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Hello everyone,

For those who do not need more info, why is my transfer speed at 20% of the wireless cards' maximums with a workgroup mapped external HD connected to 1 computer?

For more info, continue reading.

I have a WD MyBook 320GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive (7200 RPM) connected to my main desktop computer. That computer has a USB 2.0 wireless adapter (54Mb/s). I have a laptop (5400 RPM) with an internal 54 Mb/s wireless card and the external hard drive is mapped as a network drive on my laptop for ease of access, sharing, storage, etc. My question is about transfer rates:

If I am doing my math right, a 261 megabyte file (~2088 megabits) should be transferring from my external HD to my laptop in about 40 seconds (2088 mbps / 54 mbps = 38 2/3 s). The reality is it takes closer to more than 4 minutes. I checked task managers inbuilt network monitor, and of the 54 mb per second, both computers show usage hovering around 19-20%.

So...why is my transfer speed at 20% of the wireless cards' maximums? Is this a HD i/o bottleneck? I hardly think it's THAT slow...again, if my math is right, I'm moving at about 10.8 mb/s, 1.3 MB/s? Wheres the bottleneck if I can connect my hard drive via USB to my laptop and get much faster transfer speeds? The same file transfers in about 10 seconds, or 208.8 mb/s (26.1MB/s) when connected through USB 2.0. So, it's 2000% faster through USB than my 54mb/s wireless connection which is actually running at about 11mb/s.

So the bottleneck is definitely occuring in the wireless stage somewhere, but I don't know where. Is it how Windows handles wireless network transfers or something? Perhaps I should disable active AV guards when transferring? But still, it's moving at 26 MB/s through USB...Maybe my USB wireless adapter on the desktop is to blame. I will look into that, too, but in the meantime, if there are any other ideas, I definitely appreciate any input!


Thanks for any help you can offer!

Hello and welcome to PCHelpForum.

How to explain this?Mmmmm.

If all your network resources were used to transfere just the maths data your internet connection would drop.

The connection is shared so it would not transfere at a great speed.

20% is dedicated to the transfere of the file and rest is dedicated to your internet connection/downloads/internet usage/uploads etc.

Also I see you have a 54 mb wireless connection,if you upgraded this to a higher specs one you may get a better transfer rate and also you do not state your broadband speed or dialup speed.

It appears just to be a combination of wireless adaptor,router,speeds.

I would say possibly the 20% transfere rate is about a correct average speed.

Thanks for the reply, Jelly Bean!

I am not using an internet connection during these transfers, if that makes any difference. Only the file transfers are active during that time. I have tried to eliminate AV and background pinging to boost speeds but it hasn't helped.

I don't know why it makes a difference, since this is a local workgroup, but my internet connection speed is 3008/512 kb/s.

So taking into account that the connection is shared, you're saying that right away my max speed is 27Mb/s, right? Although since both are not sending and recieving info, would this really effect one-way transfers that much? In any case, I am getting less than half of that, 20% speed, so is the rest of the throughput just being eaten by overhead?

Thanks for the help!