My Book Live 2TB Very slow

I just connected the drive to my Linksys wireless router then went through the setup using a Dell Studio laptop connected wirelessly to the router. I did not start any backups. There is nothing else active on the network. The access times to the drive are very slow. Copying files to the default shared space on the drive averages less than 2.5MB/sec. Deleting a file using explorer takes several minutes to identify the file before I get the confirmation to delete. Opening the dashboard for the drive in Chrome takes several seconds to change from one menu to another.Ā 

Any help would be appreciated - if I cannot get this fixed I will have to take it back.

There could be a variety of things that can affect the data transfer speed.Ā Ā  Lets start with the router.Ā  Does the 4 ports on the Linksys router Gigabit or 10/100 speed?Ā  This makes a big difference in data speeds.

Your Dell Laptop and Linksys Router, do they both run and are connected on 802.11n?Ā  e.g. if your Router WiFi only supports 802.11G, but your Dell can support 802.11N, then your data transfer will be based only on the slower G.

Also, make sure that the MyBookLive has been updated to the latest Firmware 01.02.03.

My setup is doing the same ā– ā– ā– ā– .Ā  I just tried to copy a ~801mb avi file from my laptop to theĀ  My Book Live and it was clocking at ~2.10mb/sec.Ā  Is this the best itā€™s going to do?Ā  I have the drive wired to a 2Wire DSL modem/Wireless Router.

Are there any firewall settings that have to be changed on Windows 7 or at the router?

Antivirus software can slow down access. If you have AV installed, try turning it off and testing your speed.

That sounds about the speeds for wireless G.

For my old NAS and wireless G router, thatā€™s about what I got, nothing too much faster.

Iā€™ve been having issues a well. I purchased this from Costco 7 days ago an itā€™s still doing the initial backup (670GB).

A Few things to note:

  • Iā€™m running a Mac OS (Leopard).

  • My router is an Apple Extreme Base Station

  • My network is running over cat 6.Ā 

  • Iā€™m running my backup using Time Machine (but Iā€™m willing to change that if thatā€™s the problem).Ā 

  • I had a previous WD LIVE (2TB white one) that worked extremely fast but it stopped working altogether, I thought I was safe with another WD but Iā€™m starting to question that.

  • Iā€™ve got the latest firmware

  • it works sporadically i.e. 8GB in 5-10min and then 20kb in the following 2hours .

I really donā€™t want to return the drive but this is getting stupid.

-D

while copying files from a lap-top to Mybooklive through network, what speed of transfer should one expect?

I am also experiencing slow speed.

Regarding Time Machine backups - do a google search on issues with it. You will find a number of ways to help with Time Machine - especially if you are trying to do this wirelessly.

I am not sure what people are expecting the My Book to do connecting wirelessly and with a 10/100 connection. It can only move the bits as fast as the wireless speed. Try connecting the My Book Live directly into your computer via the Ethernet port to test the speed. As long as you have Gigabit ethernet, you should see anywhere from 40MBs-90MBs (depending on the size and length of files you transfer. The larger the file size, the better performance you will get).

If you are still having issues connected directly, then you might start investigating your OS. Antivirus software can slow down performance on file writes by up to 40% (depending on the AV vendor).

Tony

DeepakGandhi wrote:

while copying files from a lap-top to Mybooklive through network, what speed of transfer should one expect?

I get about 230 to 250 megabits per second on a Wired Gig network:

I also have a My Book Live 2TB (installed in my home for a few days now).Ā  It has performed reasonably fast up until today.Ā  Now I hear the WD drive reading/writing when no computers are on.Ā  How can I tell what the drive is doing?

Copying or deleting files are extremely slow right now.Ā  I have both OSX and Windows devices in the home and have tried both wired and wireless, still really slow.Ā  Just to be clear, it was fast until today and the HDD is doing some background task which I assume is what is slowing the dirve down.Ā  I have no clue to tell what the heck the drive is doing or when it will be doing it.

PS. Not too thrilled with the SmartWare backup software.Ā  Backing up files that I didnā€™t chooseā€¦not too sure how I feel about guessing as to whether the software backed up my important files.Ā  Some product manager at WD should be questioned on how he/she let engineers slip that one through. :slight_smile:


RyanS wrote:

 How can I tell what the drive is doing?

    • *> Basicly only way to tell is to enable ssh (using hidden menu in webinterface), log in and type ā€˜ps auxā€™. If you donā€™t know nothing about linux you can just type:

ps aux > output.txt

It will save current proccess list in file output.txt , copy/paste content of that file in http://paste2.org , share URL here and I will tell what your drive is doingā€¦>

 

Have you recently added photos to the Shared pictures folder? If so, that might be the reason it seems like it is accessing the drive even though you are not doing anything. There is a background process that transcodes photos to formats acceptable to Mobile devices for the WD Photos application. This is a low priority process, so can take quite a while.

Other processes that might be happening in the background is the DLNA software indexing the media as you are adding it.

I am experincing very slow speed too. Not just when transferring files to/from the drive, but also when navigating in the dashboard menu.

It takes 10-30 seconds from I click on a menu option until the screen is updated. In the meantime I see the ā€œplease waitā€ wheel turningā€¦watching the content of the WD drive Ā (such as pictures on my TV) is testing my patience as it takes forever to load to image.

Transferring 250 GB from my laptop to the WD MyLiveBook Ā through a cabled connection via my Linksys DIR 655 Gigabit router took 10 hours.

Any idea where to search for a solution?

Chris

Actually I have a 2TB mbl too.

But i can copy with 48MB/sec til 50. so very fast for me.

The only thing i didĀ  was putting a30.-ā‚¬ gigabit switch between my Internetrouter and PC

so all other Devices are connected via Gigabit.

I also have Antivirus Running and Firewalls

I copied about 1,2 TB to MBl and yes took about Ithink 6Hours or so

Hi

I have the linksys (E4200)Ā router with gigabit ethernet ports. I also swithched off the firewall and still my write speeds are no more that 2mb/s.

This is horrific performance.

Has anyone found a solution for this?

Any help would be great

Kirrin: Are you sure your other device (PC perhaps) also do have Gbit network card? If only 10/100Mbit then it will not work fast of course.

@jazzymood: I am running a killer NIC gaming card and I am sure that supports gigabit ethernet connections. Do you know of any other possibilities to overcome this issue. I have tried all the tricks I have with my limited network knowledege. I have checked a few forums and not one has identified a clear issue and why this is happening.

Thanks

Itā€™s only WRITE performance that is bad? Ā 

How is your READ performance?Ā 

@TonyPh12345: I have tried writing and reading. Writing seems very bad! I am not sure about the read as I do not know how to do that.

I am assuming that if write is bad read should be terrible also. Is that the case?

What is the scenario if one is bad and the other is ok? Sinilarly, What does it mean if both read and write is very poor?

Regards