Why is disk access on Windows Server 2008 3x slower than Windows Server 2003? We are purchasing new hardware for our build servers and may end up with a 6 year old OS because disk access is so slow with Windows Server 2008 and 2008R2. I have performed benchmark tests on clean OS installs on the exact same hardware. The benchmark consists simply of unzipping an 800MB zip file of source files. We use 64bit 7Zip to unzip. Uncompressed the source tree is approximately 3.9GB and consists of 43k files. We then delete the tree via "RD /q /s".
Benchmarks:
Windows Server 2003 - 2:12
Windows Server 2008 - 5:05
Windows Server 2008 R2 - 6:15
I have tried the test with indexing disabled, but it did not help. Is there a configuration setting I have missed?
Write caching is not enabled. My device driver will not allow me to enable write caching. I get "The device does not allow its write-caching setting to be changed."
No shadows on the system:
C:\>vssadmin list shadows
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
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Best Answer
Can you double-check that write/read cachning is enabled on the disk volume within device manager? Also, is it possible for you to breakdown those figures into portions of the test (most specifically: does it take several minutes longer to delete the files on 2008?)