Slow NAS speeds from attached Drive on an Asus router to/from my computer

[michael-95037]

I have an ASUS RT-ACRH13 AC1300 Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Router with a 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7200 RPM SATA-2 drive (NTFS format) in an Aukey aluminum SATA-3 to USB 3.0 hard drive enclosure (I know, it's not a real NAS). The drive is connected to the USB 3.0 port of the router. My upload/download speeds through the router (either wired or wireless @ 5 Ghz) are both right around 5-6 MB/second. When I test the drive by directly connecting it to one of my computer's USB 3.0 ports (on a Windows 7 Pro 64-bit system), I get 111 MB/second up and down. The speed of the computer to the router, through a Cat-5e cable, is 106MB/second. What can I do to increase the throughput speed of the hard drive in my configuration? I use this drive to hold all my media files (Movies, pictures, music), so files range in size from 3MB - 5GB.

Thanks In Advance.

 

[RealBeast]

Most likely the issue is that your router CPU is limiting your speeds as most routers do not do very well in transfer speeds over USB3 compared to using a computer USB3 port.

You might want to check for a firmware update, which could improve the speed -- although the top end speeds on my ASUS AC68 that I usually see are around 30MB/s unless the router CPU is overclocked, which I don't recommend.

Does your situation allow you to attach it full time to one computer and share it as a network drive instead of attaching to the router?

 

[michael-95037]

I need the HD connected to the router since I'm using the HD to hold media files I stream to computers, TVs and tablets/smartphones in my house. Also, I don't want to leave a computer on all the time -- too much power wasted. However, I never stream to more than one device at a time. At this point, I would be happy getting 30MB/s. I'm only seeing 5-6MB/s right now.

 

[kanewolf]

It is possible you would get much better performance if you allow the router to format the drive so that it is in a Linux file system rather than a Windows (NTFS) file system.

 

[michael-95037]

Kanewolf,

I haven't found any way for the router to format the attached hard drive, but I can always reformat it with my computer. The router is capable of using a HD formatted with EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, or NTFS. What format would you suggest for better speeds?

I also checked the firmware version, and I'm running the latest firmware version.

 

[kanewolf]

EXT3 or EXT4. Either one will be more "native" to the linux OS that is on a router. EXT4 has more security features, but might have slightly more overhead.

 

[michael-95037]

Thanks. I just found out that my Windows system can't read/write to those formats (EXT3 & EXT4). That would make the data reload (1.6 TB) a nightmare. Would using exFat provide any kind of speed improvements? I thought about FAT32, but with a 2 TB drive and several files over 4 GB in size, it's not a viable solution.

On a side note, I was just reading reviews of the Asus RT-ACRH13 router, and everyone is complaining about the speed of disk access from the router to the USB 3.0 port. May-be it's time to move on. Could you recommend other routers that would provide better speeds from the router through the USB 3.0 port? I'm trying to limit my costs and my 2 TB drive fits my requirements now.

Thanks for the help.

 

[kanewolf]

Your windows system doesn't have to write to those file systems. Your router does. Your windows system just uses the SMB protocol. The filesystem is only important to the host that is directly accessing the volume.

I would not recommend changing your router. I would recommend purchasing a purpose built NAS. A 1 or 2 disk Synology, QNAP, Thecus or Asusstor.

 

[USAFRet]

On a side note, I was just reading reviews of the Asus RT-ACRH13 router, and everyone is complaining about the speed of disk access from the router to the USB 3.0 port. May-be it's time to move on. Could you recommend other routers that would provide better speeds from the router through the USB 3.0 port?

Thanks for the help.

If you're going to buy new hardware for this function, buy an actual NAS box, instead of a new router pretending to do that functionality.
Much more flexible.

 

[michael-95037]

I had a Synology (I think it was a DS-216) NAS with 2x2 TB drives in RAID-1 for a while, but the performance was so bad (I was using the Asus router) that I sold the NAS and decided to try a spare 2 TB drive I had available. I really didn't need the extra functionality that the NAS gave me. I just need something to hold back-ups and stream media. Even with the Synology NAS, I was only getting 8-9 MB/second speeds. I'm hoping I can get something closer to 30-40 MB/second.

What's the best way to find the bottleneck in my environment?

 

[USAFRet]

This is writing (2 ISO files, ~7GB total) across the LAN to my Qnap NAS.

PC->switch->switch->router->NAS, all wired.

 

[kanewolf]

A DS218j -- https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS218j can do 100+ MB/s. (click on the performance bubble for details) ..

 

[michael-95037]

Thanks for the info. I wish I was getting those speeds, or even something close to that. I contacted Asus for some support. They had me test my system again last night. I used a single mp4 file of 1,070,186 KB (1.02 GB). I tested it 3 times in each direction and took the average. I'm getting 6.43 MB/second going from the drive, through the router, to my computer and 11.3 MB/second from the computer, through the router, to the drive. That same drive, connected directly to my computer with a USB 3.0 cable, gets 104 MB/second from the computer to the hard drive and 92.8 MB/second from the hard drive to the computer.

It turns out the Synology NAS I had was a DS213j with 2x3TB WD Red drives. The performance was terrible, not even close to the 100+ MB/second it should have gotten. Looking back, maybe the router was/is the bottleneck. I'm hoping Asus tech support can shed some light on this. They should get back to me in 48 hours.

 

[michael-95037]

Well, after a few weeks of back and forth with Asus, they agreed there is a problem with the router. I'm sending it back to them for further diagnosis. During the sessions with Asus, I did find out that the 50' CAT-5e cable I have going from my computer to the router may be damaged. I'm getting 2-3 times better read speeds using a different CAT 5-e cable (up to 21 MB/second), but the read speeds are still below what I expect. Write speeds are still abysmal at 6 MB/second.

I'm going to be using my back-up router (TP-LINK Archer C5 AC1200) with my new Synology DS118 (I know it doesn't support RAID, but I don't need it) in the meantime. The new NAS, and gigabit switch, should arrive tomorrow. My plan is to put the NAS & switch near the computer in my home office, cable the computer and NAS to the new switch and then to connect the switch to the gigabit router. I'll be using 12" CAT-6 cables to connect both the NAS and computer to the switch. I'll also be going under the house to replace the old CAT-5e cable with a new CAT-6 cable from the switch to the router. When I'm done, I'm hoping to see speeds approaching 100 MB/sec. Since the slow throughput is only really a problem when I access the router's HD from the computer, I think my planned set-up will minimize the speed problems I'm seeing, even if Asus can't get the router working correctly. The other devices I have connected to my home network are mostly streaming, and should function correctly even at the slower (21 MB/second) read speeds.

UPDATE:
I'm still loading data, but my write speeds to the Synology DS118 have reached 87 MB/second (14.5x what I was seeing with the hard drive attached to the router via USB 3.0) while transferring 1.5 TB of files of various sizes. I'll test the read speeds this weekend, but so far I'm a happy camper. UPDATE - Read speeds are 97+ MB/second.

Moral of the story -- Don't expect an Asus router to perform anywhere near as well as a real NAS device. It was definitely worth the money.

Thank you USAFRet and Kanewolf -- Getting a real NAS was great advice!