NAS Drive Slow speed

[ssubhasis]

Hi,

I have created a NAS drive using old laptop - Lenovo Y500 and 1 & 4 TB Seagate USB Drive. I installed Samba in Ubuntu in my laptop and connected the laptop to Router via Ethernet cable. When i want to save files to my NAS drive i am getting 1.5 - 5 MB/s. Is this the expected speed i should get?

 

[popatim]

That depends. Lots of little files transfer alot slower then one big file. Transfers only move as fast as the slowest link in the chain and we no nothing about anything in your chain except the y500.

Check the laptop, make sure its seeing a gigabit connection and set to full duplex.

What about the drives themselves? If these are desktop drives in enclosures, which enclosures did you use?
- benchmark the drives right from the laptop, this is the baseline and you will not exceed these speeds.

Which Router?
Are you using Cat5 cables? Yes, those are part of the chain too. You need gigabit rated cables & network gear to see speeds approaching 100MB/s in addition to having Gigabit ports on the router.

Onto the sending end, how is it connected to the network?
- Run the benchmark again from it and compare.

Just from the little we know, I would guess that you have a 100Mb/s device/cable in the chain. (approx 10MB/s top speed)

 

[ssubhasis]

Thanks for replying. My Lenovo Y500 is connected to my router Belkin N450 using lan cable. In my laptop wired connection setting i see speed reported as 100 mb/s. I think the router's max lan speed is 1000mb/s. They are connected using cat 5e cable - lucent-d systimax 1074d. Which i thik has max speed of 1gb/s. My other laptop is connected to wifi using 5 GHz connection. So basically its the laptop lan speed that is causing the bottleneck? I should get a 1gb/s there but instead i am getting 100mb/s.

 

[ssubhasis]

Did some checking on the connections. It seems when i am connecting the laptop to my modem directly the network status show 1000mb/s. But when I connect to the router the speed is 100mb/s. I used both the connector to connect my laptop to modem, connector which connect my laptop to router and the one which connects my router to modem. Both giving me 1000mb/s when connected directly to modem.
I assume i am not getting the max connection speed of 1000mb/s via my belkin N450 router Ethernet. Not sure why.

 

[popatim]

From this review, it states "This Belkin router has four (10/100Mbps) Ethernet interfaces.". Therein lies your problem.

It also states the Belkin "Devices that connect on the 2.4GHz band have a theoretical transmission rate of 150Mbps. The 5GHz band enabled by the router's adherence to the IEEE 802.11n standard supports a theoretical transmission rate of 300Mbps." ie - roughly 15MB/s and 30MB/s respectively. (B=bytes. b=bits)

 

[asoroka]

I assume you are using USB2, this will be a major bottleneck.

You are better off buying a dedicated NAS case.

 

[ssubhasis]

@popatim baes on the information provided at Belkin website i thought its Ethernet ports are capable of 1000mb/s speed. Below is written there.

"The N450 Wireless Router features four 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN Gigabit (Ethernet) ports for your wired devices."

I connected to 5GHz band. So i expected to reach at least 20mb/s but 1-5mb/s is no where near that.

@asoroka my external hard drive is connected to usb3 ports.

Looking at all the complexity it seems to get better speed i need dedicated NAS and a better router.

 

[popatim]

Its possible there are more then one version of he N450, we may need to research the exact model# of the one you have.

 

[ssubhasis]

You are absolutely right. My N450 version is a older one and have 10/100 switch. So the max speed is 100mb/s. Planning to buy a new powerful router. Thanks a lot for ur help.

 

[popatim]

Glad we got it sorted out for you. Next you will be wanting faster speed from the wireless connected PC. I would suggest trying Powerline adapters when you reach that point.

Enjoy!