DS213J is set up..file transfer over ethernet

[SiUK]

My new DS213J was set up in minutes (excellent installation process) this morning, but there does seem to be an issue with transfer speed over ethernet. I'm temporarily getting around it by plugging a USB 2.0 portable drive into the NAS USB port and copying the files over to the NAS that way.

My PC was wired to my router directly using a 10m run of cat6 cable ...up until today. The cable passes through adjacent rooms to reach the router at the front of the house (from back room to front room along the skirtings). Been like that for a long time, and no issues. However, went to plug the new DS213J into the router which is on a table under the window in the living room and blow me, no spare LAN port. Don't know how I missed that! All four lan ports taken up by a Home plug, VoIP line, the PC, and a cat6 cable to a gigabit switch which all my AV and Hi-Fi stuff is plugged into. Anyhow, I unplugged the PC cable from the router and plugged it into the the Hi-Fi/AV switch to free up a port. The switch is a gigabit 8 port TPLINK jobby, so is good enough and haven't had any issues with it. But when I initiated transfer of my music library using DSM file station the transfer speed was showing up as 24 days...and an absolutely absymal transfer rate (< 0.5KB/s).

My PC's ethernet adaptor is also gigabit, so the transfer should be blistering. Nope. After a long wait it was only showing as 0.24% completed. I've got 345GB of flacs to copy over to the new NAS, so that aint gonna happen. Needless to say I stopped it, deleted the files it had managed to copy over, and plugged a USB drive in one of the USB ports on the NAS. Using File Station I then dragged and dropped the folders from the attached USB drive to the NAS. It's not going to be as fast as gigabit, I know, but not much choice until I find out what the problem is from my PC to the NAS.

I noticed that 'Parity system check' is running, and 'data scrubbing' is at 20.78%. Would that affect the transfer via ethernet that much? 115Gb of flacs have already been transferred to the NAS via USB so I'll let it run now as it looks like it will have completed copying over the rest in a couple more hours.

Has anyone had any experiences like this with a new Synology NAS? How long did it take you to do the initial transfer to the NAS?

 

[AnotherJoe]

I'd suggest you need the parity check to finish before you do any network diagnosis. If the parity check is going really slow you could.....

Check the process list by opening Resource Monitor in DSM and clicking on the CPU Usage chart.

See what is taking up the processing time. If it is fileindexd - try disabling it and see if that helps speed up the parity check. You can turn it back on once its finished.

 

[SiUK]

Thanks a lot, that's very helfpful. I'll wait it out then, until parity checking is complete, and then check it out.

Just checked the progress of the USB transfer and it seems to have stopped at 82% for no reason. Looked like it had completed but noticed all the folders hadn't copied over. Just this second dragged the remaining missing folders over to the NAS again to finish copying them over. Odd. Oh well, only 46Gb of files left, and it's 49% copied over already so very quick.

 

[npoguy]

I think mine took about 7 hours or so to transfer 300 gb of files. It will keep indexing them for quite a while after that (I think it was about 2 days), but you'll have full use of the NAS while it does that.

What about fan noise??? Did we steer you the right way?

 

[SiUK]

Okely, thanks, npoguy. Oh, and re the fan noise. Yes!

When I first sat the NAS unit on the table it was surprisingly noisy, but then I realised the problem was actually the 10mm glass shelf it was sat on, not the NAS.

The table the NAS and router and other neworking stuff sit on is an old metal framed target hi-fi table (two shelves) that I revamped years ago: replaced the MDF top and bottom shelves with composite marble and then a 10mm glass shelf on rubber feet sits on top of the marble shelves. It was used for hi-fi up until recently but is now put to use in the corner of the room. The glass bottom shelf made the NAS sound like an outboard motor ...well made it very noisy. As soom as I whipped the glass shelf out from under it and sat it back down directly on the marble shelf the noise almsot completely went away. In truth I can still hear it but it's very quiet, and from where I usually sit I can't hear it at all. So yes, excellent. Oh, and I have also changed NAS settings to 'low power mode', so I imagine once the initial indexing etc is over it will be pretty much inaudible most of the time. Put it this way, the only thing really distracting about it is that it is white

 

[npoguy]

Yes, definitely wish mine was black. I also hate that you can't turn it to face you because the lights blink all the time, even after the indexing is complete. Btw, if you're thinking about moving a large photo library to it, wait until you see the thumbnail time for that...it took weeks!

