Transfer Speed

[Buzzin]

Finished setting up a basic NAS with 1x80GB IDE,1x250GB IDE, 1x250GB SATA and 1x1TB SATA.

The system was built using old bits and pieces laying around in my loft, I've stipulated in other posts that I know nothing about networking and have got as far as I have by reading posts etc.
Components of NAS box are:
Motherboard - Foxconn G31MX Series
Processor - x64-full on Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5300 @ 2.60GHz
Memory - 4GB
File type is UFS as I didn't understand how to setup ZFS!

I disabled the onboard 10/100 lan and put a 10/100/1000 TP-Link TG-3269 Gigabit PCI Adapter in as I thought this is what I had to do lol.
What I wanted to know, are the transfer speeds I'm getting are OK with the setup I have? See pics below and were based on transferring a 2.63GB file to NAS and then back to PC, file took about 3 1/2 minutes each way.

PCin.jpg

NASout.jpg

I'm connected via Virgin Media 100MB broadband through a Netgear WNR2200 300Mbps wireless router. My NAS is hard wired if you need to know.
The system is primarily used for streaming media through to my XBOX and my 2 children have a PS3 each as well as Android tablets.
All seems to be working ok.

[Buzzin]

Had a nosey around NAS without a clue what I was doing.
Ended up at Network|LAN Management|Advanced Config|Media - changed to 1000baseTX Full Duplex and thinking I was clever finding this with no help proceeded to change.
Had to re-enable the onboard LAN and reset to factory defaults. So, my question is how the heck do I enable this new card I have purchased to work at 1000baseTX. My onboard LAN is only 10/100
I have a cat5e cable linking router to NAS.
I'm really sorry if this a simple thing to do, but like I said I'm VERY new to networking and fully understand that it is a big learning curve for someone in their 40's lol.
If someone from the UK is willing to help over the phone, jot your name and number down and I'll give you a call

[ChriZathens]

Is your router gb or 10/100?
If you connect 2 machines with gigabit cards using a router/switch which is not gigabit, then your whole network falls back to 100Mbit.
All machines involved in a file transfer must be gigabit in order to take advantage of the network speed.


Edit: Googling a bit, I found this: http://www.netgear.com/home/products/wi ... r2200.aspx
So it seems that router's ports are 10/100. There's your bottleneck...

[Buzzin]

Just found that myself, so there is no work around. It has to be a router with gigabit?

Many thanks for your help though, it was doing my head in. Out of work, just had an operation and thought I'd pass the time away by making my own NAS, lol. If I knew some parts would be that difficult I could have just plugged a usb hdd to the router.

[Buzzin]

Is this the sort of thing I need to look for, price is a major factor though.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Netgear-WNR35 ... 43a0f7a256

[ChriZathens]

Or you could stay with this router and get a gigabit switch http://shop.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/search ... NewKw=true

Plug a cable from the router to the switch and plug all your machines to the switch. All machines plugged on the switch will communicate at 1000Mbps via the switch (assuming of course they all have gb nics). The router will only provide internet access.
In my experience dedicated switches are almost always faster than the ones that routers have.
Of course this way you will have an extra piece of equipment. This is not necessarily bad, but depends on your space/topology.

[Buzzin]

Point taken and understood. I think I'll go with a router first mainly because of the location that Virgin Media put the cable in. It'll be to much of a headache to move everything, xbox hard wired (old 360 without wifi) but again Thank You for the advice and help.

[Buzzin]

ChriZathens, new router arrived this morning (ordered at 10:00pm for next day delivery). Just wanted to thank you again for your help.

drive2drive.jpg

NAS2PC.jpg

PC2NAS.jpg

I know that drive speeds are also a factor, but not to bothered at the moment, just pleased to have it up and running and now decent transfer speeds.

[ChriZathens]

Glad I could help!!!
Welcome to n4f world!
Cheers!

P.S.: Regarding your speeds from one nas drive to other:
Speed is not lower than the other transfers. Notice that both up and down speeds are about equal.
Combine both speeds and you will see that it is about the same speed as the other two transfers.
This is because you obviously copied data between two shared drives.
So network was still used, it is just that in this case half the speed was used to up and the other half to down.
In order to get maximum speed for internal transfers you should use cli. That way network speed will not get involved in the process. Do a test copy between two drives using command line and you will see that it is actually much faster than network transfers. But since no network will get involved, no graph will be generated- you will a timer to see how long it will take and devide with the file size in order to verify this....