Low transfer speed on my book live 3TB

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Hi guys

I just bought a new 3 TB NAS. The connection was easy but im having problems withh trasnfer speed. Im getting a speed of 1-1.8 mbps not more than that. I saw somewhere whether the path issues . Can i get some tips and suggestions to increase the speed. I have 1 TB of media to be transferred into that NAS. Help is greatly appreciated

2

You need to provide some information please.

How is your MBL connected to your network?  (10 / 100 / gigabit?)

How is your PC connected?  (10 / 100 / 1000 / Wifi? [b/g/n]?]

And by mbps do you mean megaBYTES per second, or megaBITS per second? [By convention, mbps means megaBITS].

3

as far as I know, transfer rates in windows are always noted in MB/s. 

I’m having the same issue. Though I’m not really sure if it’s an actual problem since I see so many posts about slow transfer rates. My MBL is connectec by cable to my modem/router. My pc is connected with WiFi with wireless-N. I get transfer rates around 1 - 2 MB/s, which is rediculously slow. 

I constantly see ppl blaming WiFi for slow transfer rates, but I think that’s nonsense. My network adapter supports wireless-N, up to 150 mb/s (19 MB/s), and I’m connected with perfect signal. Why would that result in slow transfer rates? 

Unfortunately I don’t have a UTP cable, else I would’ve tested the transferrate with a cable connection between my PC and the router.

I don’t know how to help you since I’m having the same issue with good connection conditions, and I don’t have a solution. I get the feeling the MBL is to blame for this. Every other connection in my house is silky smooth.

4

Onemanshow wrote:

 My network adapter supports wireless-N, up to 150 mb/s (19 MB/s)… Why would that result in slow transfer rates? 

That’s a good question, and there’s lots of reasons:

  • Co-Channel interference
  • Adjacent Channel interference (in 2.4 GHz Band)
  • Channel congestion
  • Environmental noise (NON 802.11 devices in the same frequency such as microwave ovens, cordless phones, bluetooth devices, game consoles, home monitoring systems, wireless cameras, and pretty much any other device that uses the ISM frequency band(s)).
  • Mixed-mode b/g/n as opposed to N-Only configurations.
  • An AP that’s misconfigured
  • An AP or switch that doesn’t have large enough buffers ( > 64 Kbyte) leading to large numbers of dropped frames and retransmissions
  • etc.

You’d have to test with something other than the MBL to rule many of those in or out.

Just as an aside, on my 5.0 GHz N-Only WiFi network I can get 15 - 20 megabytes per second to / from my MBL and my Win7 laptop.

Heck, right now I’m at work, connected to the corprate net via 802.11n 5 GHz network, and using WD 2go, I am getting 25 to 30 megabits per second to my MBL at home.

So I know there’s nothing “inherently” slow about the MBL…

5

just curiosity… what kind of wireless router do you have? Brand/model.

6

Since the 5.0GHz band has such a small footprint, I use two Cisco E3000s configured as AP only mode (not using them as routers).

Even with two APs, there are still weak spots in my house…

7

hahaha! Not you Tony! I was referring to the users having issues… Since the speed seem to be 1-2mbps. Sounds like it is connecting at Wireless G.

Just because there is a Wireless N on laptop/server, does not mean it is connecting at N with router. Hence the question.

8

If you’re refering to me I can’t say the brand of my router right now. I’m at work and haven’t memorized it. I do know that my router supports wireless-N and that it’s set to automatic/mixed usage of b, g and n. 

But in my opinion that doesn’t explain the unacceptable extreme horrific slow transfer rates. I’m currently dowloading a few files (8 MB) at a rate of 14 KB/s(!!!) Okay, I have a wireless-g adapter on my current laptop but that supports up to 54mb/s. Having a (relative) slow adapter doesn’t explain the fact that I’m dowloading at 0,2% of the adapters max speed. I haven’t had these rates for 17 years now, back when I was on dual-up internet.

what can I do to make this faster? this is undoable and not what I had in mind when I bought the Mybook

I think it’s unacceptable that you need to have more then average IT-knowledge to set up for ideal usage of the Mybook. If that’s really the case then WD should include a thourough manual that explains every bit you need to know instead of redirecting customers to their customer support. 

The more average user wouldn’t hesitate to refund the product. 

9

Onemanshow wrote:

I’m at work and haven’t memorized it. … I’m currently dowloading a few files (8 MB) at a rate of 14 KB/s(!!!) Okay, I have a wireless-g adapter on my current laptop but that supports up to 54mb/s

So I infer you’re getting these very slow rates via WD 2go across the internet to your work environment?

