Very Slow Connection to External Drives

[asggold]

Hopefully I have put this in the correct forum location but here goes...

Over the last couple weeks I have been moving about 40,000+ photos to a External WD My Cloud Drive due to the major issues with iPhoto having that many photos. After finally completing the move of all these photos I noticed a VERY SLOW connection opening up and viewing those photos on the external drive (just looking through Finder, not using iPhoto at all). However, when I go to my old windows computer the pictures seem to pull up much faster.

After doing some research for the past few days I have been reading about some major bugs with Finder using AFP & SMB Network connections. I have tried all the suggestions about using a program called "Path Finder" to try and speed up that connection. It was a bit faster but not much.

So, What I am trying to find out is: Is the issue with the slow speed related to the drive format (NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, etc..)? and, if so, will re-formatting the external drive to HFS+ fix the issue/bug with Finder?

 

[satcomer]

How are you connecting? Through a wireless connection and the router (the WD Cloud NAS)? if it is a wired Ethernet connection then are you using CAT 6 and switches?

 

[asggold]

I have tried both wired and wireless (same network connection as the windows computer). Also tried from multiple computers. I am sure it is not a network connection because I can use the same network plug for a Mac and Windows computer where the Windows computer is ALWAYS much faster. I am trying to rid of all the Windows computers anyway as they have been replaced with Macs. So, does not need to be a format that works with both, just Mac OS would be fine. The WD My Cloud is plugged directly into the router and all the connections are CAT6 Cables. I tried switching ports, etc... and nothing has effected the speed. The Macs are just always slower connecting.

Just a bit more of the detail around the speed:
Where I get to the speed difference is t the file level. For example, I can see the folders and flip through the different folders and levels of folders pretty quick. Where the Mac is much slower than the PC is when I try to open the pictures in the folders. Takes about 5 minutes to show the pictures in the folders on the Mac. On the PC it takes seconds. Even worse, the PC is about a 5 year old laptop with only 4 GIG RAM where most of the Macs are brand new with 8 GIG RAM and an i5 or i7 chip. Should be much faster than the PC