On Fri, 16 May 2014 17:36:57 -0400 Austin S Hemmelgarn wrote: > > It's similar (writes to just one drive, while the other is idle) when > > removing (many) snapshots. > > > > Not sure if that's optimal behaviour. > > > I think, after having looked at some of the code, that I know what is > causing this (although my interpretation of the code may be completely > off target). As far as I can make out, BTRFS only dispatches writes to > one device at a time Yes, I can confirm this... yesterday I was writing large files to my Btrfs RAID1 of two devices, and remembering this thread, decided to take a look at how the writes are performed. And indeed in 'iostat' it was clear that only one device works at a time. In my case, first one drive was writing at 80-100 MB/sec for 5-10 seconds, then activity on that once ceased entirely, and the second drive started writing for the same period at similar speeds. In effect this is causing the whole operation take about 2x longer than ideal (or in case of just a single device Btrfs). Surprising that this performance drawback of Btrfs RAID1 is not more widely known or discussed. -- With respect, Roman