Slow transfer & delete times

[jgarnham]

I’ve just got my My Book Live and recently transfered 13gb of data to it, this took a total of 5 hours to do. Now that seems a tad long especially considering it is connected directly to my computer via the ethernet port.

What’s worse was that after deciding to delete this data, it took another 5 hours to do that. I’m pretty sure that the time it takes to delete something should not be the same as it takes to transfer it there in the first place.

Am I simply being neurotic or are these times too long and transfer is taking place too slowly?

[TonyPh12345]

It should take seconds to delete that much data, not hours … at least if you’re using a local connection.   WD 2Go can take a long time.

But if you are local, make sure your PC didn’t connect to the MBL via WebDAV   (search the forum for “webdav” and you’ll see lots of info.)

[jgarnham]

It is - as far as I am aware - a local connection. The MBL is plugged directly into my Mac via the ethernet port and shows up under the Netork pane in system preferences as Ethernet.

I don’t think it is connected via WebDAV are there any obvious signs if it is?

[TonyPh12345]

Sorry, didn’t realize you have a Mac. Hopefully someone else will chime in.

[jgarnham]

Still no improvement, the most recent problem is that while I am backing up with time machine directly via a local connection it takes a large amount of time too. With the current backup it has taken approximately one hour to copy 1.9GB of data out of the total 23.73GB. 

Surely this is not normal. If this isn’t normal, could it be a fault with the MBL and if so, how can I contact WD?

[TonyPh12345]

WD Support

[jgarnham]

All of a sudden the Time Machine Backup has speed up, now doing about 30mb/s. How odd.

[jgarnham]

Thanks Tony. With these irratic transfer speeds do you think there is any issue with the MBL?

[TonyPh12345]

Sorry, I don’t know.   I have zero experience with Macs.

[Jacko1]

If you look HERE you will see my views on this very subject.  If you look under my posting name you will see other posts about MBL and Macs. Given my experience of computers and Macs, in my opinion I just don’t think there has been enough development of this product for Macs.  I can’t comment on Windows as I’m not using it for that purpose.  To sum up - iTunes server doesn’t really work, TM is at best “flakey” and can’t be relied on and most of the time the only way to get MBL to sleep is to do a complete shut down of your Mac.  After three weeks of frustration I’m about to return mine to the store.  I think maybe paying a little more may get me a better “Mac solution”.

[jgarnham]

How are you returning yours, are you returning it directly to who you purchased it from or to WD? Also, what are you going to replace it with?

[Jacko1]

Well to start with I have issued MBL with a final written warning today, reset back to factory condition and started all over again.  The reason for doing so is that I happened by chance on an article about Sophos “Free Home Edition” AV and problems with TM.  Having looked at the Sophos forum I can see lots of Sophos AV users complaining about problems with slowness freezing and hanging of TM backups when using this product - I use Sophos.

I have disabled the AV and must admit the reload went a lot smoother and quicker than previous attempts.  We will see what the next couple of days brings.

If I do return this product (and still think that may well be the case) then the retailer from whom I bought the product has already indicated they will be happy to refund my money on return.  For a replacement I think I will opt either for Synology or QNap, more expensive yes but both get consistently good reviews.

[jgarnham]

I had some success this morning with making it work faster by setting the MTU to 9000 (Jumbo frames). This increased the speed until about the end of the day when it slowed to a halt at about 1.7GB while backing up about 11GB.

[Jacko1]

Take a LOOKat the solution I have taken.

[jgarnham]

That’s unfortunate for me as I was using the MBL primarily as a TM backup. 

[Jacko1]

I acknowledge it is unfortunate and understand your disappointment.  However, you also want a working solution and I’m confident you would find the solution I have used to be a big improvement.  If you think about it then it really is risky keeping all your data and backups on the one single HD.  I think if want to have both on the same disk then you need the MBL Duo which gives you the option and peace of mind to mirror the drives.