Raspberry Pi - Why my NAS (via SMB) is slow

Problem

As seen below, when I want to move files to and from my NAS, I DIYed. It was a little better before I moved to the new house.

Specs

• Raspberry Pi 4 4GB is hosting the NAS
• Both RasPi and client Windows machines are in WiFi 5 (In the old 1BHK apartment all were nearby and used LAN cable)
• RasPi is hosting another service such as Plex.
• Seagate Backup Plus 8TB HDD (not SSD) connected to usb3
• HDD uses NTFS file system than Linux native etx4
• Uses SMB3 protocol

There are many guesses or options people are talking about on the internet, from converting NTFS to ext4 to buying a dedicated NAS device, etc...Let us go the scientific debugging route.

Hypotheses

Slow HDD access

There is a bottleneck in the connection between HDD and the RasPi.

Testing

There is a utility called hdparam in Linux to test the connectivity. Below goes the result.

Status

Rejected as it is showing better numbers.

Slow network connection

Due to the WiFi 5, it is slow in communicating between machines

Testing

There is a utility called iperf3 to test the network speed.

iperf3 to local network

iperf3 test to a public server

Result

The hypothesis is true that connectivity is the bottleneck. Either upgrade to use WiFi 6 which RasPi 4 doesn't support out of the box as well as most of my machines.

Next steps

Have some way to connect the RasPi and possible machines via ethernet cable. The wiring may be required.