PE2400 PERC2S/Si slow performance

[DCBennett]

Hello,

2 PE2400 servers - both 2xP500 and 512M RAM

Perc2S/Si controllers Firmware and drivers V2.7. 4 x 18G 10K RAID5 array.

NT4 SP6a, latest NIC etc drivers, Disks just defragged after a couple of years of little attention. Disk have got full in the past - hence the 4th disk added to the array

We back these up over network to HP Ultruim tape.

Problem:-
Lots of files get very slow - 200M folder with 14K files backup at only 15M/Minute. Similar speed if files are just copied over network.
A single 200M file backs up at 350M/Min

Copy the 200M/14K folder to our PE2450 with 2x18G software mirrored disks and it backs up at 300M/Min

Question:-
Is this to be expected, or is something tweakable in the PERC bios or FAST utility? Or is it NT getting cluttered up? I thought Raid5 was supposed to be faster reading than Raid1?

Regards
David

 

[DCBennett]

OK - Sorted

Raid array not to blame, it was Mcafee NetShield 4.5.
I'd turned it off during backup with "shstat -disable". This doesn't kill service - "Net Stop McShield" does and backup runs at full speed.

David