I am in the process of removing a 1TB HDD from my EX485 system and replace it with a new 2TB WD Red. There's roughly 1TB of data being transferred to 2x 2TB Samsung drives and there was enough space for the transfer. The problem is that this has taken over 48 hours so far. After looking at several other threads on various sites, one possible culprit was that the drives were set back to PIO instead of the speedier DMA mode that drives can support. In looking deeper into this, I noticed that the settings I would normally check for in the Device Manager are not there. This seems to be unique to the EX Series hardware.

To get to my question, how do I check on my EX485 if my drives are running in PIO or DMA mode?

I did some looking in (Device Manager) And (Drive management) using remote desktop and was not able to find anywhere that would say one way or the other.
I believe this setting is in the bios and as long as you haven't been in the bios it should be set where it should be.
As far as how long it takes to move data, Yes it does take a long time, the last time i did a Reset and copy back it took two days and one night for a little over 1 tb.
Don't break something that probably isn't broke
I have seen some talk about performance and the Samsung drives, but I think you are ok, it does take time to move/index data.
Hope this helps and if I have missed something I'm sure somebody will shout out.
Good luck

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[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
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You will have to make a Remote Desktop connection to your EX485 then follow the instructions in the link below:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6864411_do-chec ... mode_.html

Good Luck!!!

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Exploring the possibilities!

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Unless the BIOS settings have been modified I'm almost positive the drives are in DMA mode. If you're using the "Remove Drive" feature in WHS, that can take a long time, however 48 hours seems excessive. Have you checked the drives with the SMART Add-In?

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Alex Kuretz
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Firstly thanks for the responses.

Comp1962: Those settings aren't available on the Device Manager on the EX485 hence my question. There's no way to actually tell unless you look in the BIOS as some people here kindly pointed out.

yakuza: The only BIOS settings I changed once when swapping out my CPU but that's about it. A long time ago. So I should be in the clear there.

After digging around a little more, I think I found the culprit. "Write Caching" wasn't enabled on the drive I was copying the data over to. I copied another file over to see what happened. It would hit around 40-50MB/s and then after about 10-15 seconds rapidly drop down to a crawl, something below 10MB/s. I then enabled the Write Caching (no reboot or anything) and then I copied some files over again and it steadily maintained a 50MB/s copy speed for around 15 minutes. I then turned on duplication on my drives and then speed between the drives was back to normal again.

At some point this setting had changed on the disk. No idea how or why but at least it's solved. Given the speeds I am getting again, I would assume DMA is enabled as well.

Problem solved!

Thanks for the follow up, It had been to many years since I played with those settings, It's good to remember again.
I think CD-rom was trying to pop into my head, but it was to long ago...

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud