I'm facing a peculiar issue with my Windows Server 2022 setup. I'm using Storage Spaces with 4 HDDs configured in a simple/RAID0 array, which can reach speeds of 800 MB/s. However, I've noticed that during file transfers, my server is reading files while it's still writing them, making the process much slower. This occurs even with files created by the server itself. For example, when I use AJA System Test to write to the drive, it should only be writing, but during this problem, the Resource Monitor shows that it's also reading the file at the same time. This hasn't happened when everything is functioning normally, and I should be seeing only writing or reading, not both. The strange part is that during these instances, the drive's active time is generally around 40-60%, rather than close to 100%. I've tried troubleshooting by disabling indexing, turning off Windows Defender, and checking defragmentation status, but I'm stumped. Does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this?
1 Answer
It seems like a classic case of mixed read/write operations slowing things down due to the drive needing to seek back and forth. If you're using HDDs, their I/O capabilities are limited, so when you try to read and write simultaneously, it can indeed choke performance. One solution might be to consider an SSD cache; it can significantly improve read/write operations by allowing some data to be accessed faster without the head-seeking delays of HDDs.
I understand that, but my concern is *why* is the process reading the file when it should only be writing it?