Drobo 5N Speed Help

Hey all -

The initial transfer to my new 5N is underway, but I’m having issues. I don’t think it’s the Drobo itself.

I plugged it directly into my MacPro and tested it with Blackmagic Speedtest and it was 90-100 MB/sec which seems great. As soon as I try to copy files from my firewire drives though it seems to slow majorly. I’m even trying a utility called ultra copy to avoid errors, etc with no luck.

Any ideas on how to speed this up? Could it be packet size, etc? Would love 100 MB speeds, etc.

Thanks for any pointers!

A couple things - the Firewire drives are likely going to be a bottleneck. Even FW800 doesn’t usually hit its full theoretical speed (it tends to be limited by chipset or drive speed). After that, once you’ve written enough data to the Drobo it starts optimizing the layout internally, so the early days of using it tend to be a bit slower; performance then returns to normal after a bit.

What kind of speeds are you seeing?

Thanks for the quick reply!

My latest news….

Via Speedtest: 50-90 MB/sec
Via Chronosync, Carbon Copy Cloner, Synk, etc: next to nothing (?)
Via Finder Copy: 50 MB/sec - copying a drive now!

The trouble is…if an error should occur it’ll cancel the whole operation.

Any reason why chronosync, etc isn’t really working? Very strange, especially considering they’re all connected to the same machine!

Thanks again.

Most drive cloning programs (like Synk, CCC, etc) don’t work with network volumes like the 5N. They need lower-level access than a network protocol like AFP allows. Best advice would be to use the Finder in smaller batches if you’re worried about a single file tripping it up.

I just wanted to update….somehow have resolved my issues. Made a static IP on my router and upped the MTUs to 9000 on my mac and the drobo.

Now Carbon Copy Cloner seams to be working great! Strange….

btw cheeseycheese posted this recently:
http://synkron.sourceforge.net/

might be useful