Strange file transfer pause over 10 gig network

[FTLN]

Hi guys,

I just finished setting up my 10gb/s home network.

I am seeing some strange behaviour when copying files over to server 2019 using SMB from my Win10 workstation, both OS's are fully updated and fresh install.

When I download a file from the server, all works as should and I hit the maximum read speed of my SSD Raid0 on the server. But when I copy a file over to the server I get a strange pause at around 66% which lasts a second or two and then it starts copying at full speed again.

Below are two videos, 1st video shows me copying the file from the Server to my workstation and the copying the file back again, you can the the strage pause at 66%. 2nd video shows the task manager on the windows server, it seems to hit a peak on the ram (even though there is plenty more ram available) and then copies again.

Server is running a quad core i5 and the workstation a 8 core i9, tests with iPerf3 show that the network is running at its full 10gbs.

Any ideas ? ?

Video 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvOlSv_X6eI


Video 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12OJaXoAnrE

 

[FTLN]

Just tried with a ram disk, and I don't have the problem.. Still scratching my head

 

[grec]

Windows explorer (Since 8, including 10) will only cache upto 8GB of data to RAM during a file transfer (Assuming that's not been changed in patches), as you can see at the "pause" your system starts rapidly clearing used memory to create more available memory before it continues copying/using cache again. Maybe SuperFetch had already filled up your RAM (That it presumed would be for a while unused) with other stuff and it had to clear that to continue first, so disabling SuperFetch is probably a good place to start. The file transfer itself (As you can see) continues occuring till long after Windows explorer claims its complete as you see the data get copied from the RAM cache down the network for a fair few seconds after. There are also alternatives to Windows Explorer to bypass these quirks with its file transfer system.

 

[AlienALX]

Have you checked disc caching and so on? have you checked the discs are not sleeping etc?

 

[FTLN]

Cheers guys for the info..

@tgrech, do you have a source for the 8gb limit ? Maybe I can increase the value via GP or Registry.

@AlienALX, first thing I did was test with activating deactivating the cache on the disk's & disable drive sleep, no change.

 

[grec]

I can't find the source I got the number but it's always seemed to hold through experience, though in your case it does seem to be doing the disk transfer after only 6GB of caching, here's some slides of your video annotated to give a better idea of how the data is flowing around. As you can see though, the network read stops at the pause and it just does some memory management (Writing the data from RAM to disk and remarking said RAM was disposable), it then starts reading the data on the network and transferring it to RAM again, even after the file transfer is complete though the data is still in RAM (Marked as modified) for a little while it is transferred to disk again.

 

[FTLN]

Thanks tgrech, gonna install freenas and see if I can get better results

 

[Dawelio]

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but a quick question regarding the Task manager. Anyone that knows if it's possible to remove some of the "tabs" in Task manager?...

Like I've got the usual, CPU, RAM, HDD, GPU etc... But also got Wi-Fi, Ethernet and Blutetooth PAN that are all "not connected". Thought can't seem to remove them entirely so they don't show?...

 

[looz]

Right click -> Hide graphs

 

[Dawelio]

Right click -> Hide graphs

That just turns them into smaller dots, doesn't disable them, ie not showing up in task manager again.

 

[FTLN]

So I binned the windows server and installed freenas, network is now running at full speed (crappy windows server !!)

Edit: also getting full 10gb/s copying over to my mechanical drives, the mem cache is working great on Freenas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D08C0bNB8EA

 

[grec]

Glad to see that helped, Windows is full of weird quirks with stuff like this. Regarding getting rid of graphs in TaskManager, there's no clean way to do it, if you're really fussed though and the devices are literally never used you can just disable them in Device Manager and the graphs will go too.

 

[Dawelio]

Glad to see that helped, Windows is full of weird quirks with stuff like this. Regarding getting rid of graphs in TaskManager, there's no clean way to do it, if you're really fussed though and the devices are literally never used you can just disable them in Device Manager and the graphs will go too.

Well that’s the thing, I can just either have them as dots (like yours) or have them as graphs. I can’t disable them lol.

 

[grec]

I was screenshotting FTLN, mine looks like this:

When I say disable things in Device Manager, I mean like this:

Edit- My GPUs external so here's disabling that as an example(You can actually just eject it like a pen drive on Win 10 nowadays though even with these pre-Thunderbolt ones):
Note, most stuff, including this GPU, but generally any PCIe based WiFi or Bluetooth modules and such too, will re-enable and continue running perfectly fine without a need to reboot.