TS412 & OSX Lion not a Roaring Success!

[arglebarg_fooferar]

Hi. First time posting and somewhat of a noob, so could really use some help. My problem is that transfer speeds across to my nice shiny TS-412 are pretty dire - at best i get spikes of 14.5 mbps but average at about 3.5 - 5 mbps. Since I bought the Qnap to hold a huge music library (around 1TB and counting) plus a photo library that is similarly oversized, I am currently looking at weeks to transfer all the data.

So I have looked over everything I can make sense of and at many postings, but nothing seems to fix the problem, and I am also struggling to understand some of the more technical fixes suggested,

As to hardware:

TS-412 with version 3.6.1
4x2TB Seagate Barracuda (ST2000DM001-9YN1CC4C) in RAID5 Array.
Single Ethernet connection from LAN1 to Virgin Super Hub (experiments with multiple connections and port trunking only made things worse)
AFP is enabled (NB: When I check Resource Monitor/Processes afpd usually tops the list at somewhere between 45% and 79%)
OS is Lion 10.7.3 on a 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7, also connected via ethernet to the Virgin Super Hub

Otherwise everything is pretty much default settings, though I am willing to be corrected if someone would just tell me what to look for.

Anyway, any help gratefully received as I am currently losing the will to Qnap!

Thanks

AF

[P3R]

• Make sure network cables are specified as Cat 5e or higher and make sure you use only known good cables.
• Look at the Qnap System Administration, Network page to verify you have a gigabit connection (1000Mbps in the Speed column).
• Use the jumbo frame setting 1500 (at the bottom of the same page as above).
• Look at the System Status, System Information page to make sure you don't have any errors (last column, Error Packets)
• Do the corresponding checks of the network status and settings on the Mac side.
• Connect the NAS and the Mac bac-to-back with only a network cable between them to rule out problems in the Virgin equipment (or use a gigabit switch known to work).
• Look at the System Status, Resource Information page for CPU Usage and Processes when doing a copy, how high does it go and what processes consume the CPU?
• Check the Disk Management, Volume Management page and the Disk Management, Hard Disk S.M.A.R.T. page for any disk related problems.
• Check the System Administration, System Logs page for any error messages.

[arglebarg_fooferar]

Thanks for getting back to me.
• Currently using out of the box cables that came with the QNAP. Cable between Mac and Hub is also a new one.
• Checked all the settings you suggested both sides, all as you specify.
• No error packets.
• Back to back connection seems to produce no discernible difference.
• When copying the CPU is maxed out pretty much throughout copy. Top processes are 'afpd' which is averaging between 30% and 75%, currently idling around 35% but with spikes; 'md0_raid5' which seems to take about 10% with spikes of 20%.
• Checking all the various management pages and logs doesn't seem to highlight any problems.

A couple of points of interest, maybe.

Overnight it hung trying to copy a load of folders from the old music directory to the new one (just to be clear old one is on a STORA, but I have tested file transfer both from an external HD connected by Firewire 800 and from internal Mac HD with same speed results). To be precise, I had been copying one folder and going fine so decided to see what happened if added a whole other stack. At that point it appears to have hung at the 'preparing to copy point', creating all the folders but transferring nothing, while the transfer that had been motoring along then hung also. So I was left with a music folder full of empty folders. When I tried to delete these from Finder going was exceptionally slow. However, when I deleted them using the Web File Manager had a totally different experience and they couldn't have gone any faster.

It appears to be slower the more folders I attempt to move at once (in a single copy, rather than starting a second one before first is complete, which is what caused everything to hang overnight). Currently moving a stack of about 60 folders (all of which will have at least one sub-directory as you will no doubt have guessed given iTunes file structure). Average bandwidth use is around 6 mbps according to the Resource Monitor. It seemed marginally faster, averaging perhaps 9 mbps for a single folder with just one sub-folder.

I plan to try uploading an album of songs via the web file manager when it has finished current transfer (claiming it will take 35mins for about 17gbs of data) and see whether i get different results in resource monitor. Not sure what that will tell me, or you, but there does seem to be a significant difference between this and finder when I delete files, so I wonder whether the same is true of writing. Will update when I have a result.

Anyway, hopefully this helps you to understand whats going on here. Thanks for the help thus far.

AF

*UPDATE*

My experiment with the Web File Manager produces same results and speed for upload. In processes 'utilRequest.cgi' is the biggie with usage spiking to 70%. CPU graph a bit more spiky as opposed to almost permanently maxed out, but still maxing out regularly.

In other news, when I transfer a small amount of files without sub-directories things seem to a lot faster, i.e. peaks of 12 mbps instead of 9mbps.

[P3R]

New cables aren't necessarily always perfect. Only cables that have been tested as working are. But if both units connect at gigabit speed and no network errors are reported the network is less likely to be a problem in your case.

