Storage

[Darkair]

Evening all,

Before I start I realise this is an older product, but still one I'd like to stop using as a bookend and start using as a storage device.

A couple of years back I brought  a Buffalo Terastation Live (HS-DHTGL/R5) which seemed like the perfect solution to my situation.

From memory, I was never completely satisfied with the performance of the unit in terms of transfer speeds but, out of laziness stuck with it.  As far as I can remember, the maximum speed I ever got was around the 1-2MBps which was just about sufficient.

Fast forward to 2011 and transfer speeds in that region simply don't work with modern media files.

Three years on, is there now a fix for this problem?  Have I been doing something wrong for several years ?  Or is it simply akin to gravity and I'm stuck with it.

Any help would be appreciated.

All the best

Jon

[davo]

whats the layout of your network? Those speeds would be standard for a wireless G network which is probably what you have.

[Darkair]

Hi Davo,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

Setup has always been hard wired over cat6, with no problems experienced between other machines across the network.  Connections are made on a Netgear GS608 gigabit switch with a Netgear router attached in a standard configuration.

As far as I can see, there aren't any obvious network related issues.

Any other ideas ?

Thanks again

[Jotin]

Try plugging it right into your pc and test the speeds that way.  A pc that has a known good working Gigabit lan card. 

[Darkair]

Thanks Jotin,

I'll give this a try tomorrow night, I have two machines with gigabit cards in.  Will report back on findings from both.

I assume a large file like an operating system iso would be ideal as a test file ?

Cheers

[Darkair]

Right then

I've just connected the Terastation directly to a custom build W7 machine, transfer from W7 to unit, results are as follows:

File: Linux iso

Size: 3GB ish

Speed: Maximum 7.14MBps / Mminimum 6.5MBps (whilst accessing web interface during transfer).

So it appears the unit is operating around the Mbps lan speeds.  Agreed it wasn't as slow as I remember, but certainly not up to spec.

I know the card in the desktop is reliable, but I plan to test later tonight to be sure.

Are there any settings I need to look at specifically on the Terastation?  In the mean time, I'm going to do a full factory reset on the unit to be sure I haven't influenced it somehow.

Thanks

Jon

[Jotin]

There are no settings you can change for speed. It should auto detect your gigabit card and go at that speeds. You might want to double check that gigabit is enabled on the lan card of your pc as well. 

[Darkair]

Well, you say that...

I've now looked through the menus on the device, and found the Ethernet Frame Size option, which I remember mucking around with.  In my infinite wisdom, I set it to jumbo.  Now back at the default it seems things have got better.

I've reset the device.  Speed improved to a lovely 25MBps then settled at 10MBps, which is an improvement.

I'll look into the gigabit settings on the lan card now.

Cheers

[Jotin]

Ethernet Frame size isn't going to play a part in speed really. If you put it back to default I'm pretty sure it'll stay the same speed. I am glad that you're getting better speeds now though. 

[Darkair]

I have now transferred the same file between the W7 machine and a Vista machine, speed averaged around the 45MBps mark, which is definitely into the realms of gigabit, but not the 1000Mbps everyone raves about.  If anyone knows why, feel free to tell me but I appreciate its a different ball game.

Therefore, I think the speed issue is coming from the Terastation end.  Feel free to correct me.

The display on the front of the unit is confirming a 1000Mbps connection, as is the gigabit switch with the port lit in green rather than the standard orange.  The same goes for the W7 machine and its respective port.  All drivers are up to date, and a look at the Lan card's device settings returns nothing unusual, its a Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller built into an Asus motherboard.

I'm starting to feel I arrived at square one again, ah well.

Thanks for all your help so far

[Edit for spelling]