Unable to access shared folders on main computer while copying files over the network

I got a peculiar problem. When copying files from another computer to my main computer via wired connection, I am unable to access any of the shared folders on my main computer from my WDTV Live.

Everything works normally both before and after file copying, but not during. 

Here’s a rundown of my hardware and software:

WDTV Live G3 running firmware 2.01.86 connected to router via Wi-Fi

Asus RT-AC66U router running firmware 3.0.0.4.374.979

Main computer connected to router via CAT-6 cable:

  • Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe
  • Onboard Intel gigabit network card
  • 16 GB RAM
  • SSD for Windows
  • 7200 RPM drives for storage
  • Latest drivers installed
  • Windows 7 SP1 x64 all updates installed
  • Master browser on network

Second computer is a HP laptop with 100 Mbit network card and Windows 7 x64 connected to router via CAT-6 cable

Homegroup is disabled on both computers

Accessing my main computer from a third computer via Wi-Fi while copying files works just fine.

I could get that wired connection would take precedence over Wi-Fi, but with a gigabit connection there should be plenty bandwidth when the other computer is only running 100 megabit. I’ve run benchmarks on the network before and reached 900 megabit on wired connection so there isn’t a bottleneck on the network. 

I have also tried resetting the WDTV to factory settings, rebooted the router, rebooted the computers, to no luck.

Would love to get some input of what to try next. It is irritating to not being able to watch anything of the WDTV while doing backup jobs. 

Thanks in advance  (=

Skyrider,

Do you experience the same issues after performing a firmware rollback into a previous firmware release?

In what sense are you unable to access your shares while copying files to them?  Exactly what happens?

I fail to see how this could possibly be considered a problem with the SMPs, except that they might time out waiting for your server computer to respond.  My experience with Windows is that its simultaneous read/write performance is very poor when compared to what occurs with Linux.  (I have always thought this is likely an NTFS issue, though I don’t know that for sure, and don’t care enough about Windows to put effort into finding out.)  Anyway, I would not be surprised if your machine is very slow to respond to SMB read requests when you are writing to the same disk/share.

Also, you don’t say whether the share drives are internal or external, but if they are external drives then that will definitely make simultaneous read/write very problematic.  I certainly avoid this with my external USB2 drives.

If you have not done this already, my suggestion would be to try copying to one of your drives while streaming from a different drive, and see if there is still a problem.  If that works OK then you will have to separate your shares onto different drives so that you can simultaneously stream and backup.

Since you have done some network bandwidth testing and know you are getting GigE speeds from your main machine and router/switch, it seems unlikely that two 100Mbps devices (the laptop and the SMP) are swamping your network connection.

JStaff:

I tried a firmware rollback 1.16.13. Same problem with older firmware aswell.

ncarver:

When trying to access a share while copying files to the computer, I get the error message " There is no media in the current folder" on all the shaes.

The problem does not have to be on the SMP itself, but I have no issues accessing the shares from other computers while copying files. Because of this, I reached out to the WD Community to see if anyone else have experienced the same issue and/or had some suggestions for me.

My shared drives are internal Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB SATA3 drives.

I am unable to access any of the shared folders on any of the three drives in my computer even though I am only copying to one of them. All the shares are giving me the error described earlier.

I have tried to upgrade chipset drivers, sata-drivers, network card drivers to no luck.

Perhaps the problem is as easy as a time out, the SMP is not waiting long enough to get a reply like a computer would?

Thanks again for your suggestions.

Probably is a timeout issue.  Unfortunately, the SMP’s error messages are not always too informative.

One thing you could do to diagnose further is get Wireshark and watch your network traffic from/to the SMP when you are not copying vs. when you are.  SInce packets are timestamped, this would allow you to see just how long it takes your computer to respond to the SMB/share requests from the SMP in the two situations.  My guess is that you will find it to be substantially different.  Wireshark is pretty easy to do basic things with, and heavily used so lots of help online.  You will also probably learn quite a bit about networking from using it.

http://www.wireshark.org/