Unfortunately I neither have experience with Mac nor with AFP so I guess you will have to wait for someone else to say what performance should be possible. Many small folders and files will be much slower than copying a single large file but if you never get above 12 MByte/sec even with a large file, it sounds pretty slow.

[arglebarg_fooferar]

Thanks for advice anyway. The only thing that seems to have made a marginal improvement thus far is shifting ethernet settings on the Mac from automatic to manual settings with speed set at "1000baseT" (only gigabit setting available), "Full-Duplex, flow control" (alternative is Full Duplex) and MTU as "Standard (1500)". The only thing this changes from the standard setting, so far as I can see, is the Duplex settings. The result seism to have pushed the peaks to about 14.5 mb/s on the Resource Monitor Bandwith Usage, although by my calculations I am still averaging no more than about 8 or 9 mb/s overall.

So, buggered if I know, but this is infuriating. Anyone with some Mac insights I would be grateful for advice.

Thanks

AF

[brooko]

Have you tried a different protocol other than AFP or copying a large file 1Gb+?

I've found FTP to give faster transfers over SMB, NFS, (no apple so not tried AFP).
Also as mentioned before if there are lots small files transfers are a lot slower. Have a looks at some of the NAS reviews on smallnetbuilder.com for some real life transfer rates. Directory copies seem to be 10-20MByte/sec.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas- ... s-reviewed

Your 412 only has a 800Mhz (ARM) cpu which isn't going to yield much more than your seeing especially on smaller files. ARM's tend to give a lower performance compared to an x86 CPU anyway. My TS-210 doesn't seem to go above 8 MByte/sec generally on a 100Mbit (~12 Mbyte/sec max capability) network using NFS.

Try moving some larger files over FTP and see what speed they give.

[arglebarg_fooferar]

Hey Brooko,

Thanks for the advice. I did wonder whether the CPU was the bottleneck rather than anything else given the stats I was seeing in the Resource Monitor. If this is as good as it gets at this price (and since mine came at a 25% discount because Amazon scratched it, I really shouldn't complain) then its just the initial copying thats a pain; once its all done and theres no more massive transfers I doubt I will notice.

Thanks for taking the time...

AF

[arglebarg_fooferar]

A quick update. Now using Cyberduck for transfers via FTP instead of relying on AFP. Much more consistent speeds around the 10 mb/s average even when writing complex file structures. The real problem with the AFP system wasn't the speeds it could manage - the peaks are the same - but the troughs which were not only deeper but often seemed to involve doing nothing for significant chunks. I think this is because FTP is less CPU intensive that AFP (total CPU usage is peaking around 75% instead of maxxed out). So this is probably as good as it gets, and frankly its fine.

Ty for help guys and my advice to anyone on a MAC out there with a QNAP is use FTP for big data transfers.

AF

PS: With some dumb luck I just discovered that you can push the speed a bit more by using Cyberduck and running a number of simultaneous transfers. I thinks its because of the spare CPU power (however paltry it may be) you get with FTP over AFP. With multiple transfers, the speed goes up to an average of around 15 Mb/s with peaks of 18.5 Mb/s or even a bit higher, while CPU use is back to 100%.

[Raptor25]

I also have a TS-412, tho havent used it yet due to still selecting the hard drives to purchase for it. Just an idea, if you can copy files to a usb stick or external hard drive then use the USB port labeled COPY on fron of TS-412 or eSata port on back, will speed up transfer, if network bottleneck is a problem.

Defeats the purpose of a NAS i know, but just a thought. let me know if you fine a better solution to this problem than FTP. im using a mac mini.

[umpa]

Hi I have Lion and Mountain Lion and I get 14MB/s constant on a gigabit switch. I find like other low powered NAS that smaller files take much longer than large ones. When transferring large files I see 30MB/s. I'm happy at that. My WDSharespace is much worse than this Q-nap.

[Raptor25]

But mountain lion hasnt been release yet? unless you mean the developer preview of mountain lion.

[umpa]

Developer previews are all that's available.

[Raptor25]

Confirmed that info after searching Apple site, cheers for your reply umpa

[sandor]

grab Black Magic's speed test app:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/38019/ ... speed-test

it is free, and far and away the best disk benchmark tool available. it is set up to help verify a disk's (direct attached, network attached) ability to handle production scale video files - ie it creates huge files (1 GB+) and tests the read/write capabilities. for example, 100 MB/s is only enough bandwidth for less than 20 fps of 10 bit 1080p video!


I can sustain about 48 MB/s r/w on my QNAP.

[sandor]

oh, i wanted to also say - check the throughput to other devices as well, perhaps the bottleneck is not the QNAP, but your network.