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Slow wireless data transfer to/from external HD

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claytop

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 23, 2012
3
0
Hi all - new to forum so be gentle! lol

I have just made the leap from Windows to MAC OS and have just bought a new 2012 MBA 13" and loving it...

My problem is this. I wireless file transfer a lot between various external HDs (one being a network drive) and have never had any problem with transfer speed when on Windows.... but on the MBA it is painfully slow! Around 3-5meg a second!

I have a Virgin Superhub router (Netgear wireless N) and am running a 30meg connection for my broadband speed.

Whilst streaming a video is fine over wireless - data transfer is slow!

Have googled this and a few people are saying that MAC wirless transfer is slow... is this the case?

Any help appreciated.

Many thanks :)
 
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cubbi

macrumors newbie
Jul 23, 2012
6
0
Yes I agree,its painfully slow! My first set up of my new macbook air and I transferred files from my last computer which was approx 380 gigs, showed 215hrs to transfer via wireless so I gave up and bought a thunderbolt to ethernet cable -only took 3 hours!
 
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claytop

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 23, 2012
3
0
So it does seem that it is definitely slower than Windows for transferring!

I'm currently trying to transfer 285gig from one external HD (plugged into my MBA) to a Western Digital Network drive plugged into my router... can't see how to do this any quicker.
 
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KlytusLord

macrumors regular
Apr 11, 2011
174
14
claytop said:
So it does seem that it is definitely slower than Windows for transferring!

I'm currently trying to transfer 285gig from one external HD (plugged into my MBA) to a Western Digital Network drive plugged into my router... can't see how to do this any quicker.
Click to expand...

I have a network of 12 machines at home, Macs, Linux and different flavors of Windows. Transferring files between Macs is the slowest of any of the possible combinations on my network, so much so, that I have a windows machine running a program called Allway Sync, and I use it to sync my iMac with my MacBook via the Windows machine. This method is still significantly faster than syncing the two Macs directly.

I would definitely say that Macs are on the slow end of file transfer over WiFi compared to the other available OSes, with Linux being the fastest.

After upgrading my MacBook to Mountain Lion yesterday, WiFi file transfer is even slower than it was. I copied my updated Apps from the MacBook to the iMac, so I would not have to download them again from the App Store, and transferring Pages, for example, took 37 minutes for 584MB. The other OSes can make that transfer is less than 5 minutes every time.

I love my Macs, but this is one area I wish was a more like Windows/Linux :(
 
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