Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Issues related to hardware problems
MartinR
Posts: 714
Joined: 2015/05/11 07:53:27
Location: UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by MartinR » 2020/03/19 20:25:50

The disk has only been powered on for just over 4 elapsed days so it's almost brand new.
- yes, see my original post.
You need to make sure that nothing uses the disk while the test is running or it may abort.
- all partitions are unmounted.

Code: Select all

# smartctl -t long /dev/sdd
smartctl 7.0 2018-12-30 r4883 [x86_64-linux-3.10.0-1062.18.1.el7.x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-18, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately in off-line mode".
Drive command "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately in off-line mode" successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 173 minutes for test to complete.
Test will complete after Thu Mar 19 19:07:03 2020
Use smartctl -X to abort test.
so I waited until 19:07 and then allowed another hour for contingencies:

Code: Select all

# date
Thu 19 Mar 20:08:50 GMT 2020
# smartctl -a /dev/sdd
smartctl 7.0 2018-12-30 r4883 [x86_64-linux-3.10.0-1062.18.1.el7.x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-18, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Toshiba 2.5" HDD MQ04UBF... (USB 3.0)
Device Model:     TOSHIBA MQ04UBF100
Serial Number:    Y9E5T17ST
LU WWN Device Id: 0 000000 000000000
Firmware Version: JU003U
User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
Form Factor:      2.5 inches
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.3, 3.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Thu Mar 19 20:09:06 2020 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Status not supported: Incomplete response, ATA output registers missing
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
Warning: This result is based on an Attribute check.

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)	Offline data collection activity
					was never started.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (  25)	The self-test routine was aborted by
					the host.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: 		(  120) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
					Suspend Offline collection upon new
					command.
					Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					No Conveyance Self-test supported.
					Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
					power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 ( 173) minutes.
SCT capabilities: 	       (0x003d)	SCT Status supported.
					SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
					SCT Feature Control supported.
					SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0005   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Always       -       2475
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       45
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0005   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       113
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0033   100   100   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       16
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       9
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       54
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       30 (Min/Max 19/49)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
220 Disk_Shift              0x0002   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
222 Loaded_Hours            0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       6
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
224 Load_Friction           0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
226 Load-in_Time            0x0026   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       201
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0001   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Aborted by host               90%       109         -
# 2  Extended offline    Aborted by host               90%       104         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
Looks clean to me.

I've gone back to the Toshiba website (https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap- ... eries.html and noted that the internal transfer speed is quoted as 819.7 ~ 1733.6 Mbit/s. USB3 is 5 Gbit/s and my machine can happily drive the other USB spindles at a decent rate. I'll run the benchmark again at get a figure for the write speed once it has green-screened.

MartinR
Posts: 714
Joined: 2015/05/11 07:53:27
Location: UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by MartinR » 2020/03/19 21:11:03

Test results.

10MiB sample size, 100 samples gave a satisfactory result, benchmark reports 114.6 MB/s read, 55.8 MB/s write.

10MiB sample size, 1000 samples:
Benchmark graph - reads: Starts at 150 MB/s slowly dropping to 114 MB/s then stopping.
Benchmark graph - writes: Starts at 40-96 MB/s until 40% done, then drops to 32 MB/s up to 50%, then down to 16 MB/s to 55% where it freezes.
PCP results:
avg wait: 2-20s (NB seconds, not ms)
req size: 500 kb/req
que len: 5-50 with peaks at 200
read: 10Mb pulses about 10s apart, nothing inbetween
write: 0.6 Mb/s with occasional peaks to 4 Mb/s
iowait: 25% (this is a 4 core machine)
Freeze occurred at 574 samples.

100MiB sample size, 100 samples:
Avg wait ramps up to 160 seconds, then test aborted.
Qlen: likewise, with occasional peaks at 600.

HTH!

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by TrevorH » 2020/03/19 23:01:18

What's in dmesg or /var/log/messages when it goes wrong?
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

MartinR
Posts: 714
Joined: 2015/05/11 07:53:27
Location: UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by MartinR » 2020/03/19 23:15:11

Running grep -v rpfilter messages | grep -v FINAL_REJECT | grep -v DHCPREQUEST | grep -v DHCPACK | grep -v bogon and cutting out from the start of monitoring to the time of posting gives:

Code: Select all

Mar 19 20:55:01 tamar systemd: Starting Check pmlogger instances are running...
Mar 19 20:55:02 tamar systemd: Started Check pmlogger instances are running.
Mar 19 20:59:34 tamar rsyslogd: -- MARK --
Mar 19 21:00:01 tamar systemd: Created slice User Slice of root.
Mar 19 21:00:01 tamar systemd: Started Session 37 of user root.
Mar 19 21:00:01 tamar systemd: Removed slice User Slice of root.
Mar 19 21:01:01 tamar systemd: Created slice User Slice of root.
Mar 19 21:01:01 tamar systemd: Started Session 38 of user root.
Mar 19 21:01:01 tamar systemd: Removed slice User Slice of root.
Mar 19 21:10:01 tamar systemd: Created slice User Slice of root.
Mar 19 21:10:01 tamar systemd: Started Session 39 of user root.
Mar 19 21:10:01 tamar systemd: Removed slice User Slice of root.
dmesg isn't much more help:

Code: Select all

# dmesg -H | grep -v DROP | grep -v FINAL_REJECT
[ +13.049057]  sdd:
[  +6.913746]  sdd:
[  +1.108058]  sdd:

MartinR
Posts: 714
Joined: 2015/05/11 07:53:27
Location: UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by MartinR » 2020/03/20 11:06:54

I tried the benchmark again this morning, 10MiB sample size, 100 samples started slow and stopped at 40% done. I then tried a full format to flush any bad blocks, but it has slowed to 666 kB/sec (appropriate!) and reckons that there are 17 days left to do the format! As I typed it has speeded up: 2.2MB/s and 5 days. I'll let it run for a while, it could just be a case of bad blocks at the start of the disk, I'm not sure these days how long bad block revectoring takes.

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by TrevorH » 2020/03/20 14:41:59

I'd be pretty sure that either your drive is knackered (likely since it's new enough to suffer from what's known as infant mortality) or you USB enclosure/cable have problems.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

MartinR
Posts: 714
Joined: 2015/05/11 07:53:27
Location: UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by MartinR » 2020/03/20 15:55:55

Thanks :( Pretty well what I thought, but I wanted a second opinion before I junked it. Why do drives only show faults once you've put sensitive information on them?

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by TrevorH » 2020/03/20 16:09:13

If you can plug the drive into a SATA port and test there it would eliminate the cable/enclosure.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

MartinR
Posts: 714
Joined: 2015/05/11 07:53:27
Location: UK

Re: Slow write speed for Toshiba USB disk

Post by MartinR » 2020/03/20 16:30:27

It's not the usual USB->SATA converter + a SATA drive. The USB port is the only port and is firmly attached to the circuit board. I think this one's headed to the incinerator.

Post Reply