Transfering files across network

Psyk

Psyk

Psyk

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
8,444
Location
Leamington Spa
There are 5 of us in the house and we need an easy way to transfer files between our computers. The built in windows networking is useless. Can't get it to work most of the time and when it does it's incredibly slow. It's a 54Mbit wireless network. Preferably it should be easy to use, since not everyone is as tech savvy as me. Any suggestions?
 
Built in windows file sharing should be very fast, chances are one or more of the computers is getting a poor signal, that'll effect network speed. Check out your network before giving up on windows sharing to be honest.

Have one of your PCs on all the time, setup a shared folder on it and put a desktop shortcut on the rest of the PCs, job done. If you want security you'd be best looking at a network storage device, essentially a hard disk plugged into the network.
 
have you tryed disableing simple file sharing and going the long way around? (access rights and such)

on a side note i have been unable to get my wireless laptop and wired comp to share files dont know why. Comp can see laptop but not access shares but the lappy can for some reason. plug the lappy back into the switch and all is ok again. odd.
 
lay-z-boy said:
There's your culprate.

cable 4tw (100mbps is very fast and ll gigabit even more)
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I wish it was an option but the house is over 4 floors with at least one computer on each. Cables are completely impractical and I don't think the landlord would like me tearing up the walls installing cabling.
 
you are getting a STRONG signal on all the PCs aren't you? to be honest if it's 4 floors you should have at least 2 access points to max out the transfer rate.
 
if its a student house, who cares if there's cables running up the stairs etc, just tape it to the wall, thats what we do

there's 8 machines in all plugged in, sure its not that tidy, but its out of the way and it works 100% of the time

home wireless kits are pretty shocking (from last time i read anyway)
-do they still share the 54mbit -ie if there's 4 pc's its about 11each..

wired networking, you get full 1gb or 100mb per machine
 
Psyk said:
Hmm well I've always found using explorer to look at network folders extremely slow and unresponsive. I suppose a direct link would fix that.
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Something to do with the 'Simple File Sharing' in Windows XP causes that really sluggish network access. If you have XP Pro turn it off in tools -> folder options -> view and it's the bottom option, but only in pro. You'll have to set up your network shares with passwords like you used to in Windows 2000 but that's another story and I don't know how. Pain in the ass if you ask me and MS should have sorted it for the home version.

Could also be a weak signal strength on one of the other wireless computers. AFAIK it slows the whole network down, not just the one with the weak signal.
 
I think i read somewhere that wireless has huge overheads, so even if you are getting good signal, as in it tells you its 54Mbps its about 2 thirds or less of that.

So if any of you are getting weak signal then transfers will be slow to that comp.

Try testing it - time how long it takes to transfer a series of files of different sizes and do the maths, work out transfer rates and which computers had good signal

Or dont bother and put up with it!
 
I know that wireless has a lot of overhead and 54Mbit doesn't mean a useful 54Mbit. My housemates won't want cables going everywhere so that's out (plus they all have laptops). All but the PC right at the bottom gets a good signal. That PC is a media centre type thing, we don't use it much so if we can't get a good signal we can just use an external HD to transfer stuff to it.

Something to do with the 'Simple File Sharing' in Windows XP causes that really sluggish network access. If you have XP Pro turn it off in tools -> folder options -> view and it's the bottom option, but only in pro. You'll have to set up your network shares with passwords like you used to in Windows 2000 but that's another story and I don't know how. Pain in the ass if you ask me and MS should have sorted it for the home version.
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That has helped quite a bit but I think I'm the only one with pro. At least now I can just get them to make a shared folder and I can move stuff into theirs if they want it.
 
Gatsby said:
No, its as fast as the connection between the computers, so as we have a wired network it's lightning quick.
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Hmm MSN seemed to be slower to send files than using shared folders. Maybe the difference is just in my head. I thought maybe msn sends the files through some server instead of a direct connection to who you're sending it to. It took about 10 minutes maybe longer, to send 300MB. Even assuming that you only get an effective 20Mbps via wifi, it should still only take about 2 minutes.
 
just setup one pc with xp pro on it, and set certain folders to have read only (make two logins for it), and some folders that the 2nd login can write to

create a share, with the permissions setup

then on the xp home pc's add a startup entry..

net use x: \\computername\sharename [password | *] /USER:computername\username
 
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