Speed up my photograph library!
October 20, 2013 1:56 PM Subscribe
Netgear Stora MS2110 -> Router -> Picasa on my PC. Which bit is slowing the whole thing down?
I currently have 15Gb of family-orientated pics, video etc. on a Netgear Stora MS2110 NAS drive (pretty old, I know) that's plugged into my router. I use Picasa to sort my way through all that material.
Except it's mind-boggingly slow at times, taking 5 mins to browse to a directory etc. - ironically, it's even slower when I plug the network cable in.
So what's causing this drag in speed? The Netgear? My router? Picasa? And what can I do about it?
I currently have 15Gb of family-orientated pics, video etc. on a Netgear Stora MS2110 NAS drive (pretty old, I know) that's plugged into my router. I use Picasa to sort my way through all that material.
Except it's mind-boggingly slow at times, taking 5 mins to browse to a directory etc. - ironically, it's even slower when I plug the network cable in.
So what's causing this drag in speed? The Netgear? My router? Picasa? And what can I do about it?
I just got myself a NAS and I am amazed. Having said this, the Synology comes with a decent webui which allows me to monitor its operation. CPU load, memory utilization, network load and so on. Is there a chance for you to monitor these settings on your NAS? If the CPU is not on 100% and there is memory available, I would think it is not the NAS? How is file access to your NAS from outside picasa? If on Windows - count all the files in c:\Windows using the properties menu when right clicking on the folder - this should have the NAS churn through a bunch of folders and come back with a result.
posted by nostrada at 5:34 PM on October 20, 2013
posted by nostrada at 5:34 PM on October 20, 2013
Those netgear NASes blow. Their proprietary OS sucks and their CPUs are anemic. The new ones might be fine, i have no idea. But i set up one of those about the same age as yours for a friend and i was appalled at how crappy the performance was with it. Both throughput and response time.
Do you have enough free disk space to just copy the stuff over real quick and see how much faster it runs?
The fact that you noted that plugging it in doesn't help really does single it out as being the issue. Routers are basically irrelevant if you aren't using wireless and aren't cueing up a bajillion outbound connection on the WAN with bittorrent or something. I bet the netgear is just plugging up when it really gets handed the requests more quickly over LAN.
The synology NASes, like nostrada mentioned are very high performance... but not really all that cheap. They will offer the performance you're looking for however. I use them at work, and they can handle big databases and such with aplomb. A cheaper option might be to poke around ebay for an atom-based NAS or something similar.
This, for instance, will absolutely blast through this type of thing. It's also like driving a monster truck to the grocery store for what you do with it, but it is cheaper than a synology and would solve the hell out of the problem.
posted by emptythought at 6:43 PM on October 20, 2013
Do you have enough free disk space to just copy the stuff over real quick and see how much faster it runs?
The fact that you noted that plugging it in doesn't help really does single it out as being the issue. Routers are basically irrelevant if you aren't using wireless and aren't cueing up a bajillion outbound connection on the WAN with bittorrent or something. I bet the netgear is just plugging up when it really gets handed the requests more quickly over LAN.
The synology NASes, like nostrada mentioned are very high performance... but not really all that cheap. They will offer the performance you're looking for however. I use them at work, and they can handle big databases and such with aplomb. A cheaper option might be to poke around ebay for an atom-based NAS or something similar.
This, for instance, will absolutely blast through this type of thing. It's also like driving a monster truck to the grocery store for what you do with it, but it is cheaper than a synology and would solve the hell out of the problem.
posted by emptythought at 6:43 PM on October 20, 2013
Response by poster: @This_Will_Be_Good - already checked those, but thanks for suggesting it!
@nostrada - Same problems outside Picasa, to be fair. So looks like a NAS problem...
@emptythought - Hrm. Care to recommend other NASes that can handle 2Tb drives or higher? :)
Thanks for your help, btw!
posted by almostwitty at 2:52 AM on October 21, 2013
@nostrada - Same problems outside Picasa, to be fair. So looks like a NAS problem...
@emptythought - Hrm. Care to recommend other NASes that can handle 2Tb drives or higher? :)
Thanks for your help, btw!
posted by almostwitty at 2:52 AM on October 21, 2013
I got the Synology DS213j for $199 off amazon. Put in a WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD30EFRX and was up and running - and smiling by the hour. Running media server, download server, backup server (crashplan), NAS, webserver and more on it. Honestly, after messing around with a raspberry pi (CLI, I can not take you any more) and an old laptop, this made my heart jump.
Sure, it is expensive. But it is well supported and just works. /fanboy out
posted by nostrada at 11:11 AM on October 21, 2013
Sure, it is expensive. But it is well supported and just works. /fanboy out
posted by nostrada at 11:11 AM on October 21, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 2:56 PM on October 20, 2013