Hard drives suddenly running slow??

  • The last two days my backup speed has went from about 20-30 MB/sec to 2-5 MB/sec. The backup job is the only thing running on the server at this time.

    1. My server is running RAID 5. (i know, i know, goto RAID 10)

    2. There is plenty of free space on all my drives.

    3. Windows Automatic updates are off.

    4. There are no hard drives failing right now.

    5. All other drive access seems to be slow also.

    I have not defragged my drives in a while, but everything was running fast 2 days ago. I would expect that if it was too fragmented, then it would have slowly crept up on me.

    Thanks in advance for any responses to this post.

    Any idea on what may be causing my slow down?


    Live to Throw
    Throw to Live
    Will Summers

  • Checked system monitor for anything eating up IO/Memory/CPU?

    Strange. Not sure why it would be slow. You running to new files or the same file over and over? Or appending?

    What's the size of the disk array and the backup?

  • System shows 97% System Idle Processes.

    I am generating a new file everytime.

    Disk array is a 1TB RAID 5 drive spread across 2 drives in Windows

    Don't know why, but we rebooted and now everything is fine.

    Gotta love Windows!!!


    Live to Throw
    Throw to Live
    Will Summers

  • Did you look at kernel stats when you looked at the processes? Sometimes you can have things in paged pool memory that will slow things down on the system, and they won't return without a reboot.

  • Very strange. I'd keep an eye on System Monitor in case it happens again. Maybe have it run continuously with a 1 minute interval and then you'll have some stats if it happens again

  • If one of drives fails, your system will become very slow.

  • Good old reboot for the win.  How long had it been since your last server reboot?

  • No error msgs in Event Viewer?

  • My most likely suspect would be your system Page file? If a lot of data is being switched in and out of the page file it can bog your system down over a period of time. I would also look at tempDB as a potential issue. Look at the size and utilization of objects.

    But was it SQL alone running slow or other apps as well? If other apps as well most likely outside of SQL Server objects except memory utlization which leads down the road to Page File. Next time check the physical memory available when a slow down occurrs.

  • As I said originally hard drives were failing.

    It had been about a month since a reboot.

    I didn't look at kernel stats before the reboot, but I will next time it comes up.

    No error messages in event viewer.

    We are running IIS on this server also. Not a ton of webpages. Response times on the webpages didn't seem to be effected. They are mostly small pages, so I wouldn't expect to see a change.

    I will look at available memory next time it happens.

    This machine seems to have a ghost in it at times until it is rebooted.


    Live to Throw
    Throw to Live
    Will Summers

  • i guess may be even you can check with your temp folders also.

  • Ok, the problem is back this morning. CPU usage is at about 5-10%. System idle processes is at around 97%.


    Live to Throw
    Throw to Live
    Will Summers

  • Call the hardware vendor? Is it a name brand for the box?

  • It's a Dell server. I think all the drives are 348gb segate Cheetahs. Dell machines come with a diagnostic service that runs continually, it reports no errors. I doubt if it's doing a low-level scan on any of the drives. So just because the diagnostic service says everythings fine, that doesn't mean EVERYTHINGs fine.


    Live to Throw
    Throw to Live
    Will Summers

  • How do I check this?


    Live to Throw
    Throw to Live
    Will Summers

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