I took a little video of that. Not sure what it’s telling me though.
I am really worried that this pile of crap is running all of that data over my internet connection. Everything is hard wired, but if that is true the speed at which it being done is the very least of my worries.
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EDIT: Here is the info I get on my adapter. I am also wondering if maybe amazon sent me a fake cable. Like a cat5 instead of cat 6.
If you are going from a LAN device to a LAN device, there should be nothing passing over the internet in your setup.
Even CAT5 will do gigabit over a 100ft cable all day, and you only have a gigabit network adapter in that computer (and probably any other device in in your house) anyway. There isn’t a huge cost difference between CAT5/CAT6, and for a 1G network with shorter cables like yours there isn’t really a performance difference, but I hope they sent you an honest cable. CAT6 can do 10G for 55 meter. The cable isn’t your limiting factor unless it is damaged (this doesn’t seem likely based on your description).
File transfers are measured in MB/s (megaBYTES per second) and network speeds are typically measured in Mb/s (megaBITS per second). There are 8 bits to a byte, so you have to convert. In a perfect world, with gigabit adapters and a cable capable of full throughput, you can get a theoretical 125 MB/s. This is the maximum speed, but it does not account for overhead or other activity.
You also have to factor in the limitations of the disks. A NAS with 2 drives in a RAID1 (mirror) will only be as fast as 1 of the members. Most drives max out around 150MB/s, but some are much slower (typical “NAS” drives on the cheap end are 5400rpm which are slower than the 7200rpm drives typically found in desktop computers. Laptops often have 5400rpm drives as well). Sequential data is much faster than random data, which is what you probably have unless the drive was defragged shortly before you started the transfer (don’t do this, you’ll spend more time than just waiting and it’ll tax your drive). 20-50MB/s is pretty good normally for a single disk with normal data.
Another factor is the type of data being moved. 1x 1GB file will transfer faster than 1000x 1MB files. If you have lots of smaller files and a lot of data the initial sync will take a LONG time, but in the future you’ll only have a few files to sync at a time and it’ll go faster. Watch the file transfer and you’ll probably notice that the speed increases when it hits a larger file and slows down when there are lots of small files.
Do you have other devices putting data on the NAS at the same time? This will slow the process down.
If your ISP provided router is not great (most aren’t) they can have a hard time with large data streams (research “bufferbloat” for info on how that works). Essentially they choke when you put a large load on them. It also may only have 100M ports, which could slow you down. Do you have a network switch in between the router and the devices? If yes, check and see if it is only “10/100” or 100M instead of “10/100/1000” or 1000M/1G.
Another possibility is that you are actually transferring things over Wi-Fi (both can be connected simultaneously). Try disconnecting from Wi-Fi before transferring the files and see if it is faster.
Lastly, 250GB is going to be a pretty long wait unless you have that workload distributed over more disks or faster disks and use a faster link (10G is pretty cool).
If you are just moving files with file explorer in Windows, I’d recommend doing it in smaller batches so if you have an issue in the middle of a transfer you don’t have to start all the way over again.
EDIT: after typing all of that I saw that you are connected at 100M, so that is the reason for the slowness… Check any device you have in between that computer and the router to make sure it can do gigabit. If there is nothing, it may be the router only has 100M ports.
Take a picture of your router or provide the model info so we can research.
Want to second the MB vs Mb issue. I found that they’re typically a 10:1 difference almost exactly, whether latency, guard-bits, whatever. And people get sloppy with capitalisation, like using “LEDS” and “FETS” instead of “LEDs” and “FETs”, so right there everything can be off by 10:1 just because of the shift-key.
Yep that 100 Mbps in your screen shot jumped right out at me too. Is it possible that your computer only has a 100 Mbit Network adapter?
Built in windows file sharing, simplest most reliable option.
Also free and no need to install anything at all.
That same screenshot shows he has a Realtek GBE Family adapter which is gigabit. Why it’s only negotiating a 100mb connection is the question. Prolly gonna be the switch or the cable.
Ah I didn’t see that. That’s really strange…
If a CAT6 cable loses a pair or two it will only do 100M (1000M requires all 4 pairs).
I think this is the router I have.
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I don’t think I really have an option to change it though. The LTE company sends them to you with a preinstalled card that is keyed to the router.
I’m not sure if this helps, just now I plugged in a WB backup drive uisng the USB 3.0 and my transfer rate is hovering between 90-157 M*B*/s. A 53 Gig file takes about 7 minutes to transfer. From what I understand the USB 3.0 is always going to be faster, but it still makes it seem to me like something is not right with the LAN.
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I took that same WB drive into the house and plugged it into the PC in there with the USB 3.0 and the transfer rate over the LAN network had the same speed from there as it did from the shop about 11.1 M*B*/s. To me this means at least that the cable from the shop pc to the router is not damaged. It could still mean that the one from the NAS to the router is the culprit, or that all the cables I got are not really what they say.
I’m not seeing anything that mentions the speed of those ports unfortunately. I did some searching and it seems they don’t advertise the speed.