 

[SiUK]

Yeah, the lights are a PITA. If every piece of consumer orientated equipment had an on/off for the leds, or a dimmer, it would be great, but not a chance of that happening. My router is adorned with the wrteched things as well, and it's on the shelf above the NAS..next to my VoIP box whihc also has a big blue glowing button, and then the home hub (in modem mode) which glows blue as well. I've covered the front panel of the router with a dark cloth to hide the constantly flashing blue leds because they are very annoying but you can still see them flickering from the edges. Best bet is a cupboard I suppose, but then there's ventilation, and soundproofing etc. to consider. Undefeatable front panel LEDS are a pet hate of mine. Wretched things.

And I made the mistake of copying my photo library over to the NAS as well...so yeah, it's creating thumbnails and taking an age. Doh! Good thing is I've been playing music around the house and it's fast and no delays. Terrific. Haven't fully explored it yet but going to do that later.

I did move my mpegs over during the night, but haven't tried streaming them yet, and I also moved the TrueCrypt container I use for all my data over to the NAS as well, and so now I mount it over the network. Means I can access it from laptop and PC without having to faff about, and I won't have to manually back it up (I'm thinking I can schedule that from with DSM?)

This morning the fan was audible, but considering it's been working away all night I'm not at all surprised. A lead lined light proof corner cupboard is next on the furniture list I think

 

[SiUK]

Darna dn double darn! DS Audio is no good whatsover for using with my Marantz! Absolutely terrible in fact. Choose an album and tap play and it takes ages before it begins playing on the Marantz 610, if it does at all. Change volume and 2 minutes later the volume changes. Doesn't seem to want to know. I've reluctantly had to go back to using the horrible Marantz remote app. Design wise, the DS Audio app looks nice enough but it is just not usable. Very disappointing. Now I need to find an app that I can use instead of the Marantz remote app and one that displays folder art properly.There must be something available, surely?

Sheduled startup and shutdown is working just fine, and the NAS goes into hibernation mode after 20 minutes of inactivity as well. Takes a moment or two to wake up and is a bit sluggish for a minute or two afterwards I've found. I had all three Marantzs streaming from the NAS today without a problem and I streamed a film (DVD rip) to the TV as well. No issues. It's almost doing everything I need it to then.

Just my luck that my router isn't compatible with the router set up. My router is a TP Link jobby, quite new, and upnp but not on the router list; set up fails on the last item..removing ports has a red X.. That obviously means I'll have to manually forward all the neccessary ports and work out which ones i need to open. PITA.

I used to run Xitami web server and Mercury mail servers on a dedicated server for many years. Nowadays I don't use Mercury but I load up Xitami often as and when I need to. Noticed the Synology NAS has a web server, so may set that up. Obviously need to get the router ports sorted first. Already have a domain resolving to my IP so don't need DDNS. My IP very rarely changes and if it does it takes seconds to login and update the DNS under cpanel.

The DS213j is a neat little box. The apps for android are the biggest let down though. Not brilliant.

 

[SiUK]

This evening I streamed a film from the NAS to the new teles in the bedrooms (Samsung UE32F5500s) I put up today. Each bedroom has a homeplug, to which a gigabit switch is connected, and then the TV, dinky bluray player, and Marantz 610 are plugged into that. I browsed the Diskstation using the Samsung TVs and streamed the Green Lantern DVD to each TV so they were playing simultaneously, and whilst playing music on both upstairs Marantz 610s. Not a single hiccup. Very impressive indeed. I have been trying to make it fall over but haven't been able to. Once I find a decent app for a tablet then I'll be very happy with the Synology NAS....even if it is white.

 

[AnotherJoe]

Darna dn double darn! DS Audio is no good whatsover for using with my Marantz! Absolutely terrible in fact. Choose an album and tap play and it takes ages before it begins playing on the Marantz 610, if it does at all. Change volume and 2 minutes later the volume changes. Doesn't seem to want to know. I've reluctantly had to go back to using the horrible Marantz remote app. Design wise, the DS Audio app looks nice enough but it is just not usable. Very disappointing. Now I need to find an app that I can use instead of the Marantz remote app and one that displays folder art properly.There must be something available, surely?

https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/tutorials/452

For android clients try BubbleUpNP, 2player, or Playto(universal)

 

[npoguy]

SiUK

Don't give up on the app just yet. I cannot explain it, but I had a similar issue early on and then one morning it worked perfectly. No idea why, but I chalked it up to completing a process behind the scenes. Hopefully you'll get some of that magic! Tis' the season right?u

 

[SiUK]

Okay, I'll give it another go ...as soon as I can work out why it no longer finds the other devices on the network. Will only play on my phone now. Can't be certain but it may have happened since setting router config and firewall via DSM. May just start over with the settings and see.