lately i have noticed that when i watch dvd movies and downloaded tv shows stored on my unraid server, the video will stop for a few seconds at random.  after the video (and audio) freezes for a few seconds the audio restarts at normal speed...then after a few more seconds the video playback resumes but looks like it is in fast forward for a few seconds until the video catches up with the audio.

 

this doesnt always happen when i watch videos from unraid - it happens completely at random.  but it doesnt happen if i watch videos from the local hard drive.  the system i am watching them on is as follows:

windows vista ultimate

AMD athlon x2 4600+

2 GB RAM

Radeon HD 2600XT

 

note that i have a high end gigabit gaming router from d-link and all systems on the network are connected via gigabit ethernet - not using wireless.

 

can anyone help me with a suggestion about how to troubleshoot this?

There are known performance issues with Vista where it tries to read from non-local drives.  I have heard that the most recent service pack resolves (or will resolve?) them.

 

Are the videos SD or HD?

 

 

Bill

the videos are SD.

 

Have you teleneted into the Unraid box and looked at the syslog?  I was having the same problem, only with HD material.  I too could play off the local drive without lags but not the unraid box.  Everything was working fine until one day I started having random freezes like you mentioned.  Once the freeze occurred, I could back up to the spot that froze and it would play fine.  Once I learned how to telenet to the unraid box, troubleshooting became easier.  I watched a movie, and wrote down the times when the video froze.  It froze 4 or 5 times during the movie.  I then went and looked at the live syslog and sure enough, every time I had a freeze there was an error message in the syslog. 

 

I don't remember the exact message but it was something about a SATA port not responding and it would reset itself.  What I found was that Unraid defaulted to SATA speeds of 3.0gbps which is what it should do since both my motherboard and my (5) Seagate 250GB drives are 3.0gbps (SATA II).  But after a few freezes and resets at 3.0gbps, Unraid dropped the speed down to 1.5gbps and I got no more errors!  So, I removed my drives, which was easy to do since they are in hot swap trays, and I jumpered them to default to 1.5gbps and I haven't had a video freeze again.  I did leave my parity drive at 3.0gbps but still, no problems.

 

I didn't have problems with 3.0gbps until I started using disk4 and disk5 of my setup.  The drives are all Seagate but the model numbers are mix and match...I got them used off eBay.  I'm not sure if it's the drives or the motherboard but with 1.5gbps speed, everything is fine.  There are no performance penalties either because it's not like I could write or read from a drive at 3.0gbps anyway with a 1gbps network.

 

This may not be your problem, but looking at the syslog as it is generated may help. 

 

To look at the syslog, telenet into the unraid box...I used Windows Hyperterminal...and issue the following command:

 

tail -f /var/log/syslog

 

This will let you view the syslog and capture error messages as they are reported.

 

Here's another command you can issue to make sure you are connecting to your unraid box at 1.0gbps:

 

ethtool eth0

 

Good luck!

 

-Tom A.