Mapping NAS drives to My Computer

I've got a couple of 1TB NAS drives on a gigabit network...

Is it advantageous to map these NASes to Y and Z drives in my computer, or does it actually have disadvantages? (performance and user-experience-wise)

I.e. Will it make me wonder why I've always used the pesky Network Places, or will it bring unforeseen pains?
Thanks

 

The advantage of mapped drives is that with some software do not support networks. By using mapping you get around this limitation. I use them for my Music and my private storage space, with a desktop Icon. But as you know SMB is slower than FTP. So if I need to move large sets of files I use Filezilla FTP client.

 

One issue you may well run in to is lag in explorer (including desktop explorer lag) when the mapped driver are unavailable.

 

What do you mean by that? When the drives are disconnected?

 

Scenario....

You map network drive to drive Z (or whatever letter you want) of your computer.

You open windows explorer and it starts enumerating your drives. As long as the mapped drive is available and the connection speed is reasonable no real problems.

Now lets say you turn off the mapped drive machine/NAS or go to another network where it is unavailable or the connection is slow and you open explorer.... that enumeration takes longer and can cause lag.

Try inserting a CD/DVD and immediately opening explorer right away. You will notice lag before it refreshes while the system tries to figure out what is going on with the DVD. The principal is similar to mapped drives.

Explorer.exe is what you are using to do that. It is also your desktop shell. If you kill all instances of explorer.exe in the task manager you will see your start menu/desktop icons poof as well.

This problem is not as pronounced in Vista but is still present.

 

Thanks for that useful info. thumbs up. You get these small advantages and abilities to do more advanced things with newer operating systems, and gigabit speeds.

 

The lag will be quite significant if you take the computer out of the network on which the NAS drives are installed and use it to access another network. Specifically, the computer will "browse" the new network repeatedly trying to find the "missing" NAS drives - it should do this whether or not they are mapped to drive letters; the mapping is an internal logical function, which is based on the pre-existing "My Network Places" object, which is the object the computer "browses" for when it connects to a network.

If you have generally good connectivity on the network that has the NAS drives attached, you might see if you can short-circuit the amount of time the computer spends "browsing" for the NAS drives if it fails to find them on the first go-round (i.e., in essence, tell the computer that, if it doesn't find them the first - or second - time it goes looking, then it isn't going to find them so it should stop looking).

 

or you can just use the ancient DOS command

That last argument will keep your computer from remembering the mapping once you disconnect.

Further you could just turn off the network discovery service as well (its an option in network sharing)

 

Good thing I won't have to worry about doing this as my laptop is a desktop replacement, not really portable (vostro 1700 is a heavy beast), and gigabit using cat6 cables means it will be quite reliable and un-laggy, methinks.

 

Sounds like an option, but how much extra trouble/lag would that cause in day-to-day use when the laptop just gets shut down but doesn't go anywhere (not criticizing, just asking 'cause I don't know the answer ).

The only difficulty I can see with shutting off network discovery is that it would make it more difficult to get onto a different network elsewhere (have to manually set up the connection).

 

Its an option and most certainly not the only solution. But I guess if it gets to laggy its a workaround

 

So, basically, once I have gigabit and they're mapped, it's hardly any different to extra sata drives in a tower, is it? At least for read/write speeds...because it's even faster than the drives can read/write anyway.
My gigabit gear is coming tomorrow, can hardly wait

 

In practice there probably will still be a little bit of a slowdown, depending on the activity on the network at the time; also, don't forget that the networked drives are separated from the bus on your motherboard by several feet of wire (at least) instead of being right next door. Any delays will probably not be very noticeable, however, unless your network gets very congested or has other "issues."

 

Thanks

 

If you have a large set of file to send use a FTP client like Filezilla to do it. You will get close to FULL Speed that way. Where as SMB will be 50% max.

I went through what your doing over a year ago. The average GigE card only delivers around 30-40MB/sec. Better than a 100BaseT but not full speed of a GigE port. What I have discovered is that I reach the HD/buss (CPU maxed at 100%) limit using FTP on my 3.2ghz P4. I discovered that my Snap 4500 is not even loaded with 2 pc at the same time (maxed out). But with the 4500 being a Commercial SMB NAS unit it flys. It's equipped with dual GigE ports, Independent test gave it a speed of 470MB/sec with the optional Fiber Optic card. All of my GigE hardware is connected to a Dlink 16port switch. Enjoy the speed.

I used NetStat to determine the max for my PC's.

 

Thanks! The cat5 cables are only really getting 20MB/s write over FTP, hopefully my cat6 will improve it even more when they arrive.

Actually, while we're on the topic of NAS access, if I'm using NAS as network shared folders at the same time as the mapped drives, (for looking at the folders, not file transfer) within the already-slowed down SMB, will that slow it down even more? Or is network shares treated exactly the same way as mapped networked drives (same protocol)?

 

There treated the same.

I went through a mess of drivers when I went to GigE. The one that worked the best was the one that shipped with my MB. Even though there were 4 updates. Not all drivers and HW respond the same. Remember Writes will be slower than reads. Test it both way, you may be at the limit of your NAS. In my case writes to my local PC is the slowest.

 

If you are using the NAS as a shared folder and as a mapped drive, you should not run into any problems or slowdown. I actually get no explorer slowdowns when i'm away from my network and I decide to pull up explorer. It just shows three disconnected drives. I double click it to get to my offline files and it's actually faster sometimes, especially when loading my images folder.

Network shares are treated the same way as networked drives since the network drive is ACTUALLY a network share. It just is mapped to a drive letter on your computer and is unchanged on your NAS. They both use the same ports and same protocols. Ports 137-139 , 445 UDP and TCP.