Wireless File Transfer

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

Hello all,

I am very very new to all this so be gentle.

I have set up my WD TVLive with a 2tb ext HD and I am able to see it in my local network on the laptop. I am able to see the laptop media device on WD TV.

My question is how do I transfer files from a second HD on the laptop to the ext HD on the WD TV over wireless?

If someone could please be kind and patient enough to explain I would be most grateful.

Cheers

Travmelb

2

 I would like to know the same thing. I currently do not own a Western DigitalTV live streaming media player  But I’m thinking about buying one real soon.

 So can someone please tell me if it is possible to transfer files from my PC to the USB flash drive connected to Western Digital media player through WiFi??

 Both the PC and the media player will be connected to the same WiFi network.

 Thanks a lot for your help

3

drag and drop in windows

but generally speaking wireless transfers are extremely slow, you’re usually better off to safely eject the drive, then attach to your pc for transfers

4

KAD79 wrote:

drag and drop in windows

 

but generally speaking wireless transfers are extremely slow, you’re usually better off to safely eject the drive, then attach to your pc for transfers

In agreement, although not everyone’s system can use drag 'n drop, (ex: IE 9 can’t, but Chrome browser can) so copy and paste is also used, and my preferred way.

Unless you have just one large file to transfer, AND you have a wired network connection,  it is really best (as said) to have both drives on the PC for copying stuff over…  When I have had to move an entire drive’s content from one to another (ran out of room) I just put the drives on the spare PC, and let it copy stuff over ALL DAY.  Lots of files takes lots of time; especially on drives 1TB and more.

For a benchmark, it takes around 15 mins to transfer the typical DVD movie ISO file (7-8 GB) from a computer drive to the one connected to the WD unit, and this is through a gigabit wired network.  (But, it is not moving at that rate, because of the drives and the WD).  Data is moving at around 10mbps from one drive to another in this case.

5

I never thought of using IE or chrome to do the transfers

I was refering to windows explorer functionality

drives attached to the smp will appear under network

6

Well, I wasn’t referring to using the browsers this way either, although I CAN move files from my PC drives using Chrome to my pogoplug drives and cloud (but I would rather use the upload function,) and I don’t use drag n drop to move files between home drives – it is all too easy for me to miss either targets this way, drop something into the wrong folder, etc. so I prefer copy and paste. 

7

KAD79 wrote:

drag and drop in windows

 

but generally speaking wireless transfers are extremely slow, you’re usually better off to safely eject the drive, then attach to your pc for transfers

 how slow is “extremely slow”?? How long will it take for a 9 GB mkv file to be transferred from my PC hard drive to a USB flash drive attached to Western Digital media player through WiFi?? More than 30 minutes? Also can you remotely manage the contents of the flash drive through WiFi [e.g. rename and delete]??

 I really don’t not need streaming and Netflix. However it would be really convenient to control the contents off a USB flash drive without having to pop it in and out each time

I need to add or remove files!

btw my PC is running Windows 7

8

most report about 8 - 9 mbps transfer speeds

which means a 1 GB file will take approx 10 - 15 minutes, if I remember right

you can do that math if you like

so yes your 9GB file will probably take a few hours

9

Yes, it will take a while – over 30 mins.  Consider that a 9GB file takes around 20 mins for me to send a file this large (through my gigabit wired network traveling at 9+mbps)  from a USB 2 drive on a computer to a USB 2 drive on the WD.  (Since the WD is not a gigabit device, it is not utilizing the gigabit network, but rather the 100mps speed) .

Since a flash drive is slower than a HDD, and wireless could be slower, too, it will take quite a while.  So, if you want to know how long it will take on your system, just send the file via wireless to the flash drive.  It’s not like you would set a fire if you tried this!  No harm in trying.

Also, it really is no big deal to unplug a flash drive and put it in the PC – especially if it saves a good bit of time.

10

thanks guys for all of the replies.

I guess Western Digital media player is not for me since WiFi file transfer and managing is to slow! I’m also not interested in Netflix or any online streaming services.

 So the question is what media player should I buy?

 I was thinking about ASUS Oplay media player! Although it can play almost all media files, some reviews stated that its remote control is very poor!

 What other media players are out there[without streaming]?

 Thanks

11

Wireless file transfers with ANY media player would be the same, because it doesn’t have much to do with the fact that it is a media player, because if you were transferring from a PC drive to another PC drive, wirelessly, the time it would likely take is the same.  So, your concern should not be a deal breaker for the WD or any other media player.  If you think you can get “instant” file transfers from any gadget, you are under the wrong impression.

