Just built a HTPC and hooked it up to my desktop through my second gigabit port. I'm able to share files and internet but i was wondering about transfer speeds. I'm only able to get up to maybe 30-35 megabytes/second (280mbit). Shouldn't i be closer to the 1000mbit capacity of the cards? I realize other things come into play here (chipset, bus speeds) but i thought i'd get a little faster transfer speeds on newer machines.

7/23/2008 11:30:33 AM

Harddrives typically can only do about 30-35 MB/s depending on what kind of data you're reading/writing. The only way to increase this would be to run a RAID in both computers.

7/23/2008 11:49:50 AM

Yeah i was thinking the HDDs might be the limiting factor.

7/23/2008 12:10:28 PM

copying files through windows file sharing is inherently slow too. I've seen transfers go twice as fast over a LAN using FTP compared to windows file share.

7/23/2008 3:18:27 PM

Shit, on Windows 9x it was quicker to FTP files from one HDD to another in the same machine than it was to use windows copy. I'm not sure if xp/Vista has fixed that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still faster to use FTP locally.

Windows copy = teh suq.

7/23/2008 3:20:47 PM

Yeah i've been hearing if i want to make the fastest media server just use a linux box for storage because it handles file transfers so much better than windows. It's just i want Vista on the HTPC for media center and gaming. I'm not really complaining about 35megabytes/sec, just wondering why it's not faster.

Wouldn't the HDD's be the biggest limiting factor?

7/23/2008 3:30:11 PM

get you some raptor's and call it a day

7/23/2008 3:30:22 PM

You might want to make sure you're using CAT6 cable too if you want maximum performance.

7/23/2008 3:33:04 PM

^yeah true it's only 5e but i heard that shouldn't matter as much. Not that big a deal because everything will just be played over the network to the HTPC.

7/23/2008 3:41:13 PM

Quote :

"Harddrives typically can only do about 30-35 MB/s depending on what kind of data you're reading/writing."

i don't know about that...i almost exclusively use seagate .11 drives (gen2 PMR) and i CONSISTENTLY get 60+ MB/s between drives via SATA (and i know you said typically, so maybe this doesn't apply)

now, one thing i've never been able to remember is the difference between MB and Mb and mB and whatever, so maybe i really am only getting 30-35 MB/s, but i'm taking this from what windows supports

and yes, i realize this is over a network, but on a gigabit network, the bottleneck shouldn't be the network interface

7/23/2008 3:45:17 PM

^i know the bottleneck isn't the gigabit cards. It's more to do with the chipset, express bus, windows limitations, and HDD limitations.

B is Byte

b is bit

8 bits in a byte.

Transfer speeds are usually shown in bits, and sizes are usually shown in bytes.

7/23/2008 3:55:26 PM

yea, the cable isn't the issue, cat5 can do gigabit, it's just not optimized for it, 5e should be just fine

my guess is it's OS overhead and hard drive limitations, could be network drivers as well.

7/23/2008 5:04:19 PM

Quote :

"Yeah i've been hearing if i want to make the fastest media server just use a linux box for storage because it handles file transfers so much better than windows. It's just i want Vista on the HTPC for media center and gaming. I'm not really complaining about 35megabytes/sec, just wondering why it's not faster. Wouldn't the HDD's be the biggest limiting factor?"

I dont know if linux will make up for it.

I run a VIA EPIA 800 file server and it transfers at the speed of the hard drive . the bonus is it isnt windows, and runs at 23W with the install hard drive spinning.


check hard drive speed
hdparam -Tt /dev/hda

[Edited on July 23, 2008 at 5:13 PM. Reason : .]

7/23/2008 5:12:56 PM

Quote :

"Yeah i've been hearing if i want to make the fastest media server just use a linux box for storage because it handles file transfers so much better than windows."

cifs ~= samba

I just setup an iscsi target at work and I'm seeing ~35MB/s read and about 50MB/s write over gigE within each building and fiber linking the buildings. Just using plain old dell boxes with SATA (150??) 7200rpm drives

7/23/2008 6:00:27 PM