How to copy fast

[wasted]

I wish I knew how to speed up the transfer of my music library to the N1200 which contains a HITACHI Deskstar T7K500 320GB S300 8MB.
I've currently got a WD Lifebook attached with USB2 to my PC, and the N1200 network attached to a Belkin ADSL router, on the same subnet as the PC. Transfer speed is awful.
I've stopped the iTunes and Media servers, as the N1200 CPU was running at 100% - I assume it was constantly trying to refresh the db. However, this has not improved transfer speeds significantly.
I've tried attaching the WD Lifebook directly to the N1200, but in that configuration I cannot see how to copy between the drives.
Any thoughts most welcomed !

[Update]
I did some further tests - plugging the N1200 ethernet directly into the PC, having a 1gb link then. My results seem to show that the network ports in the N1200 are where the problem is:

Firmware version 1.0.06

1GB network link, directly connected between PC and N1200, which is a 1GB link, I get just 12kb/s on FTP.
N1200 shows cpu% of 0 to 1%.
WAN light is flickering regularly.

Ping from PC (whilst FTP copy is taking place) is:

D:\DOCUME~1\KEV~1.6JN>ping 192.168.0.20

Pinging 192.168.0.20 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.20: bytes=32 time=931ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.20: bytes=32 time=640ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.20: bytes=32 time=1043ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.20: bytes=32 time=254ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.20:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 254ms, Maximum = 1043ms, Average = 717ms

Both are on the same segment (ip address of PC is 192.168.0.19).

Ping when transfer is not taking place:

D:\DOCUME~1\KEV~1.6JN>ping 192.168.0.20

Pinging 192.168.0.20 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.20: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.20: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.20: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.20: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.20:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

[omega]

Just to restate: if you have connected your N2100 to your PC via a switch, the speed is reasonable but when connected directly using a x-over cable it is so slow like you posted?

Anyhow, it might be caused by incorrect auto speed negotiation of the two devices. Try to set the network speed for the net card in your PC to a fixed value (100Mbit or 1Gbit). AFAIK it is not possible to do the same on the N2100 (on the N5200 it is officially not possible too).

What is the length of your direct network cable? Try a longer one if possible....

Maybe this helps.

Andreas

[wasted]

Andreas - you are a genius ! That worked.
I set my adaptor from auto to 100mb duplex and now I get 7kb/s or more (on small files like mp3's.
Thanks a million.

[omega]

Fine that it works now.....

Nowadays it is not often the case that autonegotiation is an issue, but as we see here.....

And I assume you meant 7MByte/sec instead of 7KByte/sec.....

Andreas

[wasted]

Eh yes - seems that my FTP program reported kb/s rather than mb/s.
So, onto the next thing now, try and get my USB printer working !