Slow Connection from Mac to PC

[Plusbits]

I'm trying to transfer a lot (read: 50GB+) of files from my iMac to my Vista laptop. I've tried a direct ethernet connection using one cable, and the transfer rate was stupidly slow. Currently I'm trying connecting each to my old router via ethernet cable (with no DSL line connected) and the transfer rate still seems exceptionally slow considering
Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this?
Thanks in advance

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I'm trying to transfer a lot (read: 50GB+) of files from my iMac to my Vista laptop. I've tried a direct ethernet connection using one cable, and the transfer rate was stupidly slow. Currently I'm trying connecting each to my old router via ethernet cable (with no DSL line connected) and the transfer rate still seems exceptionally slow considering
Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this?
Thanks in advance

First thing to check is your cable. Is it crimped anywhere? If it is, that may cause the Ethernet protocol to scale back its transfer rate to accommodate the cable.

 

[Plusbits]

To my knowledge, neither of the cables are crimped

 

[merl1n]

I'm trying to transfer a lot (read: 50GB+) of files from my iMac to my Vista laptop. I've tried a direct ethernet connection using one cable, and the transfer rate was stupidly slow. Currently I'm trying connecting each to my old router via ethernet cable (with no DSL line connected) and the transfer rate still seems exceptionally slow considering
Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this?
Thanks in advance

Few questions...

1. 50GB is a lot of data. Are these mostly many small files or some large files? Small files take a lot of time due to the overhead of transmitting packets and getting acknowledgement for these packets.

2. How are you doing the transfer (Finder copy, ftp, scp, etc.)?

3. What is the speed of your ethernet card on your Vista PC?

 

[Plusbits]

Few questions...

1. 50GB is a lot of data. Are these mostly many small files or some large files? Small files take a lot of time due to the overhead of transmitting packets and getting acknowledgement for these packets.

2. How are you doing the transfer (Finder copy, ftp, scp, etc.)?

3. What is the speed of your ethernet card on your Vista PC?

1) About half of it is music files, a fair few video files and about 5GB of documents and photo's

2) Finder Copy at the moment

3) From what I can tell, 100MB/s

 

[merl1n]

1) About half of it is music files, a fair few video files and about 5GB of documents and photo's

2) Finder Copy at the moment

3) From what I can tell, 100MB/s

So it sounds like a lot of small files and 100Mb (that's megabits, not megabytes) is not very fast. Your mac's ethernet is 1Gb (gigabit) but has to throttle down to match your Vista laptop.

Finder copies are slower than the other methods I mentioned due to the overhead of transmit packet, wait for acknowledgement, transmit packet, ...
The other methods do the same, but there is less overhead.

Music files are small
Videos are larger
Documents vary by size

The more files, the longer it will take.

Also, did you disable your virus checker on your Vista laptop as this will slow things down even more?

 

[Plusbits]

So it sounds like a lot of small files and 100Mb (that's megabits, not megabytes) is not very fast. Your mac's ethernet is 1Gb (gigabit) but has to throttle down to match your Vista laptop.

Finder copies are slower than the other methods I mentioned due to the overhead of transmit packet, wait for acknowledgement, transmit packet, ...
The other methods do the same, but there is less overhead.

Music files are small
Videos are larger
Documents vary by size

The more files, the longer it will take.

Also, did you disable your virus checker on your Vista laptop as this will slow things down even more?

Sorry, I meant 100Mb/s, my mistake
Both the firewall and anti-virus were disabled before I began the transfer
Could you possibly suggest an easy way to FTP or SCP the files across?
Thanks

 

[merl1n]

Sorry, I meant 100Mb/s, my mistake
Both the firewall and anti-virus were disabled before I began the transfer
Could you possibly suggest an easy way to FTP or SCP the files across?
Thanks

You can use the Terminal application to do this. Do you know unix commands?

 

[merl1n]

You can use the Terminal application to do this. Do you know unix commands?

Also, if you are not on a network, use cp instead of scp (secure copy). scp encrypts the data first (packet by packet) and after it is sent, Vista has to decrypt the packet. Again a lot of overhead.

 

[Plusbits]

You can use the Terminal application to do this. Do you know unix commands?

Nope, sorry I don't
I'm a Windows boy recently converted to Mac

 

[Plusbits]

Also, if you are not on a network, use cp instead of scp (secure copy). scp encrypts the data first (packet by packet) and after it is sent, Vista has to decrypt the packet. Again a lot of overhead.

Technically it's just a computer-to-computer network, so the encryption really isn't necessary. How would I go about doing this?

 

[merl1n]

Nope, sorry I don't
I'm a Windows boy recently converted to Mac

Well, I'm not about to start teaching you unix as if you make a mistake, you can do a lot of damage.

I would suggest a flash usb drive (the larger the better) and just do a finder copy to that drive (as many files as you can fit). Then unmount it and insert it in your Vista laptop and copy the files to it. Keep repeating the process until you have everything you want. Otherwise, you are limited to a Finder copy over ethernet.

 

[TJones]

The limiting factor here could very well be your hard disk. Laptop hard drives are generally designed to be more power efficient than fast so even if your network connection is capable of faster transfer rates your disk isn't able to keep up.

 

[Plusbits]

The limiting factor here could very well be your hard disk. Laptop hard drives are generally designed to be more power efficient than fast so even if your network connection is capable of faster transfer rates your disk isn't able to keep up.

I never really thought of that. But I don't think the speed restrictions would impede the transfer rate to this level. The laptop has got nothing on it since I formatted it the other day, so there's plenty of free space to fill, so it can just stick the files wherever it wants to

 

[TJones]

I never really thought of that. But I don't think the speed restrictions would impede the transfer rate to this level. The laptop has got nothing on it since I formatted it the other day, so there's plenty of free space to fill, so it can just stick the files wherever it wants to

It's not a question of how much space exactly. It's about how fast your new laptop can physicaly transfer all those little bits of data to the spinning platters of your hard drive.

 

[Eraserhead]

Sorry, I meant 100Mb/s, my mistake
Both the firewall and anti-virus were disabled before I began the transfer
Could you possibly suggest an easy way to FTP or SCP the files across?
Thanks

Download WinSCP for the PC, set up remote Login (system preferences>Sharing) on the Mac and connect to the IP address.

To be honest its probably the speed limit of the connection and you should just be patient .

 

[italiano40]

put the mac in target mode and use a firewire cable to connect to vista then you can use it as a hard drive and it should work fast

 

[Consultant]

What is the exact transfer speed?

100k per second?
1MB per second?
5MB per second?

Chances are your PC only has 100mbit ethernet.

Also, if both computers have gigabit ethernet, neither of your laptop harddrives can transfer at full gigabit ethernet speed.

You need cat 5e or cat 6 for gigabit ethernet (cat 5 alone won't do).

50Gb is a lot. But will only take about 1-2 hours on gigabit ethernet between macs.

 

[Plusbits]

Download WinSCP for the PC, set up remote Login (system preferences>Sharing) on the Mac and connect to the IP address.

To be honest its probably the speed limit of the connection and you should just be patient .

Thanks, it's working a hell of a lot faster now!
It's going to take roughly a quarter of the time compared to before
Thank you!!