes 45 hours, then 70% after 30 hours sounds exactly right. That is, 30 hours is 2/3 of 45 hours, and 70% is approximately 2/3 of 100%. So what is the issue?

Also, what software are you using to create the backups, and what settings are set? Is this Hyperbackup, or are you using backup software on a PC connected to the NAS, or something else?

 

[martinb0820]

Typos corrected below:

... three WD EasyStore 4TB drives. Two of them work fine on the NAS; a full backup takes about 4.5 hours [four point five]. With the third drive, I cancelled a similar backup after it only reached 70% after about 30 hours.​

This is Hyper Backup, with settings identical in all cases, writing to external USB drives.

Are any diagnostics available via the CLI?

 

[fredbert]

Are these new EasyStore or ones you've used for a while? They look similar to the WD Elements that I use (good bog-standard USB drives with no annoying extras).

I formatted the drives I use exclusively with Hyper Backup as ext4 to have compatibility with the NAS's ext4. Other external disks I format as exFat (paying the small fee for the Synology licence) so they are compatible with Mac and PC. All these disks were formatted using the NAS.

Message log at /var/log/messages

You could test the drive/disk with WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

WD Software

List of all WD firmware and software available for download.

support.wdc.com

 

[martinb0820]

I picked up the EasyStore drives a little over a year ago; they were on sale at Best Buy at the time for a great price.

The full format (on a Windows 10 system) on the problem drive finally completed and a backup task to that drive is now running normally. A "quick" format before that hadn't helped.

Prior to the full format, the WD diagnostic software probably would have found a problem. I'll keep that in mind for the future; running a full format takes forever...

Thanks!

 

[fredbert]

running a full format takes forever.

Indeed it does. Format option of last resort

 

[jeyare]

just to be sure:
4TB for 4.5hours = 259MB/s for USB3.0 write to the EasyStore from NAS?
Is there any slowing option in HB task enabled (encryption,...)?
What kind of disk is inside the WD EasyStore capsule? Just to be informed, thx

 

[fredbert]

If they are like the WD Elements then older ones will have 3.5" Green HDD and newer Blue. I think WD merged the Green HDD line into Blue. The old Green and bigger (>1TB) Blue used to be 5400 rpm whereas the <1TB Blue were 7200 rpm.

Backup speed isn't just limited to disk read/write but also integrity checks etc. and also interaction of disk access from competing processes. I think I'd be happy with 259MB/s sustained. I've had internal 2.5" SATA boot disks that didn't do a quarter of that.

 

[martinb0820]

The USB drive is 4TB. The size of the backup being written to the USB drive is < 1.8TB.

WRT to the EasyStore, I've never opened one up. Below is how it shows up in Device Manager, which isn't very informative about what is actually inside.

If you Google, there is some discussion (conjecture?) about what WD puts inside these.

 

[martinb0820]

If they are like the WD Elements then older ones will have 3.5" Green HDD and newer Blue. I think WD merged the Green HDD line into Blue. The old Green and bigger (>1TB) Blue used to be 5400 rpm whereas the <1TB Blue were 7200 rpm.

Backup speed isn't just limited to disk read/write but also integrity checks etc. and also interaction of disk access from competing processes. I think I'd be happy with 259MB/s sustained. I've had internal 2.5" SATA boot disks that didn't do a quarter of that.

As noted, the size of the backup is appreciably smaller than the size of the USB drive, so throughput is less than half of that figure.

BTW, that is a lot of good information!

 

[fredbert]

If you Google, there is some discussion (conjecture?) about what WD puts inside these.

I cracked mine open They're not that difficult to do with a plastic blade and not being too rough.

The most recent one I go was a 6TB Elements and the standard Blue disk inside is more expensive without the USB case!

The ones to watch out for are some of the pocket drives that have a direct mount USB interface instead of a SATA interface plugged onto a USB board.

 

[jeyare]

Backup speed isn't just limited to disk read/write but also integrity checks etc. and also interaction of disk access from competing processes.

what I asked: "Is there any slowing option in HB task enabled (encryption,...)?"

 

[jeyare]

The USB drive is 4TB. The size of the backup being written to the USB drive is < 1.8TB.

WRT to the EasyStore, I've never opened one up. Below is how it shows up in Device Manager, which isn't very informative about what is actually inside.

View attachment 867
If you Google, there is some discussion (conjecture?) about what WD puts inside these.

I found too many unprofessional discussion over net. Some of them about, that there is 4TB WD Red for 89USD
I like facts

btw:
1.8TB / 4.5h ... 116MB/s is more trusted value for the DS218+ performance and common HDDs inside NAS

 

[fredbert]

what I asked: "Is there any slowing option in HB task enabled (encryption,...)?"

Wasn't preaching cos I know you've done your performance testing. And I missed the specific point you were asking

When I moved the old iMac from a standard 7200rpm WD Blue to Seagate SSHD (8GB SSD) I was happy with the jump to 160MB/s. So I would be very surprised that external USB HD reach really high speeds, and even more surprised if used with a competent backup app.

 

[akahan]

You can almost certainly determine what brand/model of HDD is in the enclosure using (free) CrystalDiskInfo:

Download

[2024/05/01] CrystalMark Retro 1.0.2 – Manual / History Standard Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER (Vista-) Source Code Aoi Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER (Vista-) [2024/08/27] CrystalDiskInfo 9.4.1 – Manual / History Aoi Edition 2 themes / 27MB ZIP (XP-) INSTALLER...

crystalmark.info

If the "bad" drive is just a different model, you'll have your answer, most likely.
You can test the drive's speed attributes (exhaustively) using the (also free) companion software, CrystalDiskMark (available further down that same page).