Win 7 Pro Samsung P80 Laptop

I select multiple files in a folder.

I select copy to a NAS drive.

I have 1000 Mb LAN. WiFi OK, but is disable so only LAN via CAT5 is
being used.

Copy runs for a few minutes at 45 MB/Sec

Then starts slowing down to around 10 MB/Sec.

Calculated copy time goes to hours.

Why ?

What can I do to get max speed for the whole copy ?

On 7/8/2021 10:46 AM, BillyJ wrote:
> Win 7 Pro Samsung P80 Laptop
>
> I select multiple files in a folder.
>
> I select copy to a NAS drive.
>
> I have 1000 Mb LAN.  WiFi OK, but is disable so only LAN via CAT5 is
> being used.
>
> Copy runs for a few minutes at 45 MB/Sec
>
> Then starts slowing down to around 10 MB/Sec.
>
> Calculated copy time goes to hours.
>
> Why ?
>
> What can I do to get max speed for the whole copy ?

I frequently do multi gigabyte (say 100GB +/-) transfers between Win 7
machines were the receiver puts the file on a hard disk connect by USB3.
These copies run at 98+ to 99+% of the gigabit ethernet. There is a
switch and router between the two computers. In a few cases, I like you,
have selected a few of these files to be copied by a single operation
and have noticed no slow down. So I don't think your problem is inherent
to Win 7 unless your installation is imploding on itself. Other places
to look include:

1. Is your network (all of it) gigabit? Routers, switches, cable
(mentioned above), bios settings for which network plug(s) and
performance are you using, etc?

2. What else is sucking bandwidth in competition?

3. Any broken or cracked cable insulation? Any cables not snugly push
in? If you have dogs, or especially cats, give this one serious
attention. We have cats and all of our exterior computer cables and
electric cords (in the whole house) are surrounded in split loom.

4. Depending on what happens on the receiving end to the stuff you are
transferring, you might see the size/amount of physical memory used
increasing during transfer. If the amount gets anywhere near the actual
amount of memory on your machine, thing will slow down. I don't have
this problem because a) I have a 64GB memory and b) data is being
offloaded to the disk at about the rate it arrives.

I don't know if any of these applies to you but they should give you
some clues about where to poke. I'm sure several other list readers will
send you other interesting places to investigate.
--
Jeff Barnett

BillyJ wrote:
> Win 7 Pro Samsung P80 Laptop
>
> I select multiple files in a folder.
>
> I select copy to a NAS drive.
>
> I have 1000 Mb LAN. WiFi OK, but is disable so only LAN via CAT5 is
> being used.
>
> Copy runs for a few minutes at 45 MB/Sec
>
> Then starts slowing down to around 10 MB/Sec.
>
> Calculated copy time goes to hours.
>
> Why ?
>
> What can I do to get max speed for the whole copy ?
>

Switch to FTP protocol as a test case.

FTP protocol:

1) Not subject to Windows "System Write Cache" (that causes variable rate output).
2) Does not use line level encryption like your NAS case described above.
(If you switched to SFTP, then it might have crypto involved.)
3) Still subject to hardware limitations of NIC chip.

That's the most efficient transfer method I know of, FTP.

Use "perfmon.msc", select a counter from the physical
disk section, to watch the read rate as the transfer
happens. Explorer file copy has the nice graphic to show
the rate the write cache fills up. Experiments done without
File Explorer, you can use perfmon.msc to watch a disk on
Windows 7. Or Task Manager probably has a pane for the NIC rate.
Windows 10 on the other hand, the Task Manager has better
displays of the same things you've already seen. You can watch
memory usage swell up, as the write cache fills, and the sending
side "falls behind".

With some luck here, I have managed to get 112MB/sec rates via SMB.
Windows 10 might insist on halving the rate, for funsies (a measure
of "fair share" when you want the blasted thing to run at link rate).
There is always some well-meaning nitwit in the design to ruin it
for you. FTP on the other hand, has fewer mother-may-I features
and is closer to the metal.

My Marvell NIC appears to have fried, and I'm using a RealTek 8169
at the moment, because I love abuse (70MB/sec). The nice thing
about the 8169, is a wide range of drivers. I have another
portable NIC I could use, but it doesn't have drivers back to
the dawn of time.

I'm absolutely certain, you will "find a way" to exceed what
the file share to the NAS is doing right now. On computers,
the lazy way is always the slow way.

