Z9X - SMB playback issues while streaming from NAS

No

 

FWIW, I can definitely vouch for the WD MyCloud EX2 Ultra NAS's... I have 4 of them and they have been fantastic for me thus far.... as I have progressed from the X9s, to the Z9s and now the Z9x....

 

Yep, me too - I have WD MyClouds (the old ones before they released the ridiculous "Home" versions) and MyCloud EX2s and they just work.

 

@Dean086 & @Markswift2003 I've heard good things about these NAS's, which I don't think are RAID enabled, but I may have this wrong. My ReadyNASs are getting old now but the main reason for getting them was their RAID functionality. I've just bought a Yottamaster 4-bay RAID unit which, as you say "it just works" too albeit non-NAS, when the Zidoo is off.

What is your opinion on RAID these days? Am I living in the past in that is it not considered necessary? As primarily an Audiophile I am paranoid about any disk failure which would result in me losing my collection. But at the moment my UHD film collection resides on a single disk (the internal disk in my Z1000 Pro) with my non-UHD stuff on one of my NAS's.

I have been thinking of increasing the capacity (currently HDD = 9TB with 8.5TB used) of the internal disk but rather than a single disk, somehow squeeze into my setup a third external arrangement. I currently use both USB 3.0 ports as, as well as the Yottamaster, I have a single external disk which holds my Photo collection. The front 2 USB 2.0 sockets are used for my external DACs.

Maybe I could somehow "split" one of the USB 3.0 sockets and assuming I could, and this is my question, should I go for RAID again or a non-RAID setup like the Yottamaster or maybe a WD MyCloud? Maybe just a larger sized single HDD for the Zidoo's internal bay?

Just seeking your views - thanks

 

Currently amazon has them at $170 each, so this alternative would be expensive to me since I would need 5 of them.

 

The problem with RAID is it's proprietary so when it goes wrong, it goes wrong big style!

I used to use Buffalo rack mount raids (configured in RAID 5) but one day one of the controllers went mad and destroyed the array integrity - without sending the disks off to a very expensive data retrieval company there was no way to rebuild the array and I had to ditch the lot (it was music) and rebuild from scratch.

Admittedly this is incredibly rare, but given the crazy amount of storage we need now, I decided that mirroring, although inefficient, is the way to go. Initially I had two physical boxes - one with the data I use and another with an exact copy. Now I use the EX2s mirrored - as I say, inefficient as far as storage goes, but I know if a drive goes U/S I can just swap it and there's no RAID shenanigans to potentially ruin my day.

I was taught decades ago to treat hard discs as consumables - I've never forgotten that and it's been proved to me many times over the years.

 

Thank you @Markswift2003 - good information but which way I'll go, I'm not sure as yet

 

My 4 WD EX2 Ultras range from 8tb to 12tb and all set for RAID 1 mirroring. I then picked up equivalent sized WD My Book desktop drives when they go on sale and have 1 attached to each NAS that I use as a redundant backup just in case something were to go really wrong with a NAS! lol

 

Hard disks or even SSD are devices that most likely fail over the time. It may take years or even 10s of years based on usage and handling. Most of the time you get some indication of drive failing but you can't relay on it.
If you have original disks with movies or music it will take time to restore the collection but it is possible in case of total failure. If you don't have disks you need to evaluate the risks and value of your collection.

I don't do backups for most of my media collection. I did go through some crashes over the years with good rate of recovery. Most of the issues were related to hard disk interface rather than disks themselves.
It varied from my LG OLED TV destroying boot record and messing up partition table of 4TB NTFC drive (2TB works fine) to some USB enclosures corrupting partitions when plugged to another system without completely powering it off. There are programs out there that can recover damaged or lost portions, scan sectors for files free or at fraction of cost of the large drives. Something to consider only if yor drives are in standard format like NTFC and not encrypted. Copy some of your critical stuff to another offline drive may be good alternative.

I'm also a fan of Western Digital NAS. I have WD Live happily working in my LAN for 15 years, WD My Cloud (original not Home) and WD EX2. My recent addition is Raspberry Pi 4 purchased at regular $50USD before COVID and shortage of chips. It runs 2 USB drives 8 & 10TB using SAMBA from Kodi 20. Very impressive, over 50 MBps minimum and it wont spin up the drives if PC updates active mapped drives or Zidoo HT checks on network sources auto updating database. I don't have backups for all and I don't mind waiting 10s for NAS drive to spin up if this is going to save the drives in the long run.

I'm pushing for Home Theater to keep the database of movies active if the source drives are powered down. It helps to save the drives and energy. If you click on movie from disconnected drive it should ask if you want to retry or remove. You will have a chance to start your small media NAS if you need to see the old movie from cold archive. The poll is is here if anybody like the idea.

It's an individual choice what setup makes you comfortable. RAID is expensive and complex. Do you really need it for media storage?

 

Disk speed should not be a factor. Not saying it isn't a factor but it should not be. Even slow disks can read faster than the player needs to process them. I have a RAID 5 setup which is WAY faster than the player needs but I still have the stutters with high bitrate files. Something else is going on.

I am thinking this sounds like it could be the issue: http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?thr...mplementation-on-z9x-buggy.89002/#post-155128

I haven't read the entire thing yet but it sounds like what is going on to me.

Maybe Zidoo needs a little competition in the market to prompt them to do the right thing here. This should be their number 1 priority and it seems like it isn't even on the radar.

