Long reconnect time to SMB on Win7 Pro

I recently, within the last three weeks, decided to switch from using the TimeCapsule's hdd as NAS (bad idea in the first place, btw) to a RAID1 array in my Dell T3400. The trouble I am having is not connecting to the Dell, that goes fine, but after several minutes and of course after the MBP goes to sleep, accessing the RAID results in a 60 to 90 second delay. I can see in the lower right-hand corner of Finder, an animated icon that resembles the "spinning pizza of death" as it waiting on something, what that is, I don't know.

There is also another single hdd in the Dell, same problem accessing it, so does not seem related to RAID. I don't have the same result with the TimeCap, but it is similar... initial connect (Control-K same as I use for the Dell) goes fine, but after a short time, I attempt access, I am face with about a 10 second delay, but no longer than that, so somewhere between 5 and ten seconds. However with the TimeCap, and this is why I say it is a lousy choice for NAS, it will do this over and over, the MBP does not have to go to sleep so I assume that it is the TC powering down the drives as the delay is always the same and seems to appear after the same amount of time.

Additionally, other Windows machines in my LAN access the Dell just fine and have exactly the same experience with the TimeCapsule. I initially setup the RAID array with Windows because I was loathe to reinstall the OS at that time. Shortly after seeing the access trouble I bought another main hdd, set the BIOS to RAID-on (hehehehe, radon, get it?) and started from scratch, all went perfectly fine but absolutely no improvement on the smb share access delay.

Anybody else ever seen anything like this? In summary, initial access is good, access after a period of inactivity results in 60 to 90 second delay. One last thing, if I "Eject" the share before closing the MBP's lid and reconnect with Ctrl-K that also is fine...

Thanks in advance,
Gary

I watched the videos but they are geared toward using TimeMachine on an smb share... that's not what I am doing, I am not currently using TimeMachine at all but when I do, I leave it on the TimeCapsule.

However, I did try mounting the smb share and running "diskutil list" and oddly enough, it does not appear, I expected to see it in the list...

I am using Cat5e+ cable, not Cat6...

I have four switches, 2 Cisco SG100D-08 switches and two Netgear GS105E switches... One Cisco is connected to the LAN port of the TimeCapsule, the other Cisco is a spare and is connected but idling. The Dell that has the RAID array is connected directly to the main Cisco. One Netgear handles an Apple TV2 and a media PC that is nearly always asleep.

The other Netgear is off the grid; it's connected to one of the LAN ports of the AT&T 3800RG and handles 4 of the 5 static public IP addresses for my Cisco lab, the fifth static IP is assigned to the TimeCapsule as it's WAN address.

The TimeCapsule is on 192.168.1.0, the 3800RG is on 192.168.2.0 so they are on completely separate subnets; there is no LAN traffic from the 3800RG on the LAN at all. The TimeCapsule is in the DMZ, as far as it knows, it is connected directly to my service provider...

I really wish I could pinpoint when this problem first appeared because it seems like I used to be able to connect right to the Dell and work just fine but I really don't remember because before I put the RAID array in, there wasn't much need to. I can, and will try, shutting off the RAID array and rebooting the Dell and see if it still has trouble with a stale connection to the single hdd that is in it; maybe that will shed some light on this...

-Gary