If the computer is connected directly to that device it is either the ports or the cable (look for damage, but probably not). You can try another cable or check your other devices. If everything wired is connected at 100M, it is probably the router. A good test would be to use a shorter cable with your laptop (since it is portable) and see if it connects at 100M.
Assuming the router is to blame, you could get a small gigabit switch and connect it to the router with a short cable, then connect your wired devices to to the switch. This should get you 1000M speeds assuming your cables are good.
Something like this should work: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-8-Port-Gigabit-Ethernet-Unmanaged/dp/B07PFYM5MZ/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=gb+switch&qid=1615480230&sr=8-3
That one is 8 ports, but the 5 should work if you don’t need that many.
If you are shopping around, TP-Link and Netgear have decent switches for the money. I like ones that are all metal. Make sure it is gigabit, and has 1 port for each device (including the router) that you want to connect.
There shouldn’t be any setup beyond plugging it all in, so it would be easy too.
You guys did it again!!! 
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Fortunatly I had my old router still here. I took the cat5e cable that came with the NAS, plugged my old router into the back of the house PC and the network adapter changed to 1.0 Gbps! I drug my LTE router in the living room and plugged it directly into the pc using the short Cat5e and it dropped to 100 Mbps. Some variation on those tests show my long cables under the house are good (Hallelujah for that).
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I plugged in all the long cables from under the house to the old router, and then plugged the LTE router into the old one. Now I get 50-100 MB/s.
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I also appreciate you guys mentioning that discrepancy between how data on the drives is measured vs how the LAN connection speed is measured. I will do my very best to keep my MB/s and Mb/s in the right place
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SUPER THANKS AGAIN to every one who has been helping me with this. I was 
sick over spending the grotesque amount of money this system cost only to have a slower one than what I started with. Everything seems to be running quickly at the moment.
Happy to help!
Careful though, it is like flashlights; Once you get a taste for performance, you want more.
This is my closet at the house:
We are lucky to get fiber from 2 providers in our neighborhood (we shopped around before buying this house) and we get gigabit speeds for $80/month.
The cabling is a work in progress… I need to clean up the dangly bits a bit and eventually install my cameras. I also plan to get a switch depth server, storage, and a rackmount UPS to go in there where the AT&T box is sitting at the bottom presently. Then I’ll be able to retire my current servers and the big ol 4 post rack next to my desk. Should quiet the office down considerably.
Glad you got it sorted and working to your satisfaction.
I just finished adding some more drives and expanding my storage array.
I have one more drive to swap out but that is probably a month away.
I just discovered the most sickening thing you can possibly imagine. About 40% of my data was DESTROYED when I backed up the main hard drive to the NAS. I have never seen anything like this in my life. I copied all of the pictures from the main drive to the NAS. All of the folders copied like expected, but I found a large part of them to be empty. At first I thought it just did a piss poor job of copying the data, so I went back and hooked up the hard drive again only to find that about half of the files that were not copied have also been DELETED from the original drive!!!
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Some of them irreplaceable family pictures (graduations etc), but actually worse than that is the product photos that took me thousands of hours in total. Often times to create one image with setup, lighting focus stacking 15 images deep (like a 20 hour process for me cuz I’m slow). Not just the final image, but all the raw, and all of the photoshop projects are gone.
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I don’t even understand how that is possible!!!
How did you transfer the files? I would always recommend copying the files and not moving them (cut, if you dragged them onto your share, then you did a cut and paste essentially) Copying, would not affect your source files.
Well, your data should still be on either one of the disks, most likely on your source drive (the drive you sent the files from). As you may or may not be aware, when you delete or data get deleted from storage, the data is not actually “deleted”. It is still there on the drive, but the reference to it is removed, and it can now be written over.
I’m not really sure what has happened in this case, but I would suggest trying something like Recuva from CCleaner, I have had good experiences with it in the past. Failing that I would suggest taking the affected drives to a data recovery specialist to try and recover you irreplaceable files, should have a high success rate, just will cost a little.
I would also heavily suggest not writing anything at all to either disks in the mean time, as if your files have been deleted, when writing new data to the drive it is possible that you may overwrite the “deleted” data, thus making it irrecoverable.
@vestureofblood Yikes!!!
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You and me both.
Backup sw should only copy, and never ever ever ever move or delete anything.
It sounds to me like it wasn’t backup software per se, probably just a standard copy/paste action. But I agree that this doesn’t make sense, which is good, because the data is probably still intact somewhere, barring an extremely bad case of data rot on an infrequently used backup drive.
HOLD ON… It may have been some kind of a glitch (OH MAN I HOPE). Many many of the files that were supposed to be transferred were NOT, I am making a screen recording so you guys can see what I mean. Basically most of it has to do with folders within a folder. Example Christmas>2010>Moms house. The Moms house folder and any others in that layer are empty. However SOME of folders on the original drive that were coming up totally blank a moment ago are now showing me some images that were not there before.