[SOLVED] NAS Setup LAN speeds woeful

[SonicMan]

Hi all,

I spectate on these forums regularly but I have never created an account so this is my first post.
I'm super new to NAS and I recently purchased a new Synology DS418 and 3x2TB Seagate Firecuda hybrid drives and set them up in a RAID 5 array. Everything was going swell until I started to put files into my new shared network folders. Transferring a 27gb folder onto the NAS setup sees me getting on average less than 100KB/s!? It is taking 2 days to transfer this 27gb folder. Surely this is not standard behaviour and if so I'm going to burn it and throw it in a river.

On DSM under "Control Panel>Network>Network Interface" I see the network status as 1000 Mbps, Full Duplex, MTU 1500 and my DS418 is connected to the router via cat 5 ethernet.
I am running a 21.5 2017 iMac with Mojave 10.14.6 and I have what the majority of Australian's would consider 'good speeds' on my internet (Woeful in comparison to the rest of the world probably) 111Mbps up and 5 Mbps down.
Looking at the Resource Manager in DSM under "Performance>Network" I see long periods of minimal received figures with intermittent spikes up to 25/50Mbps... it seems completely unstable. Nothing else is consuming any bandwidth on the Network.

If anyone has any ideas on how I could trouble shoot this it would be amazing. I don't think it's a problem with my internet as I always have a very solid connection and haven't had any issues with erratic speeds in the three years I have had it.
Again, I am a newb so any information on troubleshooting will be welcomed with hugs.

Thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

First off, Welcome!

I have a QNAP, but it is reasonably close to your Synology.
And that performance is NOT normal.

Your iMac and NAS are both hardwired to the router? What router is it?
Or, it may be as simple as a poor CAt5e cable.

 

[Alabalcho]

Transferring a 27gb folder onto the NAS setup sees me getting on average less than 100KB/s!?

If that folder consists of thousands of small files, that's kind of expected. You should measure file transfer speed using gigabyte-sized files (movies, ISO images, etc).

 

[Ketchup79]

Sounds like a router that doesn't have gigabit connectivity (or Cat5 cables).

 

[kanewolf]

Is the source of your data on a wired device or wireless ?

I don't know if the hybrid drives contribute to your slowdown. And some reviews of that drive say that the hybrid aspect can hurt performance. The SSD cache definitely doesn't do anything when attempting to write multiple GB of data. Seagate doesn't recommend those drives for NAS use.

 

[SonicMan]

If that folder consists of thousands of small files, that's kind of expected. You should measure file transfer speed using gigabyte-sized files (movies, ISO images, etc).

I'm thinking you might be right.. It was a folder containing heaps of small files. I have since tried different sized folders and files and have found astoundingly varied results in speeds. Some files I was getting an average 60Mbps!!! and some an average 150KB/s I was not expecting such varied speeds. I just expected one relatively quick speed all around. How bizarre.

I do get steady speeds though as I can visually see it in blocks on the Performance tab.

Is the source of your data on a wired device or wireless ?

I don't know if the hybrid drives contribute to your slowdown. And some reviews of that drive say that the hybrid aspect can hurt performance. The SSD cache definitely doesn't do anything when attempting to write multiple GB of data. Seagate doesn't recommend those drives for NAS use.

Oh no I didn't realise these were bad for NAS setups 'facepalm'. They will mainly just be storing my sound library for work so once it is all on there I will only ever be just taking small samples out one at a time for use in projects. So hopefully they do their job good enough for that and when I can I will replace them with more appropriate drives I guess. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, the composition of the files can have a huge impact. With thousands of tiny files, it has to initiate a new copy process for each one. Again and again and again. That takes time.


Those drives won't break anything. They're just not optimal or designed for this use case.