Data transfer using a cat5

Shicky · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:04

Went to steal a bunch of movies etc off my friends HDD, I figured the quickest method would be a cat5 cable. So attempted this but the transfer rate was only 476kb a second....I thought this should be flying at several meg, though I imagine I'm being a tard. Should this not be much faster? I need to do anything else other than connect a cat5 between the machines?

RomanNose · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:10

Should be faster, Windows-->Windows files transfers I have found to be much slower than they should be with samba. Try with ftp.

23JMZ07 · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:16

Try FTP windows file transfer is often slow. Failing that cant you just put his hdd in ur machine? That would be the fastest way by a long distance.

semi-pro waster · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:17

The quickest method would be just to ask to borrow the hard drive for half an hour and put it in your machine to copy them. However if they aren't willing to do that then a network cable is probably the quickest easy option although that does sound a little bit slower than you'd expect.

Shicky · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:24

His is a shuttle and mine a laptop unfortunately. Was just making sure I wasn't being a total idiot, I knew it should have been working much faster. I'll work something out im sure.

Thank you for the quick replies

Spook007 · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:57

If you are connecting two computers directly with a network cable I believe you need a crossover cable, If its via a switch, regular cable obviously.

Magic_x_uk · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:59

Spook007 said:
If you are connecting two computers directly with a network cable I believe you need a crossover cable, If its via a switch, regular cable obviously.

I am pretty sure, these days the NIC sorts it all out so a normal ethernet cable will do fine.

semi-pro waster · 18 Sep 2011 at 17:03

Magic_x_uk said:
I am pretty sure, these days the NIC sorts it all out so a normal ethernet cable will do fine.

If it's transferring at any speed at all then it must be ok I'd have thought, as far as I'm aware it is a simple works or it doesn't scenario rather than it leading to greater speeds if you choose the correct cable. Spook007 is right though, it definitely used to be something to watch out for - welcome to the forums by the way.