File Transfer on Home Network

[aadeshgandhi]

Hello,
I recently bought Netgear N900 router, hooked my external HDD's and they do show up as network drives. Now when I try to move my data (mostly movies) from laptop to these drives it takes a lot of time. I wanted to know if there is a setting that I need to change to speed up this process.
I know hooking up the HDD's to the laptop is the easiest option but would like to do it wirelessly for the data on the laptop and moving forward would like to save the data that I download directly to the external HDD's. I tried unzipping a movie a few days back stored on my shared drive and took me about 30 mins to do that while on my laptop it only takes me couple of minutes at the max. What is the best option for me to get good speed while saving or transferring data to the external HDD's.
The laptop is an i5 with 4GB ram running on a 64-bit Windows7 OS and the HDD's are Segate's with 2.0 USB.


Thanks,
aadesh

 

[imagoon]

I would eliminate portions of the system until you find the hang up. Cable right to the router, try doing a copy / unzip. Is it slow? Then the 'NAS' is underpowered and can't keep up. Is it normal? Then the wireless may not be able to handle it. Most of the USB based "NAS" units are way under powered.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What kind of throughput are you actually getting?

 

[aadeshgandhi]

Hello to both of you, I apologize but most of what you guys wrote went bonkers. I am pretty new to networking and if you could break it down it would be helpful.

@ Dave - I am not sure how throughput is calculated but in my case when I tried to copy a movie from my laptop to the shared drive, I got an error after 4-5 minutes stating that drive was not available, other times it took about 40 mins to an hour to move ~ 700MB of data.

Aadesh

 

[aadeshgandhi]

Guys any suggestions? When I transferred data by connecting the external HDD to the laptop via 2.0 slot I got speeds upwards of 60MB/s, while the same wirelessly my start speed was about 600 kb/s and was decreasing consistently finally hovering around 80-100kb/s mark.

aadesh

 

[jumpncrash]

First culprit is your wireless, don't expect more than 1MB/s on wireless G, wreless N can do a bit better but again, don't expect miracles. 100mbps connection, you can get up to 12MB/s 1Gbps connection, you can get 120MB/s your solution is obviously running cables

 

[JackMDS]

There are two aspects to this issue.

1. Wireless - Your Router is N900 and has a Dual Band Wireless capacity. if Upgrade the Laptop with a Good Dual Band card and the general Wireless Speed will significantly improve.

2. NAS' on Wireless Router. These NAS' are significantly lower than their electronic rating. This is a problem across the board with all the USB NAS Routers, and there nothing that can be done about it.

If transfer and storage are important to you get one of the $200 mini computers with Giga Wire capacity, and use it as live storage Server.

 

[aadeshgandhi]

There are two aspects to this issue.

1. Wireless - Your Router is N900 and has a Dual Band Wireless capacity. if Upgrade the Laptop with a Good Dual Band card and the general Wireless Speed will significantly improve.

2. NAS' on Wireless Router. These NAS' are significantly lower than their electronic rating. This is a problem across the board with all the USB NAS Routers, and there nothing that can be done about it.

If transfer and storage are important to you get one of the $200 mini computers with Giga Wire capacity, and use it as live storage Server.

Thank You Jack for the reply, It surely might be the case that I do not have the correct equipment to do what I want to do... rather than posting problems with my current setup which is inept . I will tell you what I am looking for and you can then guide me to the best possible setup.

1) I would like to wirelessly save data to a network drive with fast speeds.
2) This network drive should be accessible via internet for I or others can download from it. Also I should have the ability to choose the folder's I want to share with others.
3) Support via DLNA.

Right now I have 2 external HDD from Segate, 1 TB 2.0 and 3TB 3.0 since I wanted to utilize these I bought the Netgear router as it has 2 USB's to make any drive a network drive also Netgear offers access to these drives via their ReadySHARE feature.
Current setup works for the 2 n 3 but 1 is doomed. What would be your suggestion that will help me build a network that supports all 3 and if can utilize my current HDD's and router in that it would be great!


