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Network Attached Storage, strange slowness

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sirwoogie:
sam and bish are correct. The concept of a remote initiation of a file copy/move really isn't in commodity hardware. Thus, in your case, your local windows machine is reading the bits in over the wireless connection, then writing them back out over the wireless connection in very small chunks (typically XP/Vista with SMB copy is 4k chunks). So, the inefficiency of SMB/CIFS to work over a slow connection (your 802.11g connection) is definitely your cause. At best case, you'll probably eek about 1-2 Megabytes per second.

Remember also that the more people you have using wireless on the access point, the available bandwidth drops by half. It based simply on the total number of connected devices, not how much each user is pulling from it. Thus, on an 802.11g you'll get theoretical 54mbps with one user, 27mbps with two users, and so on. Then, just for overhead and inefficiencies, take 30-40% off that number, and that's how much bandwidth you have to play with.

The first-most option is to do the copy on the station itself if supported (either through a command line or a web based front-end). Your other solution is to go wired, and preferably gigabit between the NAS and the host doing the copy. Not knowing what Terastation model you have, and what it's capabilities are, I can't advise you further.


Edit: Eeek, you get the Satan post...

shmokes:
God, how disappointing.  Gigabit is out of the question.  I have a Gigabit NIC on my PC, and the Terastation has gigabit, but I don't have a gigabit switch/router, nor a crossover (or regular cable) long enough to reach between the two.  If I do a wired connection it'll have to be with a laptop, cos unhooking the Terastation and bringing it to my PC is too big a hassle to deal with based on where it's located.

And, yeah, as near as I can tell, there is no local option.  The web interface allows me to create folders and manage their share properties, but that is all.  And there's no built in telnet or remote desktop as far as I can tell.  There's a hacked bios that adds some telnet support.  I haven't really looked into it, but I'm afraid of destroying my array (and the data on it) by going to those extremes.  It has a built-in FTP server, but it's wonky.  Only some of the folders show up and I can't create new folders from within the FTP client.

It's looking like hooking a laptop up locally, so I can at least get a dedicated 100 Mb/s connection going will be my best bet.  It'll still take forever, but at least it won't be quite so painful.

SavannahLion:

--- Quote from: shmokes on June 06, 2008, 01:18:40 pm ---It's looking like hooking a laptop up locally, so I can at least get a dedicated 100 Mb/s connection going will be my best bet.  It'll still take forever, but at least it won't be quite so painful.

--- End quote ---

Give it a shot, but I usually don't bother. I've consistently bumped my head against this exact same problem. ON TOP of the insane slowness, there appears to be some sort of cut off or time out that innitiates on some Windows installs. It never seems to trigger with huge files but triggers when you're moving around a large number of files on networked drives.

My laptop suffers from it, but not any of the desktops.  :dunno

I ---smurfing--- hate Microsoft's network protocols. Even at its most complex configurations, Linux gets it dead right. Windows, on the other hand, forces you to jump through hurdle after hurdle just to get simple ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- going. Bleh.

bishmasterb:
shmokes,

As a workaround, the Buffalo NAS devices do support "backup" to local USB devices. You can connect a USB HD directly to the Buffalo NAS's USB port, and then setup a one-time backup operation via the web admin. You'll get normal USB speeds using this method (100MB/sec or so on USB 2.0).

Hope this helps.

shmokes:
I can't figure out how I can use that method to move files from one folder to another on the NAS . . .  Can you elaborate?

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