[kwlug-disc] Trouble Reading 1 TB Hard Drive in USB SATA Dock

Wed Feb 9 12:05:41 EST 2022

See bottom.

On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 11:35 AM Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 12:39 PM Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Jan 23, 2022 at 6:57 PM Ron Singh <ronsingh149 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Doing a backup of 13.5 Gig of data(mostly small files) from my MS
>>> Onedrive(locally sync'd on my SSD) onto a 5400RPM 512G USB3 2.5"
>>> HDD(Hitachi), I am seeing Thunar sucking up 18%-26% of my i7-2640M CPU for
>>> the duration. PC is running Mint 20.2 Xfce.
>>>
>>
>> I got a USB 3.0 dock, and connected it to the same 'server' (i.e.
>> desktop) that had the now dead e-SATA
>> dock. The server has only USB 2.0 ports and will be replaced soon with
>> another desktop that has USB 3.0.
>>
>> Here is a detailed capture of performance data before, during and after
>> the backup at 5 minute intervals.
>> The tool is dstat.
>>
>> The incremental backup size was 17GB.
>>
>> As you can see, wait for i/o is high, but that is expected for any
>> intensive disk operation.
>> What is also high is user time, and I think this is because of using USB
>> and not SATA.
>>
>> stem---- --total-cpu-usage-- ---load-avg--- ---procs--- ---system--
>> -dsk/total- --io/total-
>> ime     |usr sys idl wai stl| 1m   5m  15m |run blk new| int   csw | read
>>  writ| read  writ|
>> 03:56:37|  4   0  95   0   0|0.26 0.22 0.19|2.0   0 0.1| 296   294 |   0
>>    42k|   0  3.56 |
>> 04:01:37|  4   1  94   2   0|0.73 0.32 0.22|3.0 1.0 0.3| 358   358 |5644k
>>   45k|50.1  4.10 |
>> 04:06:37|  7   2  78  13   0|1.92 1.11 0.58|3.0 1.0 0.1|1119  1254 |  31M
>> 1365k| 418  10.0 |
>> 04:11:37| 20   3  50  28   0|2.84 2.04 1.12|3.0   0 0.5|2244  3133 |  25M
>>   16M| 336  47.8 |
>> 04:16:37| 18   2  50  29   0|3.21 2.66 1.65|1.0 2.0 0.2|1877  2470 |  19M
>>   14M| 245  46.2 |
>> 04:21:37| 21   3  42  34   0|2.59 2.72 1.97|2.0 2.0 0.2|2030  2752 |  22M
>>   22M| 226  57.1 |
>> 04:26:37|  7   1  71  20   0|1.30 1.96 1.87|  0 2.0 0.0|1081  1381 |  10M
>> 4037k| 227  13.3 |
>> 04:31:37|  6   1  84   9   0|0.43 1.24 1.60|5.0   0 0.3| 740   979 |5083k
>>  933k| 113  7.02 |
>> 04:36:37|  4   0  95   0   0|0.29 0.66 1.24|1.0   0 0.0| 314   318 |5338B
>>   43k|0.10  3.72 |
>>
>> When I swap the servers, I will check if USB 3.0 is faster, and uses less
>> CPU time.
>>
>
> I swapped the server with a newer (i.e. 2013) motherboard that has USB3.0.
>
> As you can see, CPU usage is still very high, and even higher than USB
> 2.0.
>
> stem---- --total-cpu-usage-- ---load-avg--- ---procs--- ---system--
> -dsk/total- --io/total-
> ime     |usr sys idl wai stl| 1m   5m  15m |run blk new| int   csw | read
>  writ| read  writ
> 03:42:26|  2   0  97   0   0|0.19 0.20 0.18|3.0   0 0.5| 290   381 |   0
>  42k|   0  3.57
> 03:47:26|  2   0  97   0   0|0.15 0.15 0.16|4.0   0 0.1| 308   398 |   0
>  40k|   0  3.19
> 03:52:26|  2   0  97   0   0|0.15 0.14 0.15|2.0   0 0.5| 281   370 |   0
>  41k|   0  3.41
> 03:57:26|  2   0  97   0   0|0.16 0.13 0.14|1.0   0 0.1| 284   371 |   0
>  40k|   0  3.28
> 04:02:26| 13   2  83   2   0|1.85 0.65 0.31|5.0   0 0.3|1800  2697 |  21M
> 6950k| 206  18.1
> 04:07:26| 58   5  29   7   0|3.42 2.32 1.13|1.0 2.0 0.1|5469  7814 |  57M
>   53M| 515   120
> 04:12:26| 50   5  37   7   0|2.42 2.58 1.59|4.0   0 0.5|5593  8179 |  58M
>   36M| 601  88.5
> 04:17:26| 61   6  25   8   0|3.30 3.15 2.13|5.0   0 0.1|6013  8730 |  65M
>   60M| 547   148
> 04:22:26| 58   6  28   8   0|3.15 3.23 2.47|3.0 1.0 0.2|5830  8408 |  61M
>   56M| 561   141
> 04:27:26| 55   5  34   6   0|2.84 2.96 2.56|4.0   0 0.1|5636  8276 |  57M
>   31M| 555  80.5
> 04:32:26| 55   5  32   8   0|3.18 3.05 2.71|1.0 1.0 0.2|5641  8264 |  61M
>   42M| 544   103
> 04:37:26| 50   5  36  10   0|3.50 3.13 2.83|  0 2.0 0.1|5389  7839 |  55M
>   39M| 549  96.2
> 04:42:26| 21   3  71   5   0|0.37 1.74 2.35|  0   0 0.6|2593  3842 |  25M
>   14M| 247  37.6
> 04:47:26|  2   0  97   0   0|0.15 0.70 1.72|  0   0 0.1| 298   387 |  16k
>   40k|0.50  3.17
> 04:52:26|  2   0  97   0   0|0.13 0.31 1.26|1.0   0 0.5| 297   387 |1830B
>   39k|0.06  3.37
> 04:57:26|  2   0  97   0   0|0.13 0.18 0.93|1.0   0 0.0| 284   370 |  68B
>   41k|0.02  3.42
>
> All this reminds me why I opted for e-SATA many years ago.
> --
> Khalid M. Baheyeldin
> 2bits.com, Inc.
> Fast Reliable Drupal
> Drupal performance optimization, hosting and consulting.
> "Sooner or later, this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going
> to blow up in our faces." -- Dr. Carl Sagan
> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc mailing list
> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
> https://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org

Was the backup size still 17G? See, your USB2 transfer duration is about 40
minutes, but your USB3 transfer duration is more like 75 minutes.
I can see USB3 being more CPU-hogging than USB2 since the data stream is so
much faster, but I wonder about the transfer duration.

Ron
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/attachments/20220209/02088882/attachment.htm>