Thanks again,
aadesh

 

[JackMDS]

If the external drives when plugged into a regular Computer provide you with the Speed that you need. Set a small computer that Giga capable network card, running Windows7 or other server capable OS.

Connect this computer with a cable to the Router and plug the external drive to the computer's USB. With the correct configuration you probably will be able to use the way you want.

Actauly if you do have a computer you can install in it regular large drives and use it in the same manner that the external HDD's. it will be faster and more reliable.

There is freeware software that can provide the same features (and much more) that is provided by the add-ons on the external drive.

 

[aadeshgandhi]

If the external drives when plugged into a regular Computer provide you with the Speed that you need. Set a small computer that Giga capable network card, running Windows7 or other server capable OS.

Connect this computer with a cable to the Router and plug the external drive to the computer's USB. With the correct configuration you probably will be able to use the way you want.

Actauly if you do have a computer you can install in it regular large drives and use it in the same manner that the external HDD's. it will be faster and more reliable.

There is freeware software that can provide the same features (and much more) that is provided by the add-ons on the external drive.

Jack,
I do not have a spare computer but if I need a buy one just for this purpose which one would you suggest and also can you point me to the freeware software options that I can use?

Thanks again.
Aadesh.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Also keep in mind that you likely won't be happy with speeds when unzipping files from a non-local drive (like over a network). When you unzip a remote file, your computer is downloading data, uncompressing it, and uploading the uncompressed data back to the remote storage. Over a wireless link, this would be a very slow operation.

If you have to do that, it would be faster to copy the file to your local machine, unzip it, and then upload that uncompressed file back to the remote storage.

 

[aadeshgandhi]

Also keep in mind that you likely won't be happy with speeds when unzipping files from a non-local drive (like over a network). When you unzip a remote file, your computer is downloading data, uncompressing it, and uploading the uncompressed data back to the remote storage. Over a wireless link, this would be a very slow operation.

If you have to do that, it would be faster to copy the file to your local machine, unzip it, and then upload that uncompressed file back to the remote storage.

Yup, I had done that just as a test... but I do not intended to unzip files shared on the network! Thanks for the heads-up!

 

[aadeshgandhi]

Hello All,
Thank you for your support on the forum, continuing on the post from yesterday I wanted to discuss it more. I looked at the personal cloud options and as test created a free account on Tonido. It was fairly easy and I could share any folder from my laptop and grant access. Jack mentioned freeware software could you suggest some or Tonido is good enough?

1) My laptop (server) was connected to internet thru wi-fi and so was my friend’s, he got a speed of ~ 180kbps to download a ~65mb file. When we tried to download the same amount of data from Mediafire he got speed of ~ 550 kbps? How can I achieve download speed like for my home server?

2) What type of computer I need to buy to build my server? I have two HDD’s that I would love to use; one is a 2.0 while other one is a 3.0 USB. I do not have a spare desktop so I would be looking for deals online or craigslist.

3) Now let’s say once the server is set and hardwired into the router, what changes do I have to make to my laptop to ensure that I get good transfer speed (wireless) between my laptop and the server. I do not have a 5Ghz card on my laptop, I have Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 card on my laptop and have a Netgear N900 router.


Thanks,
Aadesh Gandhi.

 

[beginner99]

NAS-Routers usually have ultra crappy performance. Basically unusable for anything else than simple documents.

1) My laptop (server) was connected to internet thru wi-fi and so was my friend’s, he got a speed of ~ 180kbps to download a ~65mb file. When we tried to download the same amount of data from Mediafire he got speed of ~ 550 kbps? How can I achieve download speed like for my home server?

