school me on how to figure out why my NAS drive creeps on data xfers randomly.

Alright guys At my office we have about 9 devices hooked up at a single time + 2 cell phones, Nothing more. I have a gigabit switch, gigabit router and all CAT5e cabling. Once I start backing up a computer to our NAS drive sometimes its blistering fast, other times its like 200kb/s. I need to reboot the nas drive to get those speeds again. I bought another NAS drive to see if it was the device itself and the second one started slowing down as well. My NAS drive has 4x2tb WD blacks in raid 10 and the other one had 2x4tb wd green in raid 1. Any way to figure out where the issue might be?

I already tried getting a new NAS box with separate HDD'S, same issue.
bought new router
bought new gigabit switch
Got a new modem because I needed a new one anyway (i know its not relevant but figured id mention).
Ran new cables.

Im assuming it has to be some sort of setting in the router that might be throttling the data over the network or possibly a setting in the NAS? Possibly QoS

Im just waiting on a email back with the PW and what not for the router, It was changed and I dont want to hard reset it because of all our custom config. Kinda a wreck when I got here and rebuilding everything, This NAS situation apparently has been a problem for years and was only brought up to me now.

Could be lots of things. Did you reboot the router or switch when it happens to see if they are the issue?

Sometimes crappy appliances will overheat and act weird until they reboot.

I normally reboot the NAS box and the problem is fixed. If the problem happens again I'll reboot the Router first, then the switch. Im pretty sure I already tried that previously but doesnt hurt to do it again, Thanks for your input. This router isnt a buisness class router so maybe. I dont really feel that this kind of enviroment needs a high end router. Nothing really happens any the computers. The most work they get is when I actually try to xfer data to the NAS.

When ive seen issues like this its usually something getting overworked and then being left in an unstable state. Ive seen it with NICs, Wifi cards, routers and storage controllers. (Heres to you Marvell and Linksys!)

Isolate and test components until you've got the smoking gun.

Thats what im doing today, I finally got the router Email and adjusted some settings accordingly. I also set some QoS stuff to put the nas drive on high priority. Im currently Xfering stuff now @ 10MB/s going to see if i can overload it and see what happens once i start unplugging stuff. Glad i atleast know i can replicate the issue

You need to remove as many variables as you can, test, and work your way back up testing along the way.

What do you mean by "nas box" ...please define the actual hardware and software that make this thing up. How is it configured?

With 4 drives in RAID 10 connected to a gig switch (with a gig nic and a cable capable of sustaining a gigabit connection), with another PC (again with the nic and cable) to that same switch, you should be able to saturate that connection (assuming that PC has an SSD, or other drive capable of 125MB/s Reads and Writes). This doesn't include any kind of router. If You're seeing poor speeds here... you've got your work cut out for you.

Saying you're only at 10MB/s sounds like something is running at 100Mbit speeds (max theoretical is 12.5MB/s in that case, and normally with overhead you're closer to 10MB/s). (Same with Gigabit, 125MB/s is the goal but normally it's more like 111-114MB/s max).

when the nas crashes to slow how many are active on it. What im thinking is the network controller is crashing and staying in a safety state...

what nas are you using

I am going to go out on a limb and say shitty ones...

You should build one using free nas as the os... you can pull the drives from the current ones though i recommend getting wd reds instead... greens are not meant to be fast or on 24/7 and blacks are fast...

yea, sounds like a crappy nas... buy yourself a synology... also do yourself a favor and get some better drives if you can afford it

in this order of cheapness:

hgst ultrastar
wd red pro
wd red



it's all a business expense

goodcooper said:

yea, sounds like a crappy nas... buy yourself a synology... also do yourself a favor and get some better drives if you can afford it

in this order of cheapness:

hgst ultrastar
wd red pro
wd red



it's all a business expense

Click to expand...

The problem with business expense is the penny pinchers get to authorize the purchase and they will go but I can get a wd green for x dollars cheaper what is the difference hdd is an hdd.

sigh...
First step log into switch and see what everything is connecting at.
Everything should be gb. Last time I ran into something like this one computer was connecting at 10base because of a cabling issue. Any traffic from that computer slowed down the entire switch stack.
Check log on pc and nas after test.
Is it all machines or just a few?
Run temp replacement network cables to nas and pc and retest.