For the money, you will not find any better media player than the WD – careful shopping can get you an SMP for under $100.  The Hub (with 1TB drive included) can be found for under $200.  If you don’t think you want or need a WD unit, especially one that streams from external sources, then you probably don’t need a media player at all.

Any decent media player has streaming.  Anyway, how do you know you would not want any streaming media?  You haven’t tried it yet.  Netflix is only one kind of streaming media; so if you don’t want that, there are dozens of others that are free – how about radio?  Have you heard of TuneIn Radio?  The WD has this feature, and you can “tune in” any radio station in the world, plus other streaming audio!  Do you use YouTube, Pandora?  They are on the WD unit, and are free.

12

I have to agree … you will not find a better Unit capable of reading so many file formats too for the price.

I usually select the files I’ve downloaded during the day and transfer them overnight onto my WD 1 TB Drive. Simple really, then when I want to watch the TV episodes of Real Housewives, I just select them !!!

I’ve never known such a easy experience !!!

13

Urghh ? dont understand why you say its not for you … ANY media player will take the same time to wifi-transfers … what no-one has told you is that if you plug the usb into the WDplayer with a hard disk already plugged into the WDPlayer there is a menu option on the WDplayer to copy or move ANY file you like from anywhere to anywhere ? For example - I copied 415 GB from my backup hard drive to the WD built in drive - left it running from about 11pm last night and it finished at 10am this morning - so about 12 hours - easy to do and I dont know of another media player on the market that has this facility - the WD is without doubt (imho) the BEST there is - AND is one of the cheapest !

1 Like
14

@sibar

Thanks for the reminder about this.  So easy for moving a lot of data – no “standing by” or moving files from one drive to another under other conditions than you mentioned.

15

I concur that moving large files over wifi is going to be slow no matter what devices are involved.  Heck, I am just making a backup disk of a large number of media files from one external drive to another (USB 2), and it seems pretty slow (~30MBps).  The other thing to consider, however, is that writing 9GB to a USB stick is probably going to be EXTREMELY SLOW.  My suggestion would be to try that out on your computer to get an idea of the maximum possible speed you could achieve.  Not sure that the wifi is going to be the bottleneck there (if “300” Mbps “n”).  I have always ended up giving up on using USB sticks to move multiple gig of data.  Way too slow.

16

First I get great throughput to my WD players, they usually connect in the 50-70MBps range and I play bluray over wifi just fine.  My observation is that the bottleneck is usually the speed of the drive and not the network whether over wired or wifi, unless both ends of the copy are SSDs.

17

@carver

And, I concur with you.  Just now, for a test, I copied a 1 GB file from the PC to the 64GB/NTSF-formatted USB 2 stick in the PC.  I tried it a few times; all speeds were less than 100mbps; often near 72mbps.  Also, when the last 5 seconds of transfer time arrived, it appeared to :“hang” while the flash drive got caught up writing the data.  Too, slow for most things.

18

dcb917 wrote:

First I get great throughput to my WD players, they usually connect in the 50-70MBps range and I play bluray over wifi just fine.  My observation is that the bottleneck is usually the speed of the drive and not the network whether over wired or wifi, unless both ends of the copy are SSDs.

This is much faster than most people have reported, (especially for wireless; and even faster than wired)  so I question this speed.  Please describe your conditions. 

As for my conditions, transferring a GB or so file from the PC, through ASUS RT-N66U dual-band N-router and the wired gigabit network, the max speeds obtained are 30mbps sending file to a USB 3.0 connected,  5400 rpm HD  (NOT a  WDTV-connected) drive. 

Same file sent wirelessly via 2.4GB speed had a max transfer speed of 7mbps

These is usually the max speeds most people claim as well.

19

I’d agree with these numbers

wired

the limitation is the hdd and anemic cpu on the WD

30mbps for usb 2 is pretty close to the max speed

wireless max possible link is 300 mbps

depending on signal quality

throughput is normally half

I’ve personally be able to run throughput test as high as 110mbps using nfs

then the wd has to take that info and try to write to a drive

you add in samba protocol overhead and drive limitations

most get about 7 - 8 mbps

20

  30mbps for usb 2 is pretty close to the max speed

Didn’t you mean USB 3?  I get 7-9mbps to USB 2 drives connected to my WDTV – either wired or wireless.  I get 30mbps to USB 3 drives connected to gigabit appliance (Pogoplug) through gigabit wired network.