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[jjcmontana]

Just curious, I've got both my laptop and the DNS-321 hardwired into my gigabit router.  I've got the USB drive I want to copy from, plugged into the laptop as well.  Trying to copy files from the USB drive to the DNS-321 is tedious at a mere 5/Mps (the laptop is gigabit enabled, and I made sure the gigabit setting was correct on the DNS-321). 

  Is it possible to use a crossover ethernet cable and plug the DNS-321 directly into my laptop to improve speed?   I only need to do it to transfer my large media files, since streaming, the DNS-321 works great off the router, but I've spent all weekend moving files at a snail's pace and it's driving me a little koo koo for cocoa puffs.

Thanks.

[GideonOmega]

as long as you are actually connected via gigabit (all your network hardware/pc's are supporting it and your cabling is good) then I don't think it will make much difference.


are you connected via usb 1 or 2? 

[jjcmontana]

are you connected via usb 1 or 2?  

I'm using USB 1.0, on my 386 PC with 512K Ram... Hahaha, kidding... do they even make anything that's USB 1.0 anymore?  I'm on 2.0.  I just wasn't sure if there was something throttling the speed by going through the router.  Eventhough everything is gigabit, my mind tells me, "Less middle-men, more speed".... but I'm guessing that wouldn't be the case?  Thanks for the insight.

[GideonOmega]

lol, I wasn't sure if you were using an older PC or not

that does seem slow though -- if you copy from the USb to the laptop does the throughput increase alot?

[gunrunnerjohn]

If you have gigabit ports, there's no need for a crossover cable, they're all auto-MDX ports.

[jjcmontana]

lol, I wasn't sure if you were using an older PC or not

that does seem slow though -- if you copy from the USb to the laptop does the throughput increase alot?

Yeah, I get about 26.9/Mbps going from USB to Laptop (and vice versa).  I read a few posts of people getting up to 14/Mbps on their DNS-321, but not sure how I can replicate that speed... It's taking forever to move my collection.

[GideonOmega]

as I understand it IF all your network components support jumbo frames that might help but it seems different values work for different people -- I believe all devices must support jumbo frames for this to work though.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Actually, just all the devices directly in the path.  I have several machines that have 100mbit NICs, and of course there's the router and wireless connections.  As long as the path between the machines supports jumbo frames, they'll work fine.

[nguyen_a]

Finding the bottleneck is a fun job, if your USB drive (480 mbps, or 60 MB/s) and laptop are plugged to the gigabit switch, the lowest speed would be 480mbps minus overhead (probably a factor of 2).  Other factors that could result in performance hits are: hard drive transfer rate, PIO vs DMA among other things.
I don't know how new or old your laptop is but if its local drive is IDE drive (16 to 33 MB/s) then 16MB/s could be the final transfer speed.  Note that PIO, which could be automatically set by Windows, can limit your transfer rate to 16MB/s.  The article below shows tips on optimizing hard drive that you might find useful for your configuration:

http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Other_Articles/Win2K_Tips/IDE_DMA/IDE_DMA.htm

Once you determined the minimum transfer rate between laptop and USB drive, you can then plug the third component to the equation: DNS-321 and see how it affects the transfer rate.  In any case, cross-over cable or gigabit switch are not the guilty parties that reduce your transfer rate so just pick the easier one to work with.

[gunrunnerjohn]

The limiting factor for speed with the DNS-321 is the DNS-321!  No extensive search required if you have gigabit ports and switch (if used).

[GideonOmega]

Actually, just all the devices directly in the path.  I have several machines that have 100mbit NICs, and of course there's the router and wireless connections.  As long as the path between the machines supports jumbo frames, they'll work fine.

thats good to know -- thanks -- I have been waiting to get my main board back from RMA and I was going to setup up Jumbo frames to test the speed -- but the info I have found has been somewhat elusive.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Well, since I have all those elements in my network, I can state with 100% certainty that it does work that way.

[smithdogg1]

I would like to know the same thing, I own a DNS-321 which is hooked into my switch but I also own a Lacie 4 TB Big Disk. The LaCie uses a pretty dumbed down “user friendly interface” but it gets the job done, and I like how you can basically plug in another external USB device (HDD, Thumb Drive, ect.) into this unit, hit the button on the front and it will back up the entire contents of the drive to the unit, this could be useful. But I would like to set it up in a way that will allow me to use this as a locally attached external drive rather than a NAS. I would keep my normal Ethernet cable plugged into the first NIC on my machine and then use the second one to plug this drive in via a crossover cable, this should allow me to access it with gig speeds and no network overhead right? Because there really is no other way to attach it local which I may end up wanting to do at some point rather than using it as a NAS.

[gunrunnerjohn]

Why not just connect it to the network using a gigabit switch?  That way it'll be as fast, but available to the whole network.

Why did you buy a NAS if you didn't want a NAS?

[smithdogg1]

I didn't buy it, it was given to me as a gift and a great one at that. I already have the DNS-321 as my media NAS so I want to use this Lacie for backups. I cannot just put it on my Gigabit switch because I do not have a Cat6 cable running up to the second floor where my two main PCs are, so they are currently on wireless which makes reading/wiring to a NAS painful. I was just looking for a quick alternative to run the drive like a normal external for now until I can figure out if I can wire this house or I may use something like MOCA to run Ethernet over Coax.