NFS with Windows 7: Disadvantages?

[di0de]

I recently had to start over with a freenas set up that got corrupted. After importing my previous UFS volumes, I could no longer get my Windows box to see my CIFS shares. I suspect this has something to do with permissions, but I've messed around with it quite a bit and still I can't figure it out.

However I just learned that Windows can see my NFS share (with a small amount of tweaking). I now have these mapped to my windows box and it appears to be working fine.

My question is, why wouldn't you want to use NFS shares with Windows, since they are purportedly faster and use less CPU anyway? Are there any disadvantages to this?

My home network includes Windows, OSX, and my main media center is OpenELEC run off Raspberry Pi. All of these can use my NFS shares. I'm pretty happy at this point, just wondering if I'm missing something?

 

[cyberjock]

NFS uses less CPU resources, but the way it works internally gives it different performance characteristics. I won't go into much detail because I'm not 100% sure what those differences are. But if you use Google there's quite a few websites that have had various results in different situations(large number of smaller files versus small number of big files). Personally, I'd use whichever one makes you happier for your situation. If you give NFS a try and it performs to your satisfaction I'd just use that. On the flip side, if you use CIFS and that works better then I'd use that. If your CPU is sufficiently powerful CIFS "should" win just about every real world test. But if your system is an Atom NFS is more than likely going to shine.

 

[di0de]

Thank you for the reply. Well I come back to the board hat in hand, I spoke too soon. Even though my share is now visible in windows explorer, the files are not "playable." I have tried music and video files in both VLC and foobar and I get playback errors every time.

I am sure this goes back to my original problem of CIFS shares not showing up at all, and again I assume it is permission-based. However I already have a support thread open on that, which I will retreat to.