ss4200e: Incredibly low transfer speeds fro USB connected harddrive

[idata]

Hi,

I'm hoping you can help a newbie. I've recently just purchased and installed a Fujitsu/Siemens ss4300e server. I have it up and running and have been able to connect to it via my laptop. I am trying to move about 100GB of files onto the server from a standalone USB harddrive which I have plugged into the 4200's front USB port. To do this I have accessed the server's menu via its software and clicked on the links for the shared and usb drives to open them as folders on my laptop with windows explorer. Once open I have tried initiating the file transfer as either a copy/paste or drag/drop; I've tired it several times in hope of getting a faster transfer result). After a fairly quick start for the first 1-2GB of transfer, the transfer slows down to just below 999KBps (according to the WIndow's copy popup window) and stays there.... only 1 day and 8 hours to go! I've seen posts indicating I should expect 25MBps transfer speeds at a minimum, and I am concerned because I eventually want to use this server to stream audio and video.

Here's a bit about my system:

Router: Linksys WRT54G (10/100, 4-port ehternet and wireless), soon to be upgraded.

Switch: Gigabyte switch

Computer: HPdv9910us laptop (running Vista Home Premium, and accesing the server via my wireless network)

Can you please help me figure out and fix this issue?

[Daniel_O_Intel]

Are all file transfers slow, or just the ones through the front USB? What kind of transfer times do you get across the network?

[idata]

Thanks. Same thing through the back USB port. How do I test my network speeds?

[Edward_Z_Intel]

I assume both your router and storage are connected to the gigabyte switch, and your laptop is connecting to your router via wireless right? When you copy files as you described, it's not copied directly from USB to HDD. Instead, the data path is like this: USB => storage => switch => router => laptop (via wireless) => router => switch => storage => HDD. This creates a lot of latency, and here the wireless connection seems to be the bottleneck.

As the storage doesn't support copying from USB to HDD directly, I'd suggest you connect the USB disk to your laptop, and connect your laptop to the switch with a network cable.

Also I'd suggest you upgrade to Vista SP2 if you haven't done so. It fixed issues with slow network transfer.

[idata]

Thanks for the tip. Your assumption about my network configuration was correct, and I am running SP2. So here's what I did, based on your email...

• I tried connecting the USB hard-drive directly to my laptop (laptop still on the wireless network), and my connection speeds a whopping 1.45MB/sec .
• So I tried the same thing as above but with the laptop connected (hardwired) directly to my router. My speeds jumped up to just under 10MB/sec. Much better, but still less than half of what most others are reporting.
• So I tried the same thing as above but transferring a file directly from my harddrive. My transfer speed started out at about 4MB/sec and slowly climbed up to just under 10MB/sec over the course of a couple of minutes.

Any suggestions for how to get up in the 20+MB/sec range?

[Edward_Z_Intel]

USB could also be a bottleneck here. Try copying something on your hard drive to the storage, or vise versa.

[Edward_Z_Intel]

Oh, I just noticed that you said you connected your laptop to your router (hardwired). Most likely the wired port on your router is 100Mbps, so the theoretical transfer rate is 12.5MB/s. 10MB/s is pretty good already in real world.

To achieve ~20MB/s, you must have a gigabit network connection. That's why I suggested you to connect your laptop to the gigabit switch. You may also want to check whether your laptop network adapter and the network cable supports 1000Gbps.