Can you try testing a single large file copy from one computer to another across the network?
Since you are on gigabit, and even lower-end HDDs should copy a single large file at 80MB/s+ these days, you should see decent speeds.

If the slow-down issue occurs here, then it is probably a router/switch issue.
If the slow-down issue does not occur when copying the large file from one computer to another, then it is probably safe to say it is your NAS devices at fault (since this would prove the router/switches are good, as is the connection/cabling between both computers).

I don't believe the cabling would be at fault, since in the OP, it was stated that files start copying very fast, and then drop down to the KB/s.
If this were a cabling issue, the speeds would most likely always be transferring at low speeds, as I have seen this before.

I agree with the others who have stated that it is probably the NAS devices and their crummy NICs (Realtek) failing or getting overloaded and operating in a fail-safe mode, resulting in a very low transfer speed.
Cheap devices can do this, and again, I've seen this many, many times; +1 to the Synology NAS suggestion if possible.

Lunas said:

The problem with business expense is the penny pinchers get to authorize the purchase and they will go but I can get a wd green for x dollars cheaper what is the difference hdd is an hdd.

Click to expand...

and then you as a well informed person can explain that

goodcooper said:

and then you as a well informed person can explain that

Click to expand...

Explain what? How in the past at work I have put in a order request for product x because product a was not working only to have my boss put in the order for more product a when i had a whole crate of useless product a. All because product A was 2 dollars cheaper... I did eventually get my product x but they recently tried to get inferior product z because product x was too expensive...

Btw it is all coffee

My boss did not like the taste of this super cheap coffee he had been getting and the guests were complaining too. So I talked to our distributor and they offered Maxwell House as well i got a box of that and it was like 2 dollars more expensive. The next week I did not do the order myself and ended up with a box of the older cheaper no brand crap. I had my boss taste the old stuff again and then the new and we have been getting Maxwell house ever since... Recently they tried getting folgers but the wrong product showed up.

Lunas said:

Explain what? How in the past at work I have put in a order request for product x because product a was not working only to have my boss put in the order for more product a when i had a whole crate of useless product a. All because product A was 2 dollars cheaper... I did eventually get my product x but they recently tried to get inferior product z because product x was too expensive...

Btw it is all coffee

My boss did not like the taste of this super cheap coffee he had been getting and the guests were complaining too. So I talked to our distributor and they offered Maxwell House as well i got a box of that and it was like 2 dollars more expensive. The next week I did not do the order myself and ended up with a box of the older cheaper no brand crap. I had my boss taste the old stuff again and then the new and we have been getting Maxwell house ever since... Recently they tried getting folgers but the wrong product showed up.

Click to expand...

explain how it's a much better product for your uses with data to back it up...

this isn't the same as choosing coffee, coffee taste is much more subjective...

Lunas said:

The problem with business expense is the penny pinchers get to authorize the purchase and they will go but I can get a wd green for x dollars cheaper what is the difference hdd is an hdd.

Click to expand...

And you can be sure to use that logic on them the next time you give them a crap computer when they need a refresh. I mean a new computer is a new computer right?

goodcooper said:

explain how it's a much better product for your uses with data to back it up...

this isn't the same as choosing coffee, coffee taste is much more subjective...

Click to expand...

I was giving my instance where the penny pinchers screwed up my fix to the issues we were having. But alright if we want to do and apples to apples thing i have forgotten more stories with the same thing happening where a dollar is attempted to be saved only to down the line have to replace the shit we got at first on the cheap with something more expensive...

My stories about the penny pinchers still has advice relevant to this situation. And in simple terms don't cheap out and call a WD my Book a NAS just because it has a rj-45 port on it... Get a proper one that does the proper monitoring and uses the proper NAS or server drives...


Storytime cliffs version

Networking-
Boss was having issues with network
We were using a chicken wire outfit that used residential cable for its backbone to serve a wireless mesh network to the city.
My solution replace household linksys router with a good one pfsense full bore would have been perfect.
Boss a maintenance man low balled it with a higher end linksys router
Boss picked the lower number
Network failed and we switched providers
Pfsense router deal went away needed something quick
Ended up setting up a ubiquiti Edgerouter for double the cost of the pfsense router...