 

Crap I have only seen this thread after ordering Z1000 pro. If I would seen it first I would have ordered a Zappiti.

Ok let's see if I will be affected.

But obviously if a file steamer fails at file streaming that makes it a bit of useless piece of gear.

But Zappiti is potentially folding... so, should I be going back to my HTPC? How comes that in 21st century we have so little choice for file streamers. We must be extreme niche group of dinosaurs...

 

We definitely are dinosaurs.. but you should be fine - the player is rock solid over wired ethernet for me and many others. As long as your network and NAS are in good shape, you’ll be ok.

 

I agree. I stream from my 2 NASs though via NFS, rather than SMB

 

No doubt about it. There is something wrong going on with Zidoo and media streaming in both directions Zidoo client and Zidoo server.

Now looking around it works for most of the people using simple setups in SMB and NFS. So your choice is to setup something simple non RAID NAS or struggle and complain about it.

I had 2x Z9X with local drives attached to both of them. The network shares would lock up after using player on the same machine. I ended up removing drives from one Z9X and setting up small simple NAS on Raspberry Pi 4. No more issues.

Your link to McBluna posting is regarding Zidoo as SAMBA server and limitation. Your issue is Zidoo as client to RAID NAS.

 

I like that you have Rasberry Pi working out for you. I have a serious need for a NAS but can't pinpoint on a solution - though I only have a RPi Zero, which probably isnt powerful enough for much of anything.

 

You probably need RPi4 to get decent speed. It runs over 50MBps. More info here. I bough my Pi4 when they came out for $50 USD. It's double or more now

 

Using smb from my hp microserver 8 with truenas and zfs raid equal to raid 5 (with disks that do not sleep). Doesnt notice any stutter, quick in everything. Playng 160Mbit/s planet earth 2 right now.

Btw, using wired ethernet.

 

As for what my problem is, it is pretty amazing to me how you diagnosed that remotely without ever seeing my setup. I am not running a RAID NAS. I am running a RAID 5 on MacOS shared via SAMBA. My network transfer speeds to other devices on my network far exceed what is required for even the highest bitrate video playback.

For anyone to imply I need to reduce the speed of my computer and/or disk storage in order to get the Zidoo to work correctly is mind-blowing. My point was that my disk speed is FAR greater than what is required for this application. Period. The problem should not be that our disks are too fast or our network is too complicated. These are cop outs for the real issue.

I do have choices other than complaining and I am pursuing them in parallel. Are you implying there is a way to get Zidoo to fix their faulty products without complaining? Not sure what your point is here. Zidoo has a well documented problem. They should acknowledge it and fix it. Some people don't like it when others make noise about problems with this product. Despite many people claiming they have it working perfectly for them, this product is clearly not bullet proof. This isn't the only problem with this product BTW.

If Zidoo can't or won't fix their product, someone else will take their market share. I have no loyalty to Zidoo. They haven't earned that from me.

 

I guess you've tried different ports in switch/router between your NAS and Zidoo and different ethernet cables, also tried with and WITHOUT link aggregation on your NAS. As I said earlier, I got no stutter and running truenas (freebsd) with a raid 5 using seagate ironwolf drives. It's quite overpowered for a NAS (Intel Xeon E3-1260L, 16GB RAM) So I agree that power shouldn't be an issue. Settings on my smb share are Enabled ACL, Shadow Copies, Alternate Data Streams, SMB2/3 Durable Handles and Browsable. Are you using MacOS out of the box as a server or are you using any 3rd party software? Btw, got my smbshare mounted in HT4 only on the Zidoo.

 

I'm genuinely curious about this. I’m not particularly a Zidoo fan boy, but I’ve never had the issue and I’ve tried to replicate it for fun with zero success. I’m not saying Zidoo is perfect but there seems to be so many people running happily without an issue to say it's got to be down to a certain combination of settings, media or network conditions that cause this? It's obvious to look at network kit, so have we looked at media types and / or Zidoo non-network related settings instead?

For instance the people with the issue, does it only happen with certain types of media mkv, iso, folders, H.264, H.265 etc. Many only have self-backed up mkv source files, so made directly from BD / UHD discs using makemkv to produce full sized mkv's which I think are pretty efficient. Do people with the issue have this or maybe different file types from different sources? If you have an issue have you tried a freshly backed up full sized mkv to test that, it may use less resources or network bandwidth than an iso etc?

On my Zidoo I have HDR set to Auto (So no extra Zidoo work being done to convert HDR/SDR VS10 etc), Dolby Vision set to the non-default TV led (as I think it's better than player led but also probably requires less Zidoo processing), HDCP is shutdown (less handshaking), Audio is RAW (so no conversions), Samba is off, CEC is off – I hate it and it can cause issues, wireless is off.

May be worth collating further info on media and other settings users with & without the issue have to see if a pattern emerges as it could be something non-obvious, I don't think it's the obvious network being set wrong else that would have been spotted ages back..

Also, like Windows PCs and many other things, kit can get tired and memory confused after a while. I've previously had random issues (unrelated to this topic) which I could never get to the bottom of logically only to find if I turned it off at the plug for 10 seconds and then back on again all was solved. My Zidoo is always turned off every time I've finished using it as i use a Logitech Harmony remote, so I get a red light (I don't turn it off at the plug) and it takes a while to boot up when start it. I presume those with issues do that also as a matter of course so Zidoo is nice and fresh each use? I also presume to rule out the basics those with the issue have fully powered off at the plug and then back on again network switches, internet router and / or NAS all at the same time..