RPI4 USB3.0 HDD Performance

Hi All,
Just wondering if anyone has done any performance testing on this scenario - I’ve seen some successrate examples but not direct disk…? I am trying to determine how my drives compared to a good baseline PI4 setup, but haven’t found any decent comparisons on this forum yet… :thinking:
Mine seems pretty slow, and successrates are very ordinary, but I’m not sure what the optimal values should be to test with either…

Cheers

Andrew

As far as I understood, the successrate depends on many factors like location, internet speed, your setup etc…
So I think there is no absolute baseline with which you can compare your results.

If you want to compare different setups, then I think you will have to test them locally at your location. Otherwise a comparison of the results won‘t be really meaningful.

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RPI 4 B 4GB RAM with 2x8TB Seagate HDD USB 3.0 connection, 290 hours uptime, shitty internet connection, Italy
========== AUDIT ==============
Critically failed: 0
Critical Fail Rate: 0.000%
Recoverable failed: 0
Recoverable Fail Rate: 0.000%
Successful: 3955
Success Rate: 100.000%
========== DOWNLOAD ===========
Failed: 2084
Fail Rate: 2.997%
Canceled: 1418
Cancel Rate: 2.039%
Successful: 66044
Success Rate: 94.965%
========== UPLOAD =============
Rejected: 0
Acceptance Rate: 100.000%
---------- accepted -----------
Failed: 104
Fail Rate: 0.010%
Canceled: 693512
Cancel Rate: 68.977%
Successful: 311807
Success Rate: 31.012%
========== REPAIR DOWNLOAD ====
Failed: 0
Fail Rate: 0.000%
Canceled: 0
Cancel Rate: 0.000%
Successful: 4
Success Rate: 100.000%
========== REPAIR UPLOAD ======
Failed: 0
Fail Rate: 0.000%
Canceled: 1657
Cancel Rate: 68.217%
Successful: 772
Success Rate: 31.783%
========== DELETE =============
Failed: 0
Fail Rate: 0.000%
Successful: 177975
Success Rate: 100.000%
I have another node in Romania, a RPI4 B 4GB RAM with a 1TB SSD USB 3.0 connected, internet connection with 1Gb download and 400Mb upload, DOWNLOAD successrate is 99.99% and UPLOAD no more than 12% so my conclusion is “SLOWER and bigger IS BETTER” for Italy

Mmm, you see to get much better results than I do - I understand many, many things influence results.
I remain curious to compare the direct disk performance as opposed to Storj’s performance…

For example, if you have hdparm installed compare some read speeds

sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda: (WD Red - 2TB)
Timing cached reads: 1682 MB in 2.00 seconds = 840.77 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 446 MB in 3.01 seconds = 148.28 MB/sec

sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sdb. (Seagate IronWolf - 6TB)
/dev/sdb:
Timing cached reads: 1748 MB in 2.00 seconds = 873.95 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 636 MB in 3.01 seconds = 211.31 MB/sec

I’m not sure if mine are OK or shite…

RPI 4 B 4GB RAM, WD My Book Desktop Hard Drive 4TB USB 3.0, speed test 60/20, Italy

Riepilogo

========== AUDIT ==============
Critically failed: 0
Critical Fail Rate: 0.000%
Recoverable failed: 2
Recoverable Fail Rate: 0.023%
Successful: 8573
Success Rate: 99.977%
========== DOWNLOAD ===========
Failed: 1086
Fail Rate: 0.631%
Canceled: 1069
Cancel Rate: 0.621%
Successful: 169895
Success Rate: 98.748%
========== UPLOAD =============
Rejected: 0
Acceptance Rate: 100.000%
---------- accepted -----------
Failed: 1010
Fail Rate: 0.372%
Canceled: 202768
Cancel Rate: 74.675%
Successful: 67756
Success Rate: 24.953%
========== REPAIR DOWNLOAD ====
Failed: 4
Fail Rate: 0.012%
Canceled: 0
Cancel Rate: 0.000%
Successful: 33160
Success Rate: 99.988%
========== REPAIR UPLOAD ======
Failed: 26
Fail Rate: 0.093%
Canceled: 23764
Cancel Rate: 84.588%
Successful: 4304
Success Rate: 15.320%
========== DELETE =============
Failed: 0
Fail Rate: 0.000%
Successful: 486964
Success Rate: 100.000%

For the 2 Seagate 8TB HDD:

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1598 MB in 2.00 seconds = 799.19 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 350 MB in 3.01 seconds = 116.37 MB/sec
/dev/sdb:
Timing cached reads: 1604 MB in 2.00 seconds = 802.27 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 394 MB in 3.01 seconds = 130.91 MB/sec

For the 1 TB SSD

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1704 MB in 2.00 seconds = 852.18 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 1044 MB in 3.00 seconds = 347.87 MB/sec

For me it doesn’t matter if the results are good or not, i won’t change anything. For what i know, what matters the most is the distance between your node and the client that is using Tardigrade. So if you have shitty successrate is because you don’t have anny client nerby. You need to compare with another RPI4 node in your country before taking any action.

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Thanks for that @dann1 !
Those results are quite similar to mine, so gives me some confidence my hardware combo is performing about the same as others. As you say must be down to laws of physics and local demand etc

Appreciate your feedback

Thanks

are this raid i asume? becouse it should be 1 node 1 disk, isn´t it?

For data safety reasons yes, but all the hardware is new so i made a RAID0. All i do for now is for testing purpose before making something bigger.

can i ask, what models are you using? Do you know if they are SMR or CMR?

Pretty sure not SMR, i didn’t find them on that list. For echonomical reasons these are autopowered external drives model Seagate STEL8000200 year 2016, cheapest external HDD i could find 17£/TB.

Found out that i am using SMR drives, this wont change anything

I´ve just heard smr could be very unreliable in raid

I’ve heard that too, no problems here…yet. Everyone is talking about possible problems, never knew someone who had or has an isue with SMR hard drive. I will just wait and see.

SMR can be a problem during RAID rebuilds… but since you’re using (scary) RAID0, there isn’t an option to rebuild anyway. So… yeah, that’s a very bad idea. Just use separate nodes per HDD instead please.

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Thank you for the advice.