I am evaluating unraid before completing a new NAS build next month. I am happy with my experience so far, however, am having an issue when trying to view videos from a share on windows 7.

 

If I copy from windows I can get about 80mbps transfers to my unraid array (with no cache). Copying files back from unraid to windows 7, I see about 50mbps.

 

However, when I try to view videos in either windows media player or VLC, they stutter and distort constantly. I do not see this behaviour on my Macbook Pro, only on Windows 7. I can also stream the video fine if I run it through unraid's plex media server. My windows machine also does not have problems playing the videos if they are copied from the share to local. I notice there is very little network traffic whilst I am attempting to view these videos.

 

I guess this suggests an issue with samba, however, am not sure where to start in troubleshooting this?

 

Unraid: v6.3.5

Make sure that your Windows computer NIC drivers are up-to-date.    I had this same problem a year or two ago, I fixed by updating the drivers for my RealTek NIC drivers.   (I would recommend that you go to the MB manufacturer's (or computer maker's) website and get the drivers from there.  I, personally, never let MS's upgrade my drivers via Windows update after I had a modem device driver from MS render it inoperable! ) 

2 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

Make sure that your Windows computer NIC drivers are up-to-date.    I had this same problem a year or two ago, I fixed by updating the drivers for my RealTek NIC drivers.   (I would recommend that you go to the MB manufacturer's (or computer maker's) website and get the drivers from there.  I, personally, never let MS's upgrade my drivers via Windows update after I had a modem device driver from MS render it inoperable! ) 

 

That has improved the initial load speed of the videos, however, they continue to stutter. Appears to have bumped my copy speed from unraid to windows 7 by 10mbps as well (to 60). So definitely progress.

I have now also tested the same video file from my old Qnap TS-210 and the video streams as expected.

Million possible reasons.

 

- Bad cabling on drives causing drive resets.  Diagnostics would show this

-  Other applications running on unRaid causing high IO issues.  (Plex scanning / updating, Dynamix FIP calculating checksums, nzbGet unpacking, etc)

- Other applications causing drives to spin up.  Most controllers wind up pausing streams from other drives if they have to spin up another attached drive.

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