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Author Topic: screenshot captor and NAS unsuable  (Read 4572 times)

psoriasis

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screenshot captor and NAS unsuable
« on: February 25, 2016, 12:38 PM »
I have a NAS and I specified a directory on it as my screenshot save folder.  Unfortunately, very time I captured the program became unresponsive for a minute.  I use that NAS all the time for random editing of files etc and I've never seen anything like that.  I've since switched to a local drive and the problem has gone away but then, of course, that requires the local machine to be available etc which is why I wanted to use the NAS for this purpose.

Is screenshot captor re scanning the entire screenshot capture directory every capture or what?

mouser

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Re: screenshot captor and NAS unsuable
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2016, 05:48 PM »
That's interesting.. It's not so much that SC rescans the entire directory explicitly, but it does use an explorer component (that left sidebar of thumbnails in the main window) which it tries to keep constantly synchronized with the screenshot directory.  So that is what's probably causing the issue.

I could add an option to disable this behavior -- and maybe have it refresh only when it was brought up to view..

Shades

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Re: screenshot captor and NAS unsuable
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2016, 08:05 AM »
How do you access the NAS? By name or by it's IP number? What version of Windows do you use? And (what is worse) do you have Homegroup enabled on your Windows machine?

Windows 7/8.x are known to slow down to a crawl when accessing network folders, especially when you use computer names, instead of IP numbers. For clarification: DNS translates the name of a computer into an IP number after which you can access the desired computer. This translation works the same on an internal network as on the internet.

Problem is that DNS requests that go through Homegroup functionality never have the same speed twice and are always(!) 10 to 15% slower than a DNS request being made without Homegroup.

You must also know that by default any TCP/IP request has a maximum wait time of 30 seconds before that protocol deems a connection unresponsive and only after that time it will create a new connection. This behavior is a remnant of the telephone modem days, giving the user the impression an application 'freezes', while it is simply waiting for the TCP/IP protocol to finish and create a proper network connection.

Last I checked Microsoft had instructions on their MSDN/TechNet website for adjusting this wait period. However, they never created a GUI interface for this, so this and other TCP/IP protocol settings are only changed by people who know what they are doing in the Windows registry.

If you really want to change this or other TCP/IP protocol settings, you'll have to find the links yourself, as I won't link to these on purpose.

What you should do is the following:
  • Never use Homegroup in any way or form (disable Homegroup related services in your Windows is the best way to accomplish this).
  • Visit this TechNet link (the answer starting at about half of the page is what you should do).
  • Use IP numbers where you can.
  • Configure the correct user name and password for accessing your NAS (by its name and and also its IP number) in the 'Credential Manager' of the Windows Control Panel. You should repeat this on any computer in your home network.

When you apply these 4 steps above, you will find that transferring any type of content that uses the TCP/IP protocol will go a lot smoother to the point that you don't even notice a difference in accessing a network folder or local folder anymore. This way you are eliminating a lot of actions Windows needs to take to help you.   

psoriasis

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Re: screenshot captor and NAS unsuable
« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2016, 03:35 PM »
I use the NAS by name, vs IP, and though I do specify my own sharing (specifically, I have the NAS directory shared as a disk and its sharing is specified through the NAS interface). Homegroup is apparently turned on (win 10). 

As per the DNS being 15% slower, 15% isn't the issue.  I think we're more in the 10,000% ball park.

From what I've seen in the past, the kind of delay I'm seeing here suggests something that's querying every file in that directory one at a time (and so a directory with a lot of screenshots is going to aggregate to huge latency).  Perhaps I should make a test screenshot dir on the nas and drop increasing number of files in there to see it it scales.

If that's the case, I guess the only way i could imagine dealing with that is to take over the update of the clip plane (some more manual process).  Easy for me to write.  ;)

f0dder

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Re: screenshot captor and NAS unsuable
« Reply #4 on: February 29, 2016, 01:54 PM »
For clarification: DNS translates the name of a computer into an IP number after which you can access the desired computer. This translation works the same on an internal network as on the internet.
It works very differently on an internal network than on the internet-at-large - there's an entirely different network protocol involved (NetBIOS the last time I checked).

Problem is that DNS requests that go through Homegroup functionality never have the same speed twice and are always(!) 10 to 15% slower than a DNS request being made without Homegroup.
As mentioned in the other thread, I'd like to see some solid documentation for this!
- carpe noctem