In reply to a post by Woolwich:

In reply to a post by MHC:

The RAID - it has to be te controller or firmware that slowed down the write and the read speeds are maxing out the Gigabit Ethernet. 125MB * 8 = 1000Mb or 1 Gb

Yes but no. The RAID is the one connected via USB3.1 to an eSATA port (using convertor cable).

As said above

In reply to a post by haydnwalker:

It's well known that DAS (Direct Attached Storage) is usually faster than NAS/SAN traffic. eSATA/USB3 can do 200MB/s + (pure USB3 max theoretical is 625MB/s)

So not bad really.

Its probably the usb to esata adapter that is limiting you.
If you get on that supports UASP it will increase the speed massively

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

Its probably the usb to esata adapter that is limiting you.
If you get on that supports UASP it will increase the speed massively

Using this FWIW. The only one I could find at the time.
https://www.startech.com/en-gb/hdd/usb3c2esat3

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

Its probably the usb to esata adapter that is limiting you.
If you get on that supports UASP it will increase the speed massively

Using this FWIW. The only one I could find at the time.
https://www.startech.com/en-gb/hdd/usb3c2esat3

Yeah it doesn't say UASP in the specs.
I'm pretty sure that is what is holding back your RAID box.

Thanks
Dan

I had one of those and I think it was limited to 1.5 Mbps. However eSATA itself has limits and if the RAID box has any other interfaces they should be investigated.

Is it a drobo by chance ?

Modern NAS is very performant / bang for buck. Some of the medium to high end Synology units (yes I'm a fan of Synology, Drobo not so much) offer incredible performance.

A few sticks of NVMe SSD cache and a slew of 7200rpm NAS-specific buffered drives will easily enable them to fill several bonded GbE connections.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Is it a drobo by chance ?

No chance! Heard too many horror stories.

Its not this drive but clearly made by the same firm (this one an own label brand, mine is 'Hydra'). Same idea but different, I have an LCD screen and USB2, Firewire 800 and eSATA connections. Its a few years. My one doesn't do JBOB, just spanning or RAIDs.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Modern NAS is very performant / bang for buck. Some of the medium to high end Synology units (yes I'm a fan of Synology, Drobo not so much) offer incredible performance.

A few sticks of NVMe SSD cache and a slew of 7200rpm NAS-specific buffered drives will easily enable them to fill several bonded GbE connections.

Yes, my other RAID is a Synology! Easy to set up, no endless asking 'experts' and learning how to do something via the command line.

I sometimes wonder about adding some NVMe but I'm probably held back more by my Mac that anything else. I'm rendering photos and the graphics chip (not card)! is likely a bottleneck. But I'm still after a bit of speed when backing up from one drive to the other and moving large files around the LAN.

Using a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 would get you up to 100MB/s.
I think it would be faster than the ESATA to USB adapter you are using.

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

Using a Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 would get you up to 100MB/s.
I think it would be faster than the ESATA to USB adapter you are using.

Interesting. I think I didn't try that because Apple only make a Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire adaptor and then you need the Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adaptor. And you can imagine how much that all comes to at Apple...

Agreed on Thunderbolt. Quite amazing what you can run over it simultaneously. Use a docking station on MacBooks - one cable to the dock does power, external screen and 10GbE.