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I have an Nvidia Shield with USB 3 5200 rpm drive attached. My home network is powered by a LINKSYS EA6300 and I have CAT 6 cables running from modem to router to PC and CAT5e from router to Nvidia Shield. My main PC storage drive is a 7200 rpm drive SAT6. Why are my file transfer speed so slow and erratic? I am a bit fuzzy on frame buffers, cache and the like so forgive my plebness. What am I missing? I thought I’d be transferring files with at 50mbps on average instead of 1~2mbps
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Have you tried directly attaching the external hard disk to the computer? Is it faster?
A quick look on Google finds several threads on the Nvidia forums and elsewhere about slow speeds. I did not see a resolution. Some claim it is limited to 100 Mbps networking. Others say it is because of the Shield only using very old SMB protocols. Some say it is because of file transfer encryption which is apparently not hardware accelerated on the Shield.
So I don’t know. But if no one else here knows you may be better off asking on the Nvidia forums and trying to get the attention of an Nvidia expert.
I have seen the same kind of behavior on embedded hardware many times. Often the hardware is either lacking horsepower to keep the data streaming thread running, or enough RAM to cache enough of high bit rate content, or both.
I suggest you drop the Shield and get a Raspberri Pi (2 works, 3 or later better) and put https://libreelec.tv/ on it. It gives you KODI which is IMO the ultimate media center package and easily handles streaming blueray mpeg2ts rips.
If you have plenty of space and don’t care about looks, maybe an old used i3 or i5 Like i3-2xxx is worth looking into as an alternative to raspberry pie
yes I have and it is, however it’s not a great solution only because the SHIELD doesn’t respond well to having the drive removed and reconnected. I’ve searched the NVIDIA forums over the years and haven’t found a definitive answer myself. I have come across the SMB issues again and again so perhaps that is the issue. Very often when I copy a file, usually larger than a few hundred MB I also encounter an issue where the the file transfer will bottom out to 0 at some point then fail completely and Windows will report an error with no solution but then after refreshing Windows explorer will report the file size incorrectly, (appearing complete) but the file won’t play, in the case of a mp4 or MKV. As far as replacing the device, I already have another PC that stands in a a second media server but I don’t like keeping it running 24/7 (AMD FX 8300 + 990FX chipset). I get 100 MB/s file transfers on that but not consistently. I like the SHIELD b/c it’s low powered and easy to use (for Mrs. Exarkun631) and I’ve already sunk a couple hundo into the drive and peripherals so moving on isn’t really an option for the foreseeable future. Thanks for the input mAh homies!
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Perfect! then you would love the RPi solution, it’s easy to use as it’s interface is quite simple to navigate (even for Mrs. gnif who is as anti tech as they come). It streams over SMB and NFS flawlessly, and you can load plugins like YouTube, etc. On the power usage front, it tops out at around 10W of consumption.
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