Paul

Paul wrote:
> BillyJ wrote:
>> Win 7 Pro Samsung P80 Laptop
>>
>> I select multiple files in a folder.
>>
>> I select copy to a NAS drive.
>>
>> I have 1000 Mb LAN. WiFi OK, but is disable so only LAN via CAT5 is
>> being used.
>>
>> Copy runs for a few minutes at 45 MB/Sec
>>
>> Then starts slowing down to around 10 MB/Sec.
>>
>> Calculated copy time goes to hours.
>>
>> Why ?
>>
>> What can I do to get max speed for the whole copy ?
>>
>
> Switch to FTP protocol as a test case.
>
> FTP protocol:
>
> 1) Not subject to Windows "System Write Cache" (that causes variable
> rate output).
> 2) Does not use line level encryption like your NAS case described above.
> (If you switched to SFTP, then it might have crypto involved.)
> 3) Still subject to hardware limitations of NIC chip.
>
> That's the most efficient transfer method I know of, FTP.
>
> Use "perfmon.msc", select a counter from the physical
> disk section, to watch the read rate as the transfer
> happens. Explorer file copy has the nice graphic to show
> the rate the write cache fills up. Experiments done without
> File Explorer, you can use perfmon.msc to watch a disk on
> Windows 7. Or Task Manager probably has a pane for the NIC rate.
> Windows 10 on the other hand, the Task Manager has better
> displays of the same things you've already seen. You can watch
> memory usage swell up, as the write cache fills, and the sending
> side "falls behind".
>
> With some luck here, I have managed to get 112MB/sec rates via SMB.
> Windows 10 might insist on halving the rate, for funsies (a measure
> of "fair share" when you want the blasted thing to run at link rate).
> There is always some well-meaning nitwit in the design to ruin it
> for you. FTP on the other hand, has fewer mother-may-I features
> and is closer to the metal.
>
> My Marvell NIC appears to have fried, and I'm using a RealTek 8169
> at the moment, because I love abuse (70MB/sec). The nice thing
> about the 8169, is a wide range of drivers. I have another
> portable NIC I could use, but it doesn't have drivers back to
> the dawn of time.
>
> I'm absolutely certain, you will "find a way" to exceed what
> the file share to the NAS is doing right now. On computers,
> the lazy way is always the slow way.
>
> Paul

As far as FTP two-pane-view programs go, the commercial
one might have been IPSwitch WS_FTP. I think at work, we paid
for a license for a decent number of seats.

There are two free ones here, WinSCP and FileZilla mentioned.
But, with caveats.

https://www.dnsstuff.com/ftp-clients-for-mac-windows

Example of a source of FileZilla. This site normally does a good
job of accepting reliable versions.

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/filezilla_64_bit.html

For benchmarking, I don't recommend switching on line-level encryption,
because then your transfer rate is only as good as your CPU happens
to be. Since you're testing on your LAN, with GbE NICs on both
ends, the best test would be vanilla FTP, not SFTP.

Paul

On 7/8/2021 12:46 PM, BillyJ wrote:
> Win 7 Pro Samsung P80 Laptop
>
> I select multiple files in a folder.
>
> I select copy to a NAS drive.
>
> I have 1000 Mb LAN.  WiFi OK, but is disable so only LAN via CAT5 is
> being used.
>
> Copy runs for a few minutes at 45 MB/Sec
>
> Then starts slowing down to around 10 MB/Sec.
>
> Calculated copy time goes to hours.
>
> Why ?
>
> What can I do to get max speed for the whole copy ?
>
Try RoboCopy

If repeatedly copy same files write a command line to use in a batch

On Thu, 8 Jul 2021 22:40:45 -0400, Zaidy036 <Zaidy036@air.isp.spam>
wrote:

>On 7/8/2021 12:46 PM, BillyJ wrote:
>> Win 7 Pro Samsung P80 Laptop
>>
>> I select multiple files in a folder.
>>
>> I select copy to a NAS drive.
>>
>> I have 1000 Mb LAN.  WiFi OK, but is disable so only LAN via CAT5 is
>> being used.
>>
>> Copy runs for a few minutes at 45 MB/Sec
>>
>> Then starts slowing down to around 10 MB/Sec.
>>
>> Calculated copy time goes to hours.
>>
>> Why ?
>>
>> What can I do to get max speed for the whole copy ?
>>
>Try RoboCopy
>
>If repeatedly copy same files write a command line to use in a batch

Robocopy, for "Robust File Copy", is a command-line directory and/or
file replication command for Microsoft Windows. Robocopy functionally
replaces Xcopy, with more options. Created by Kevin Allen[1] and first
released as part of the Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit, it has been a
standard feature of Windows since Windows Vista and Windows Server
2008. The command is robocopy.

Lots more info here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy