Speeding up file moving?

[scooterspal]

Can someone help me with the math on this.

I need to move around 100 gigs of video files from my Dell
GX-150 (1mhz, W2K-SP4, Fast Ethernet) system to my Western Digital
2T hard drive that resides on the network via its own ethernet (1
Gigibit capable) connection. I have a Linksys EZXS88W 8-port workgroup
switch between them.

At the moment it is taking 2 hours and 40 minutes or so to do the
move. This is with nothing else going on on the Dell and no other
files being moved on my tiny network.

First off, does the math work out? Is the time to move this much
data correct, based on what I have for a network?

If not, any suggestions as to what may be wrong or what I can do
to speed it up a bit.

Thanks,
George

 

[Phillip Windell]

Files sizes are in GigaBytes (not GigaBits)

Wirespeed is measured in GigaBits (not GigaBytes)

A Byte is 8 times larger than a Bit

So a 1 GigaByte File = 8 GigaBits

Now do the math.

Also,
1. TCP/IP has an overhead cost
2. The OS File System I/O has an overhead cost
3. Hardware based errors and Physical Layer errors do and always occur to
some degree and require a resend of the same packet
4. In addition to all that, a single connection never uses 100% of a Wire's
capacity,...that's why you can create additional connections over the same
Wire after one connection has already been started. It takes multiple
connections over the same path to "fill up" a Wire's capacity, that's how
Download Accelerators function,...by creating multiple connections for the
same download "job" and then reassemble the dowloaded product's "fragments"
after the fact.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.

 

[scooterspal]

Download Accelerators function,...by creating multiple connections for the
same download "job" and then reassemble the dowloaded product's "fragments"
after the fact.

Thank you.

I tried one of those software accelerators (Burst Copy) and got only a
10-15% speed increase. Nowhere near the 200% they said was possible. It
was at least something.

Now that I have looked further into this is seems switching to a Gigibit
system is my only hope. The rate comparisons I've seen say real world
speeds would be about 4 times that of my present Fast Ethernet (that's
about 10MB/sec now, apparently). Again, nowhere near the 10X theoretical
speed increase claimed by the manufacturers.

This is still faster than USB2 by about 10% and would not require
switching cables back and forth between computers and drives.

That said, is there any reason you can see why I could not install a
Gigibit card in my present Dell P3, 1Ghz, W2K system (and purchase a
Gigibit switch) and expect to get something close to real world speeds?

Thanks,
George

 

[Phillip Windell]

I tried one of those software accelerators (Burst Copy) and got only a
10-15% speed increase. Nowhere near the 200% they said was possible. It
was at least something.

200% is non-sense.

Now that I have looked further into this is seems switching to a Gigibit
system is my only hope. The rate comparisons I've seen say real world
speeds would be about 4 times that of my present Fast Ethernet (that's
about 10MB/sec now, apparently). Again, nowhere near the 10X theoretical
speed increase claimed by the manufacturers.

The manufacturers claims are non-sense. It's snake oil.

That said, is there any reason you can see why I could not install a
Gigibit card in my present Dell P3, 1Ghz, W2K system (and purchase a
Gigibit switch)

Is there any reason why you don't think you could? Spend the money, but the
stuff, ...there is it.

and expect to get something close to real world speeds?

I have already described the "real world" to you in the first post. You
are wanting a "fantasy world" promised by the "manufacturers" that you
mention above. You have to learn to stop believing stuff like that.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[scooterspal]

I have already described the "real world" to you in the first post. You
are wanting a "fantasy world" promised by the "manufacturers" that you
mention above. You have to learn to stop believing stuff like that.

More reading has now indicated the speed issue may have more to do with
the WD NAS drive I've installed. It gets very low marks for speed. Some
of the worst, apparently. This may be the bottleneck in all this.

Oh well. $500 down the drain.

 

[Phillip Windell]

Ah! Ok,...sorry to hear that sir. :-\

I suppose that is why the higher quality NAS's cost 1/3rd of what I paid for
my house.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[goarilla]

More reading has now indicated the speed issue may have more to do with
the WD NAS drive I've installed. It gets very low marks for speed. Some
of the worst, apparently. This may be the bottleneck in all this.

Oh well. $500 down the drain.

why ?
it's nice to have a gigabit switch
my father can copy files from my workstation at 30 MB/s
and i'm limited by still using old E-IDE cables which bottleneck at that
speed eg UDMA-2 is the max.

if i would replace them i would probably be able to push data out about
+45 MB/s (fairly recent eide 160 gb drive).

it's already 3 times as fast and when copying large datasets
it does add up, if you want to max out your network link
then buy a RAID controller but cheap home NAS solutions are always
slow i get 2-3 MB/s max on my iomega 160 gb NAS hard drive, so
yours seems to be fairly decent in comparison