If so, there’s so many things outside of your control that could be influencing those speeds.

But again, don’t pay attention to Microsoft’s speed indication when using WD 2go.   It’s not correct.  It’s not even a reasonable estimate.

Speed.png

I’m copying 100MB worth of an MP3 album via WD 2go.   It actually took about 7 minutes, which is slow by my standards but my corporate network has QoS policies on it that prevent higher speeds.  After all, the internet connectivity is shared by 15,000-20,000 employees.  ;)

10

Yes, definitly there is an issue over wireless, but remember, MBL has not wireless capabilties. So verify the following locally at home first.

  • Router port speeds (10/100/1000?)

  • Look in the manual what the back LEDs mean and see what speed it connects to. If you have a gig port on router and still connecting at 100, verify you have at least a CAT5E cable or newer

  • Even if you connect at a 100, if still having issues, try a static IP

  • Buy a patch cable and connect the laptop to router as well

  • Try other laptops/tablets/PCs. Android devices can use “ES File Explorer” app for copy/paste to network shares

  • if not solved yet, see if you can try a different router.

These are my results on a Linksys WRT54G running Tomato firmware.

Speeds on a 10/100 network:

Wire:

Data: 39.39GB

Time: 1:50:05

Speed: 6404590 Bytes/sec.

Speed: 366.473 MegaBytes/min.

Wireless

Data: 4.66GB

Time: 0:44:11

Speed: 1890589 Bytes/Sec

Speed: 108.80 MegaBytes/Min

11

I see pretty much the same low transfer speeds here.  I have my 3TB My Book Live connected over 100 ethernet cable to a gigabit capable router.  I have a laptop and Raspberry Pi connected over ethernet (100 again) and a desktop connected over Wireless N with a perfect signal (No network congestion in my area) and all link speeds confirmed on the router.
 The ONLY device on my network that’s suffering from slow speeds is the My Book Live, It has a slow speed regardless of the sending device (even the ethernet laptop!) be it over ftp or smb I never see higher than 500KiB/s (with an average over ftp of just 350KiB/s) going to the My Book, though copying back from the My Book Live goes as high as 12MiB/s with an acceptable average over ftp to the wireless desktop of around 4MiB/s.

I’m sure it’s a configuration issue somewhere on the My Book Live (especially since going from device to device on my network is around 10x faster writing), changing cabling or router ports has no effect.

  The problem is with the My Book Live , and since the read/transmission speeds are well within the proper range, it’s most likely not a hardware issue but some ridiculous default configuration issue.  

12

Sure you can’t trust the speed shown in the copy dialog because its some sort of average of the total copied and time elapsed.  However, one always-accurate method is to go to the Windows Task Manager’s Networking tab.

Here is a sample of my MBL speed.

WD SmartWare Transfer Rate2.jpg
WD SmartWare Transfer Rate2.jpg1188×67 21.3 KB

The MBL has a Green blinking light (Gigabit connection) to a D-Link DIR-860L Wireless AC1200 Dual Band Gigabit Cloud Router.  My laptop Ethernet is also Gigabit-capable and the wireless is using a 5.0GHz N connection.

I don’t see why it should be this slow (364KB/s shown) when I’m only 10 feet from both the MBL and the router, and the router consistently provides our paid limit of 30Mb/s (10.5x faster).  I know this hardware is lazily strolling along the internet boulevards with these figures, so the MBL should be faster! Why not?

13

What does your service limit have to do with anything? You’re using your LAN, right? Or are you using WD 2go?

14

I’m only using the internet speed as a comparison to show that the My Book Live isn’t even reaching previously proven capability (i.e. the slow speed has nothing to do with my hardware, its solely the MBL).  In fact, it should be much faster because there is nothing going through the ISP.  I am using LAN, and that’s why its so disappointing.  :cry:

15

@shabu: i have a linksys wrt54g router

16

There is the your answer, that router is way too old to be able to produce good speeds. You need a router upgrade.

17

@riscon which one do u suggest ? i have a gigabit switch as well

18

Well the gigabit swtich is great, the router is still the brains and controls everything else thus if it is slow it will affect the network.

For me I prefer Netgear, easy to use and will take custom firmware. There are many different ones available, but you should make sure it has gigabit ports and 5ghz Wireless N.

19

Riscon wrote:

Well the gigabit swtich is great, the router is still the brains and controls everything else thus if it is slow it will affect the network.

This is far from accurate.   If the traffic doesn’t flow through the router, then the router has nothing to do with it.

20

Thanks for the solution