I just setup my first unRaid server today--5.0 rc3.  Anyways, when I copy a file from Windows 7, via SMB, to the Tower it's very fast; reads are fast as well.  An 800MB file copied over to Tower in less than 10 seconds.

 

However when I boot up Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on the same computer and transfer a file via SMB from it to Tower, I get VERY slow writes (about 4MB/s on average).  The reads are fast at like 70MB/s.

 

Any ideas?  I have AFP turned off on the server.  I had it turned on and used it but was getting the same slow writes with it.

I have three computers here.. one is the Tower and the other two both run Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 --which I'll call SL1 & SL2-- and one of these has a multiboot to Windows 7.

 

Did some more tests:

Windows 7 to Tower via SMB: fast reads and writes

SL1 to SL2 via AFP : fast writes, fast reads

SL1 (or SL2) to Tower via SMB: slow writes, fast reads

SL2 to Windows 7 via SMB: slow writes (as well), fast reads.

 

So it looks like something is wrong with SMB on Mac OS X with respect to writing.  I get like 3MB per second writes.  Doesn't matter if it is connecting to Windows 7 via SMB or Tower via SMB--same behavior.

 

I have no clue what it is, sigh.

Okay I figured out something.

 

I disabled SMB on Tower and Enabled AFP.  Then I exported disk1 to AFP.  Then I was able to do an exremely fast write with Mac OS X to Tower.  So it looks like for writes, Snow Leopard (at least) wants AFP and not SMB.

There are loads of hits via google around Snow Leopard and slow writes to SMB, so yes it looks like an Apple issue. 

You can have a look at www.macwindows.com

Has some great info on Mac, windows, AFP, SMB, etc etc

I have noticed this issue for a while too.  It is dog slow now, mine even seems slow now when pulling up the listings in the directories.  Darn it Apple!  If I recall there was a directory caching plugin someone made, would that help any?

 

Edit:  sorry I actually have this issue with 4.7, but yeah I think its an Apple issue.

Is it the consensus that this is not an unRaid 5.0-rc3 issue, and I can mark the original thread as "not a bug"?

Apple replaced Samba (used in Snow Leopard) with SMB2 in Lion, which appears to work fine with unRAID SMB (which is SMB2 now yes?) based on a quick bit of testing I just did.  So yes I'd say it's definitely not an unRaid issue, but an Apple (Snow Leopard and possibly earlier) one.

I use Snow Leopard at work and copy to UnRAID 4.x over SMB with no speed issues - well, let me clarify: It seems that smaller files (perhaps under 1GB) take a while longer, but after a period of time, the transfers speed up to the same as I would get from a Windows box.

 

So for all files of any decent size, I think 10.6.8 transfers over SMB to UnRAID 4.x work fine, and even for smaller files, it does not fail, but does not necessarily impress with blazing speed.

 

I'll try rebooting into SL here at home and SMB transfer to my 5rc-2 system and report back.

 

edit: Tried some things, and here are my results using Snow Leopard 10.6.2 (it's a hackintosh installation and I can't be bothered redoing it for 10.6.

 

Two files comprising 28.72GB, both QuickTime movie files:

 

5.0rc3 to SL 10.6.2 - 37.7 MB/s via SMB

4.7 to SL 10.6.2 - 32.6 MB/s via SMB (result may be skewed slightly as the disk is also shared with torrent activity, but that's limited to a few kB/s)

SL 10.6.2 to 5.0rc2 - 28.9 MB/s via SMB

SL 10.6.2 to 5.0rc3 - 27.8 MB/s via SMB

4.7 to SL 10.6.2 - 32 MB/s via SMB, no torrent activity

 

In short - I see no difference, at least with 10.6.2 - maybe 10.6.8 has more SMB troubles?

im using 10.5.8 on a ppc g5 and getting the same speeds as bman.