Transfering files via cat 5 cable

Jimmy1983 · 12 Dec 2009 at 19:59

Highest speed iam getting is around 600KB/sec, and its taking an ageeeeeeee to transfer a few GB.

Should I be getting a quicker speed than this?

OpenToSuggestions · 12 Dec 2009 at 20:00

Yes!

iirc Cat5 is good for 100mbps at least (so around 10mb per sec).
Cat6 is where you start going to 1gbps.

All the above is from memory and may not be quite right though.

marc69 · 12 Dec 2009 at 20:08

I read on a forum of a guy who was getting awful speeds via transfer and he solved it by running "PC Booster" and chose the auto tune feature.

Apparently it changed "MTU TTL RWIN" and his transfers were fast again.

No idea if the above works, I've never tried it so use at your own risk.

mod1fied · 12 Dec 2009 at 20:08

If a client is connected USB to the network and you are transferring from/to that client that speed is not bad. But if both are connected via Cat 5, something appears to be wrong.

paradigm · 12 Dec 2009 at 20:13

mglover070588 said:
Yes!

iirc Cat5 is good for 100mbps at least (so around 10mb per sec).
Cat6 is where you start going to 1gbps.

All the above is from memory and may not be quite right though.

Cat5e is rated to 1Gbps. Chances are any network cable bought in the last decade will be 5e not 5.

Jimmy1983 · 12 Dec 2009 at 20:25

mod1fied said:
If a client is connected USB to the network and you are transferring from/to that client that speed is not bad. But if both are connected via Cat 5, something appears to be wrong.

Both connected via cat5, PC and laptop both running win 7 x64

Duke · 12 Dec 2009 at 21:55

Are you copying the files or moving them? Moving will take longer as it deletes the file after transfer so holds things up a bit. Shouldn't be that slow mind. Antivirus set too high maybe?

Beerbaron · 12 Dec 2009 at 21:58

have you connected the PCs via a hub/switch/router or are you using a cross over cable?

asim18 · 12 Dec 2009 at 22:15

Jimmy1983 said:
Should I be getting a quicker speed than this?

depends on what how big each file is.

If it's just a couple of huge files then you should be getting much higher speed.

If it's hundreds of little files then it sounds about right.

Jimmy1983 · 12 Dec 2009 at 22:24

Duke said:
Are you copying the files or moving them? Moving will take longer as it deletes the file after transfer so holds things up a bit. Shouldn't be that slow mind. Antivirus set too high maybe?

Both, both PC and laptop are running NOD32-not sure if the settings are to high

Beerbaron said:
have you connected the PCs via a hub/switch/router or are you using a cross over cable?

Just using a cable like this connected to both machines http://www.vanlierde.ca/john/articles/MyInternetDoesntWork/html/graphics/cat5cable.jpg

no hub/switch/router

asim18 said:
depends on what how big each file is.

If it's just a couple of huge files then you should be getting much higher speed.

If it's hundreds of little files then it sounds about right.

Most files are around 200-300MB

Thanks for your advice so far

Dreadhead · 13 Dec 2009 at 01:05

I've just got a gigabit router set up and a few of my cables are still cat5 rather than cat5e, even so I still get gigabit transfer across these.

thepeganator · 13 Dec 2009 at 01:13

Sounds likes it's connected at 10mbps.

Which OS's?
Check connection rate in task manager?

TheKnat · 13 Dec 2009 at 07:55

Also have you tried copying through the command prompt using xcopy ? I've been recently (in about the last 10 minutes) been transferring 250GB worth of files from one computer to another and it was stating a good few hours with the windows copy box. Fire up the same task using xcopy and it gets it done in a fraction of the time.

Jimmy1983 · 13 Dec 2009 at 09:59

thepeganator said:
Sounds likes it's connected at 10mbps.

Which OS's?
Check connection rate in task manager?

Sorry forgot to say both on win7 x64. How do you check the connection rate in TM?

TheKnat said:
Also have you tried copying through the command prompt using xcopy ? I've been recently (in about the last 10 minutes) been transferring 250GB worth of files from one computer to another and it was stating a good few hours with the windows copy box. Fire up the same task using xcopy and it gets it done in a fraction of the time.

Nah ive not, how do you do that?

TheKnat · 13 Dec 2009 at 10:14

Go into the command prompt (windows key+r then type cmd). Then use xcopy "source" "destination" and there are a lot of switches you can use, but you can check these by doing xcopy /? which will list them.

For example, I've just copied 100GB of tv shows from my main computer to my media centre one. This is going through a gigabit switch and it using around 65% of the network connection on both pcs. The switches I have used are as follows:

/e - copies all directories and sub-directories including empty ones
/v - verifies each file copied
/c - continues if it encounters an error
/r - overwrites read only files
/i - forces it to create folders which dont yet exist

The full command I type ends up being:

xcopy /e /v /c /r /i "d:\tv shows\*.*" "\\media-centre\videos\tv shows\"

That copies everything from the tv shows folder on my d:\ drive to a computer on my network called media-centre into a share called videos. Now you may have to replace 'media-centre' with the IP address of your second computer but it should still work.

thepeganator · 13 Dec 2009 at 12:34

Jimmy1983 said:
Sorry forgot to say both on win7 x64. How do you check the connection rate in TM?

Nah ive not, how do you do that?

Under the networking tab, see connection speed.