Add smb post

Author: studioromeo

src/img/2026/fixing-smb-transfers-on-mac/after.png

@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+---
+title: Fixing SMB transfers on Mac
+summary: My notes on how to fix SMB transfer speeds on Mac Tahoe on Unraid NAS
+tags:
+    - Server
+    - SMB
+    - Unraid
+    - Mac Tahoe
+---
+
+Setting up my NAS last year was probably one of the best things I did, I'll try and do another post on all that but the long and short is I'm using an old PC with Unraid.
+
+Unraid gives you a few options to connect to your NAS, I first tried SMB, I really liked how Mac Finder just discovered it, I didn't have to remember any IP addresses or special commands.
+
+Reads were good, I could browse directories pretty quick, open up files fine. But writing was extremely slow, and worse with lots of files.
+
+At the time I didn't really know what to do, someone on the internet said try NFS and the transfers were much better. But today accidentally crashed my server (my fault not Unraid) and I thought ok time to give SMB another shot.
+
+I tested this by transfering a folder of varying sized MP4's. Finder doesn't have a fancy transfer rate window like windows does so I used Activity Monitors network view which does the job.
+
+![View of graph](../img/2026/fixing-smb-transfers-on-mac/before.png)
+
+This sawtooth pattern is weird, it looks like finder is transferring one file, then reading it before transferring the next.
+
+The internet said that macs aren't setup great for SMB performance. And after a while of trial and error I settled on this config
+
+```toml
+[default]
+# Disable signing
+signing_required=no
+# Turn off validation of the negotiate info (helps with signing issues)
+validate_neg_off=yes
+# Force SMB 3+ for better performance
+protocol_vers_map=6
+```
+
+After connecting to an smb share on mac we can run `smbutil statshares -a` to get a picture of what that looks like. Unfortunately for me `signing_require` didn't seem to change this to OFF even after restarting.
+
+```txt
+SMB_CURR_SIGN_ALGORITHM       AES_128_GMAC
+```
+
+I got the same transfer performance when I tested which confirmed more work needed to be done. This config might be unnecessary, and if thats the true I'll update this article.
+
+Next up lets make sure that signing is not on the NAS. In Unraid, Settings > SMB > Samba extra configuration:
+
+```toml
+# Force signing off
+server signing = disabled
+strict sync = no
+```
+
+It was adding `strict sync = no` that made the difference, since adding my network transfer looked a lot more consistent.
+
+![View of graph](../img/2026/fixing-smb-transfers-on-mac/after.png)
+
+Speeds aren't amazing but this is equivalent to NFS so I'm happy. After [reading the docs](https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/ch11.html) I think it was requiring the server to do a WRITE > READ cycle for every file.
+
+Hopefully this will help you, or more likely future me after I've forgotten about this