SCAN.care@HEXUS
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I purchased a Dual NAS box from Scan a week or so ago but it unfortunately froze during configuration and was returned. A replacement was speedily sent out (thanks Scan!) which hasn't frozen again but ....
I copied on several test AVI files after setting up the RAID set on 2 x 500Gb drives but I just cannot get them to stream properly to any of the PC's I've tried. They seem to start ok but after about 5-10 seconds they start stuttering, then play smooth for another few seconds and then start stuttering again. After a minute or so of this it usually stops streaming and whatever application I'm using reports that the file is no longer there. If I come out of the application and browse the NAS box I can see all the files again and can restart the whole process but it crashes every time.
I have now tried Windows Media Player, Nero Showtime and WinAmp on XVID AVI's, Divx AVI's and HD WMV's - all of which work when I stream them from a hard disk on another PC. I have also tried streaming to two different XP Pro PC's and a Media Centre PC. All had the same problem.
I then tried to simply copy a test file from the NAS and it seems to be that for the first few seconds the speed is steady but then a big delay happens (and the estimated time to copy goes up). After a few more seconds the copying speed seems to sort itself out and carries on for another few seconds normally before slowing down again. I'm presuming the slowdowns are the reason that the streaming is not working correctly.
Just in case the problem is the RAID I have also replaced the 2 500Gb drives with a single 40Gb drive and set it up as FAT32. The same problem occurs.
I also ran some network speed tests. To copy a sample set of files across to a local PC also running at 100Mbit took 14 minutes. To copy across to the NAS box took 34 minutes ....
Has anyone got any suggestions that may help with this box? At the moment - it's virtually a complete waste of £70 .....
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