You also might these options as well (if there's no problem with your HDD/NAS and you've tried above suggestion) :
1. Use different port for you NAS, especially if you use computer chassis's USB port or cheap card reader/port hub.
2. Run Bitcoin Core on different computer (with same NAS obviously)
The connection is over wired Ethernet, not USB. Unfortunately, despite changing some of my SMB settings, the same issue replicated itself.
Not sure what to do now, but I suspect I'll be suspending my attempts at deploying a full node.