ML350 G5 Array 200i SLOW write speeds

[Dave McAdams]

When copying files the performance is very slow. There are three SATA drives in a RAID 5 array. OS is Windows Server 2003 A 60GB file transfer took over three hours from a 3Gbps eSATA drive. Other servers and desktops with a single SATA internal drive connected to the same external eSATA drive take far less time. This is having a significant impact on employees. Suggestions?

[SMR]

Hi Dave,

Do you know if the E200i has the BBWC? bascially... does it have a battery attached? if not then your cache on the controller is only being used for reads.

[Dave McAdams]

It is the model with a 128 BBWC. I should have added that originally.

[SMR]

So if you have a fully charged and functional battery then you might want to tweak your cache ratio, from my experience some environments benefit from 50/50 others from 75/25. Give it a try and post the result. An ADU report would be useful to check for errors.

[PussPower]

Update firmware. Update drivers. Use HP utility (don't remember name of it) to enable INTERNAL drives cache. It disabled by default, unlike all other PC's. No other ways to make this thing fast.

[iceman38]

For me it worked to enable disk INTERNAL cache via HP Smart Storage administrator. 

The speeds (although initializing parity on the RAID5 volume) went from 0-30 (sometimes it completely stopped) to steady 50-100MB. 

Perhaps it getting even better when parity is complete.

[MM_Z]

E200i is just very awful controller, performance issues are well known. You can tweak settings as suggested or replace controller with better one.