network harddrives

[project dragon]

hello.

I recently bought an iomega home media network hard drive (this one), and it's pretty great. Streams quick enough for me to enjoy. The only problem is that transferring files onto it is pretty slow (4-5 movies took about 30 minutes). I was wondering can network hard drives be connected directly to my laptop or does it have to stay on my router? There is a normal usb port in the back, though I suspect it's for a printer to attach to. Would some sort of usb transfer cable be an option?

[Ephemeral]

hello.

I recently bought an iomega home media network hard drive (this one), and it's pretty great. Streams quick enough for me to enjoy. The only problem is that transferring files onto it is pretty slow (4-5 movies took about 30 minutes). I was wondering can network hard drives be connected directly to my laptop or does it have to stay on my router? There is a normal usb port in the back, though I suspect it's for a printer to attach to. Would some sort of usb transfer cable be an option?

If your PC is multihomed (two Ethernet ports) you could plug it into the second Ethernet port, it may required a cross-over cable. But I assume that you are thinking about hooking it up via the USB port.

Even after reading the manual for your IO Omega, I cannot figure out if the USB port can be used as a network interface. Nor do I see any info for the USB specification on this thing. If it is only USB 2.0 ‘Full Speed’ it would be slower than your Ethernet, if it is USB 2.0 ‘High Speed’ than it would be faster. Of course this would also depend on your PC’s USB port speed and the quality of your USB cables.

[Doc Flabby]

I suspect you are only connecting at 100M. Which equates to a maximum transfer speed of 12MB/s, so around 60 seconds for a CD, and 4 mins for a DVD (as you've been experiencing)

Check to see if your laptop supports Gigabit Ethernet.

If it does, try buying a CAT6 network cable as you need a high quality cable to get the maximum 1000M speed (max transfer 120MB/s.)

Another problem might be if you're using vista, its got known problems with network file transfers....

http://www.google.com/search?q=vista...twork+transfer

[Maverick]

According to the specifications it has an USB 2.0 port. Try connecting it to your computer with that, it should provide faster speeds then network.

[project dragon]

I believe the usb port is to attach a printer to or another external harddrive. I tried to connect it to my laptop but it didn't do anything (maybe there is a special cable I need?). Anywhom. Initially I was transferring everything via wireless, which I guess was the problem. I'm now using a wired connection and now transferring files is faster. I guess this will mean I'll have to be wired if I want to transfer large amounts of data. Maybe I should have bought a normal external harddrive.

[Maverick]

Yup, transferring files over wireless is always much slower then trough a wired connection. This is because with wireless alot more error checking and validation needs to be done over the packets you send/receive.

Hm indeed, the manual doesn't mention anything over connecting trough USB.
Yes, if you didn't need the network availability on your external harddisk, you should've just bought an USB one :P