Slow Transfer Rates Transferring Data to My Cloud on Set Up

[newperson]

Hi. I am setting up my new My Cloud device and am trying to transfer my files from a external hard drive which I previously had using my MacBook and router as described in your instructions - i.e. connect My Cloud via Ethernet to router, connect hard drive to Mac using USB and Mac to router using Ethernet. My LAN is a Gigabit LAN as my MacBook has a Gigabit ethernet card (I checked this in System Preferences / Ethernet / Advanced / Hardware / Speed - shows speed as 1000base T) and my router is also a Gigabit router as the green light on the back of the My Cloud is green and not yellow. On Sunday I transferred one folder which was ~140GB and this took ~3/4 hours. Later I transferred another folder size 19GB which took 30/40 mins. Yesterday and today I am trying to transfer my final folder which is 100GB and this is transferring very slowly - i.e. the copy progress screen is indicating it will take days. So my questions are -

1. the transfer rates I achieved for the 1st two transfers seem very slow for a connected Gigabit Ethernet LAN connection - say 11MB/s if I assume 140GB over 3.5 hours.

2. why has the transfer rate slowed so significantly for the 3rd transfer - days to transfer a 100GB folder is unworkable.

I have tried turning off wifi (to ensure that the ethernet connection is used). I notice that the device was scanning files during one attempt during the 3rd transfer but equally I started the transfer at a time when no file scan was being done. Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks Brian

[cpt_paranoia]

What are you using to do the transfer?

Is it the WD desktop app?

Or have you mapped the drive into your Mac’s file system?

The latter is the better approach for local network transfers, using the Mac’s native file manager, whatever it’s called these days.

[PJPfeiffer]

You might consider temporarily turning off sharing, timemachine, & media scan on MC

[lotust251]

its a shame we have to disable things to transfer large amounts of data to the MC…  Like other users said this thing was designed to load/tranfer files day by day ect… and not all at once.  And forget about doing it over WiFi…  I dont care what router you have.  5ghz 2.4ghz  Madness I tell ya.   If this community was not here i bet 1/2 of the MC’s would be returned by users.   

[PJPfeiffer]

its a shame we have to disable things to transfer large amounts of data to the MC

I totally agree! This is a consumer product and we can’t / shouldn’t expect enterprise results.

I actually transported all my devices to the switch I installed for the first backup because I anticipated a slow transfer.

After the first backups were successful and safepoints were working correctly I reverted to wifi which I’ve found quite acceptable. I’m new at MC and haven’t yet attempted media streaming.

One thing I’m fairly confident in is that this is a fairly weak processor and trying multiples of the MC capabilities simultaneously will choke it!

[newperson]

Thanks for the reply and advice. I’m mapping to the drive using Finder, the Mac file system. What I don’t get is why during one transfer the speed is so different to the next?

[newperson]

Will try this when I get back home at the weekend. Thx

[cpt_paranoia]

If the problem is down to file scanning, it may depend on the type of media you’re copying (I’m not sure which would be worst, but thumbnailing video might be the most intensive task).  But days to transfer 100GB doesn’t sound right; I’m sure it only took me just over a a day to copy 1.25TB of music on a 100Mb Ethernet. (Thinks: 1.25e12 * 10 / 50e6 = 25000s = 69 hrs = 2.9 days; okay, it must have taken a few days, even allowing for a generous 50Mbps link rate).

Try a different cable/router port/check all router and Mac connections?  If there’s data corruption due to poor connection, it may be needing lists of packet repeats.  And iffy connections might change randomly.