I have a Mac Pro running OSX 10.5.8 on a network with a four-year-old PC running Windows 7. Both machines are networked together and share a Buffalo network drive that I render to from After Effects and other programs. I feel that the mac is much slower on the network. It takes about five times longer to view files in directories on the network drive ( for example a directory with 4000 files will take about a full minute to load from the Mac, and about 10 seconds to load from the PC). I think this may be a new problem, as I have been using this machine for a year and only lately noticed the problem. I'm pretty sure it's a network problem, given the multitude of symptoms, but then I am pretty much in the dark as to what might be causing it. The symptoms are worse than a you would expect.
The Buffalo: LinkStation LS-CHL F/W 1.07
The Mac: Model Name: Mac Pro Model Identifier: MacPro4,1 Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 4 L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 8 MB Memory: 8 GB Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s Boot ROM Version: MP41.0081.B07 ATI Radeon HD 4870Graphics card.
The PC: Dell Precision 490, Xeon 3.2. With a GeForce 9800 GT grfx card.
Machines are connected to a switch, a DLINK DGS 100 5D, a Gigabit switch. I am using CAT6 cables on both machines. The cables are identical on both computers, and about 3 yards long.
Seems like an odd issue. I would suggest trying it on another Mac due to the fact that it works just fine on the PC:smileywink:. You can also try hooking the Mac directly up to your router and see what kind of transfer rates you get. What kind of NIC card do you have on the Mac? What kind of transfer rates are you getting with a single 1gb file on both PC and Mac?
Good idea. I will try that. Also I am upgrading to OSX 10.6 later in the week, so that may help. Direct transfer from the PC to Mac is close to 100mbs, so I am considering just loosing the NAS for video and rendering.
Not Sure what kind of NIC yet. I'm trying to look that up. Is it on the motherboard?
I feel the situation is that Buffalo does not support OSX. Please correct me if I am wrong, but otherwise why would so many people be having the same problem with the Mac. Ironically I bought this thing at an Apple Store overseas. By the way, I was on the phone with Buffalo today, the tech support people were so rude! I know they may just have been having a bad day, but they were rude with me from the moment I started giving them my personal information. I felt like I had interupted a couple of angry teenagers while they were playing video games. Totally unhelpful, unprofessional, uninformed, rude, and unclassy. They even hung up on me. Buffalo has lost a customer for life. This company disrespects it's customers.
You stated that you bought the unit oversea's? It looks like you called USA support. If you bought the unit within the Us/Canada/Australia then you can call the US support but if you bought it overseas then you have to contact the regional support where you bought the unit. Region to Region there is different hardware and firmware revisions.
Perhaps you are right, but that does not explain the rudeness. I gave them my model number and they did not mention that it was not supported.
It is unusual for us to get US based customers with deivces bought overseas. The model numbers are the same for the diffrent regions.
I understand, but today I tried to contact the support in the region where I bought the device and finally got a message machine which said that there was no one to help me at this time.
Anyway, you have been very helpful, thank you. I may have been a bit strong in condemning the company because I did not like the response I got from the support team. But how can I ever buy a product from Buffalo again after that experience? The answer is, I cannot. I also called Apple computers about this problem and while they were not able to help me much more than Buffalo, let me tell you, their staff was kind and courteous and tried their very best to help me with this problem.
All that said, and in conclusion, I think this may be a problem with the interface between Apple computers and NAS devices. Other Mac users are having the same issue with buffalo drives and other NAS. So perhaps the answer is to not use NAS devices as shared video file servers with Macintosh. I would think that a company who specializes in this device would know definitively whether or not they are compatible for this type of application.
MrWolfy, if you PM me your name and the number you called from, and the support number you called, plus date and approximate time, I can find the tech with whom you spoke and take him/her off the Buffalotech payroll.
Buffalo Support Manager for US/Canada
"Please correct me if I am wrong, but otherwise why would so many people be having the same problem with the Mac"
On the mac and PC on our network we are getting the same transfer speeds. Where did you see that "so many people were having the same problem"?
Are you using smb or afp? Try both and see if the speeds improve. Winows uses samba protocol (or smb). I would also check to make sure that your firmware is up to date, other than that the only real troubleshooting step is to try another Mac and see if the results remain consistant. If it is a problem with the unit I am sure that we can figure it out. Hopefully your experience with technical support will be better in the future.
Out of curiosity what version of OSX are you running?
Well just to reiterate what the problem is, it is not transfer rates per se, it is transfer rates or load times with directories that contain a large amount of files. I have found a lot of Mac users complaining about this specific problem while searching the internet for solutions. I also have a friend, a Mac user, who has the same exact problem with another NAS system.
I am using smb, but then I think the PC is using the same. I have not yet had success connecting by afp. I am running 10.5.8, but my friend with the same issue runs Snow Leopard. I am going to upgrade, and I will let you know if there is any improvement.
I called your US 18667526210 number 4/15/2010 2AM and I was using skype. The early hours may explain the issue I had with the staff.