Hello, I am a newbie who has just started using NAS with Unraid.

Unraid 7.0.0
2 x Mellanox Connectx-4 MCX4121a 10Gbe NIC (Also added 40mm Fan for Active cooling)
Samsung 990Pro 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (The Pool device where the game is stored)

The game folder is shared via SMB

I am currently using Unraid 7.0.0 and accessing game folders via SMB to run old games.
However, when the storage device is installed on the PC, the game launches immediately,

But when running from a folder on Unraid, it takes a very long time for the game window to appear.

I have connected my NAS and PC using a 10Gbe NIC, and the games are stored on a 990Pro PCIe 4.0 SSD.
Since both the network and storage devices seem fine, I asked ChatGPT about the issue, and it suggested that the SMB protocol might be the cause.

As alternatives, it recommended using an iSCSI plugin or switching to NFS.

Which of these options would be the best? Or is there another, better solution I should consider?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Edited March 3, 20251 yr by wuwa

I encountered similar slowness when launching games on Unraid via SMB. In my case, the most effective solution was to move the game library to the cache pool (SSD/NVMe) and disable direct disk access for the layer. I also recommend testing NFS or iSCSI, as they often provide lower latency than SMB for games. After switching to cache, my load times improved a lot. I also checked network settings and enabled multichannel SMB support. Small tweaks in MTU and avoiding spin-down for game drives helped too. Sometimes background parity checks can slow everything down. For testing storage performance, I usually compare load times with lightweight games or even small apps like the demos you can find here because they are quick to launch and show delays clearly. That makes it easier to see if changes really help. In my opinion, Unraid works fine for games, but it needs proper tuning.

Edited February 24Feb 24 by Fisittests

Is the SSD in the array or a pool?

What format have you set it to use?

Do you have Exclusive access enabled for that share?

You are likely to get better informed feedback if you attach your system’s diagnostics (with everything in the one zip file) to your next post in this thread. It is always a good idea when asking questions to supply your diagnostics so we can see details of your system, how you have things configured, and the current syslog. I could probably have answered the questions I have just asked myself if the diagnostics were available.