External Backup running very slow

[Sparky]

So I just set up a new AS1002t v2 with [2] 2TB WD RED hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration. I have a 256gb mSATA drive in a USB 3.0 enclosure plugged into the front USB port, and I set up a backup for a folder containing approx. 160gb using the Backup & Restore\External Backup utility in the ADM. The transfer rates are very slow. Write speed is peaking at 4MB/s, probably averaging about 1.5-2mb/s. It has been running for over 24 hours, and says it has 5 days to go! What might be wrong? What should I check?

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[orion]

Most-likely, it's caused by your external box. The performance on the most of chips that convert from USB to SATA is not good. Anyway, you can try your box under a PC. Or you can try to connect your box to another USB3 port.

[Sparky]

Ok. I will check that. Also, I am saving other files to the NAS and accessing them across the network, and they are opening slowly. Will that improve when the backup is done? I have been reading recently about the WD Red drives and a few others being SMR drives rather than CMR- could that be causing my speed issues? Or are there other NAS settings that I need to change to speed things up? I did bump the proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min to 120000.

[orion]

Also, I am saving other files to the NAS and accessing them across the network, and they are opening slowly. Will that improve when the backup is done?

If you are accessing the same USB disk, that should be the case. If you are accessing other internal disks, that might be the other case. You'll need to check CPU usage to see if there are other busy tasks.

I have been reading recently about the WD Red drives and a few others being SMR drives rather than CMR- could that be causing my speed issues? Or are there other NAS settings that I need to change to speed things up? I did bump the proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min to 120000.

I don't think SMR will result in this problem. After all, the performance of disks in the market should be > 100MB/sec.