Odd New NAS streaming Issue

[toddbagwell]

After a long week at work, I thought I'd listen to some music this morning, but my high-tech world has come crashing down! I need some troubleshooting help!

 

Trouble is I'm getting random dropouts. I've never had this problem before, and I need some suggestions to see what the problem might be!

 

The setup is Library of ALAC files on a NAS box several rooms away.

Computer is running XP pro, and I'm using itunes as my player.

 

The problem occurs with songs that one or two weeks ago would play without glitches, so I'm confident the files are good.

 

The problem persists despite reboots of the computer, router, switch (between computer and NAS), and the NAS itself.

 

I moved to a different computer that is connected to the NAS via it's own 4 port switch, same files on the same NAS, but different CPU/HDD/RAM etc. and it is doing the same thing, random dropouts!

 

I've attached a screen shot of the network activity when this is happening. On both machines the network activity drops to 0 when the music stops.

 

On both machines the network activity monitor shows the same thing, no activity. (entire system is hard wired with gigabit parts, not streaming over wifi). [when music is playing the fine sawtooth patterned 0.2% activity is present]

 

I think that this must be a problem with my NAS, as when I play a file from the HDD (i.e. locally stored) it plays without problem.

 

With the problem on two machines, I think that points to the NAS, right?

 

The seeming culprit NAS is a ~5 year old Promise NS4300N with 4 1 TB drives in RAID5.

 

The box is not outputting any error messages when i go into the web-based configuration page. The Temps and Voltages are reported within the normal ranges. The box seems to sound and look fine, i.e. no weird disk sounds or red flashing lights.

 

What do you guys and gals think? should I replace the NAS? Is there anything else that could be the problem?

 

Can't seem to HTML tag the attached image in, sorry. Also sorry for all the exclamation points.

 

[toddbagwell]

I trialed a group file transfer from one PC to the NAS, and it completed, but took a while. The Network activity took several long pauses while it occurred.

 

I then took the same files and copied them from one pc to a shared folder on the other pc. this transfer was 4-5x faster with no dropouts/ network slow downs.

 

I can only guess that somehow and somewhere the NAS box is not playing well with others.

 

Has anyone else experienced this with networked devices?

 

thanks for any help,

 

Todd

 

[Paul R]

In the past few weeks, have you added anything new to the network or started some new activities?

 

For example, added in an iPhone, started watching Netflix streaming movies, added a wireless node, anything like that?

 

Also, are you using the NAS to stream the music, or just as physical DASD space?

 

Honestly, it does sound like the NAS is going to sleep and failing to send traffic in a timely manner.

 

-Paul

 

 

 

 

[toddbagwell]

Nothing new, which is frustrating. The system was off for one week while i was out of town. One week ago i ripped two new cd's and played three songs without a glitch. Everything has been on, but not in use for the past week due to my work schedule.

 

I'm not exactly sure the official Name for my NAS setup, but i've just mapped a drive to be seen by windows as any other folder. I'm not using the NAS as a streaming client itself.

 

Is this possibly a pre-failure signal?

 

Thanks,

Todd

 

[Paul R]

It certainly may be, though I am not sure if it is a failure or something more prosaic, like an overfull log file or something on the NAS. It is possible something has gotten full on the NAS device and it is spending too much time trying to take care of itself rather than serviing up disk space to your Windows box.

 

Did you say you power cycled your switches and hubs? If not, try that first.

 

Then pull out the NAS documentation and see if there are any periodic maintenance activities you need to pull on it. Cleaning out log files, emptying the trash, that sort of thing.

 

If you can, call the NAS manufactuer and bend their ear a bit. They might have a "oh yeah, we know about that. We just don't tell people about it unless they are having the same kind of trouble you are" thing going on.

 

Yours,

-Paul

 

P.S. "DASD" is an old IBM Mainframer term, I really meant "disk space." -PR

 

 

 

 

 

[toddbagwell]

Paul, thanks for your help and suggestions.

 

I've gotten everything sorted now, but it wasn't clear until last night exactly what the real issue was.

 

 

After the problem began, the monitoring software (ie web-based access to the NAS OS) didn't have any new errors in the logs.

 

about 3-4 hours into my problems a string of errors occurred on disk 3 of 4 in the box.

 

As i was looking to see what else might be wrong (bad sounds from the drive or any error lights on the drive's LED indicator) I got a new message that the RAID 5 file system was corrupt, and would need to be rebuilt.

 

I figured the dropouts I was getting were likely due to the NAS file structure failing, and I dutifully rebuilt the RAID array (went out and caught the last Harry Potter film while waiting BTW). Once the array was rebuilt, the error log didn't have any new errors, and I began copying all my data back to the array from a backup.

 

With all drives seeming to be functioning according to the box's self reporting, I was still noticing slowdowns with the file transfers intermittently.

 

I tried to play music from the NAS, and it again failed to stream smoothly.

 

It was at this point that I gave up and went shopping at my nearest Fry's Electronics.

 

After buying and installing a new 4 bay NAS, and new drives the old box finally shut down with a failure of disk 3 at 11pm last night.

 

In retrospect, there was no indication that there was a disk error from the monitoring software initially. As time went on, the OS on the old box would spit out a collection of drive errors, but it was nowhere near what i would call "real time" monitoring. I'm still at a loss to understand why one drive failure in a RAID 5 setup would corrupt my file system and require a rebuild of the array.

I got 4 years of solid service from the old box, but the last 48 hours have really ticked me off.

 

Oh well, I got to upgrade from plastic drive cages and 1TB drives to metal drive cages and 2TB drives in the process so it wasn't a total waste. Sorry for the long post.

 

Todd

 

[Paul R]

I am very glad you have gotten the problem in hand, but good grief! The entire file system had to be rebuilt from a single drive failure?

 

Something was seriously wrong. You should have been able to pull out drive three and continue to operate without any issues at all.

 

Plugging a new drive into the Drive 3 slot should have automatically rebuilt the file system on the drive. Why else pay for RAID5?

 

Great heavens, I hope your new RAID performs better and when a drive fails in the future, handles it more appropriately!

 

You did a good job troubleshooting it.

 

-Paul