What's your upload speed? that will most certainly be the limit

3) Now let’s say once the server is set and hardwired into the router, what changes do I have to make to my laptop to ensure that I get good transfer speed (wireless) between my laptop and the server. I do not have a 5Ghz card on my laptop, I have Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 card on my laptop and have a Netgear N900 router.

Even with wireless N 5 MB/s can be considered good. Forget anything above 10MB/s. Gigabit ethernet is only thing that offers reasonable performance. You can reach HDD write speeds with it.

 

[exdeath]

TCP/IP over 10 gigabit Infiniband and a SSD based SAN/NAS. All problems resolved.

 

[aadeshgandhi]

TCP/IP over 10 gigabit Infiniband and a SSD based SAN/NAS. All problems resolved.

Could you please elaborate, I am very new to networking and not familiar with most of the terminology you used.


Aadesh.

 

[mikegg]

Can someone recommend a router that will transfer files wirelessly by at least 10 megebytes/second?

I too, am sick of the slow transfer speed wirelessly with my router.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I doubt you would find one that would do it reliably. That's 80Mbps which is actually quite a stretch on most wireless networking.

You will also likely need something more powerful than a router with a USB port or its own internal hard drive. You probably would need to look into a NAS unit such as a Synology, and connect it via gigabit ethernet to your router.

 

[aadeshgandhi]

I doubt you would find one that would do it reliably. That's 80Mbps which is actually quite a stretch on most wireless networking.

You will also likely need something more powerful than a router with a USB port or its own internal hard drive. You probably would need to look into a NAS unit such as a Synology, and connect it via gigabit ethernet to your router.

Hello Thecoolnessrune,
Was this response for me?

R/
Aadesh

 

[thecoolnessrune]

The advice works for both you and senttoschool A proper NAS box will provide you with better throughput then the NAS abilities built into most routers. It also will be a more robust and flexible solution if you need backups or RAID mirroring.

 

[mikegg]

The advice works for both you and senttoschool A proper NAS box will provide you with better throughput then the NAS abilities built into most routers. It also will be a more robust and flexible solution if you need backups or RAID mirroring.

Not very practical as it costs extra and a little over kill.

I just need a faster router/network card?

 

[nusyo]

on wifi G don't expect more than 2MB/s (more like 1-1.5MB/s depending on distance)
that's still over 7 mins for a 700 MB file

like the others said you need to look for gigabit NAS boxes that you will connect through wire (forget wifi for this).

and even after you put together all this locally, your friend won't be able to download anything faster than your upload speed, which is pretty low (this is set by your ISP like comcast, at&t etc.)

 

[Pulsar]

First culprit is your wireless, don't expect more than 1MB/s on wireless G, wreless N can do a bit better but again, don't expect miracles. 100mbps connection, you can get up to 12MB/s 1Gbps connection, you can get 120MB/s your solution is obviously running cables

What? Where are you getting those numbers? My G regularly pulled twice that up to around 2.8 MB/s.

My N network (installed to days ago) gets 6-8 MB/s.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Not very practical as it costs extra and a little over kill.

I just need a faster router/network card?

I sincerely doubt you are going to find a router with a SoC potent enough to give you 10MB/s SMB/CIFS speed over wireless. You are solidly in NAS territory there.

If you *must* have an all in one router / storage combo, the Netgear WNDR4700 CENTRIA is your only bet really. It's basically one of the only routers that are designed with what you're asking. They essentially shoehorned a NAS' internals into their 802.11ac router (but this device only supports 802.11n), and gave you room to install a single hard drive. It will be able to give you speeds about double what you're requesting.

Problem? It's $230. But that's again because its essentially a NAS crammed into a router. For that kind of money you're extremely close to a full NAS solution such as the Seagate BlackArmor (2 bays) or the Netgear Stora (also 2 bays).

But if you really need an all in one appliance, the CENTRIA is pretty much your only choice. A new network card will definitely not fix your situation.

 

[aadeshgandhi]

So guys there is nothing out there that I can build that will do what I want?