File copying to eSata disks: Freeze, slow speed & disk dropouts

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pushpull

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Oct 27, 2013
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Hi guys, troubleshooting some really annoying esata issues here, all suggestions would be much appreciated.


Hardware & OS: HP ProLiant Microserver N36L, external USB/esata bay (connected to esata port on my microserver), 5 x 3TB Western Digital Caviar Green internal harddrives & several 3TB Western Digital Caviar Green disks I use externally in the esata bay. OS is Windows Home server 2011

I store multimedia content on the homeserver and use the external disks to archive when homeserver is filled up.


Symptoms & issues:
  • Copying files between internal harddrives is fine. No freezing, speed is 100+ Mb/sec and no drop-outs

  • Copying from internal harddrives to esata disk starts out fine: Speed is roughly 100Mb/sec, then quickly drops. Seems like it randomly freezes on a file, and can be on the same file for one minute or so before it continues. This continues to happen and speed drops to 3-4 Mb/sec (not sure if this is an average based on all the hanging.. it's at least slow as h**l)

  • Sometimes during the file copying the entire esata disk will vanish from explorer, leaving only event 15 ("not ready for access yet"). Only way to restore the disk in explorer is by a reboot. It does not help to rescan disks in disk management. Mostly when the drop-out has happened it has only been the esata disk disappearing, but the weird thing is that a couple of times another internal harddisk has disappeared at the same time. And it was not even the internal harddisk I was copying from, when copying to the esata disk... which leaves me wondering if it's something wrong with the internal controller. Still, if so I should have experienced problems when moving files between internal harddrives too, not just eSata.

  • This behaviour is the same when copying to other 3TB Western Digital disks, so we can rule out there being issues with a single harddrive.

  • File copying from esata to internal hardrives seems to go fine, although speed quickly drops from 100 Mb/sec to 20-30 Mb/sec. But it stays stable, no freezing on single files and no disk dropouts.

This is extremely annoying and I would much appreciate if you guys can help me troubleshoot. In advance, thank you.


Edit: Addet correct ProLiant server model
 
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pushpull

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Oct 27, 2013
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update, just happened again:
I selected roughly 150gb of files to cut & paste from an internal HDD to a brand new 3TB Western Digital in my esata bay. It starts off fast but within a few minutes speed is extremely bad and it seems to stall on certain files. I still left it running and a couple of hours later I notice that both the esata disk, and another internal hdd, is gone from explorer. Like earlier the internal HDD that is gone is _not_ the source disk I was copying files from either. Rebooted, and both the internal disk + esata disk is back online.

Events from the incident:
1) 13 x Event 15: The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, is not ready for access yet.
2) 1 x Event 11 (in between the events above): The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.
3) A large number of event 51: An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk5\DR5 during a paging operation.
4) 5 more x event 15: The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, is not ready for access yet.
5) 1 more x event 11: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.
.... and at some point the disks went offline.

I started cut&pasting files again after reboot. For the first minute I can watch files counting down and speed being stable on approx. 90 Mb/sec. This lasts roughly 1 minute until the process freezes again. I keep waiting and once the process jumps to the next file in que, and I get an update on the calculated speed from Windows, it's down to 18 Mb/sec.


Suggestions are more than welcome here :)
 
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pushpull

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Oct 27, 2013
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Hi guys, thanks a lot for the replies.

@popatim: You are right, my bad. The full & correct server model & version is HP ProLiant MicroServer N36L (AMD NEO N36L 1GB(2 slots, max 8GB), x250GB LFF Non Hot Plug, RAID 0/1).

@Trent: The eSATA drives are powered by an external power supply. I am using a combi USB 2.0 & eSATA dockingstation/bay, which I dock the 3TB harddrives in when I want to dump data fra my server > eSATA drives. The bay has it's own power supply and it's connected to the eSATA port on the back of the HP Microserver. I prefer using eSATA instead of USB due to speed, and there are issues with 3TB drives being recognized properly on USB.

Located from the order I'm running with the following RAM, if it should matter: 2 x HP 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10600
Unbuffered CAS-9 Memory Kit, 8GB in total.

I am gonna correct my previous posts with the correct server model. Thanks, eager to hear if you have any suggestions.
 
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Trent Quan-Sing

Trent Quan-Sing

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If you have access and knowledge of the internals, could you try plugging directly onto the servers SATA controller just to isolate if the dock is having the issue?
 
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pushpull

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Oct 27, 2013
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Hi, and thanks for pointing me towards the BIOS. This lead me to this thread:
http://www.avforums.com/threads/hp-n36l-n40l-n54l-microserver-updated-ahci-bios-support.1521657/page-9

...and I installed the BIOS, disabled the IDE on Sata ports 4/5 option in BIOS, and tried to force speed to 3 Gbps/sec. I'm still seeing the same freezing. Starts out fine on 100-130 Mb/sec copying then freezes for a long long time on random files. The file copy that starts out saying it should be done in 12 minutes ends up taking 12 hours instead (literally). Still crossing my fingers for a resolution.
 
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popatim

popatim

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Well your sata port is not shared. I would test the drive internally first. If its not the drive it just might be the adapter. There are many that don't support 3tb+ drives. The esata port is considered port6. You have the group of 4 ports and then another above the large connector thats used for the optical drive.
 
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pushpull

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Oct 27, 2013
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Hey guys, an update here to wrap things up:
I contacted the guy from the avforums link I included who had similar issues and he replied the following:
"In the end, for me, it turned out to be a dodgy HDD enclosure. I say dodgy, but what isn't clear is if there was anything wrong per se with the enclosure or whether it was just an issue of (in)compatibility between the numerous variables - drive, PC, BIOS, OS, etc."

So I ended up trying a different eSATA docking bay using the same eSATA cable, and I've been moving 3-4 TB since then with not a single dropout. So I guess there was no software fix in my case either, just something weird with the previous eSATA bay.

Thanks a lot for your time guys
 
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