I'm organizing my data after moving from a PowerMac G5 to a MBP. I have a G4/450DP that I'm using as a home file server. Would a gigabit switch greatly increase file transfer speed? I do have a gigabit ethernet card in the G4.

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The G4 is limited by the internal data transfer rate. From what I remember, gigabit in a G4 will run up to 4 times faster than 100BaseT. blusubaru covered fairly completely what he did to his to get data rates up.
[forums.macresource.com]

Oh, it looks like you are pretty well informed on the Armada threads.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2007 12:29AM by Filliam H. Muffman.

on my network -- G4 MDD to G5 takes under 1 minute for 1 gig -- roughly the speed of FW 400

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

Even old G4 towers, like my 466 can move tons of data with it's fast ethernet performance. I move gigs of data all day, every day over the network in my office. We have everything from that old 466 G4 to a 24" iMac 2.16. The 466 network performance is better then the iMac C2D.

Every Monday I have laptops coming in from shoots and have gigs to move from each. The Toshiba with 100BaseT can take hours to copy over 20GB of data, while a Powerbook G4 can do it in 10-15 minutes, again the Powerbooks have strong ethernet performance.

Depending on how you set up the details, a good avg sustained transfer rate should be in the mid 25MBps range, with bursts over 40MBps

While transferring data, check the processor performance of the DP450. I use Menu Meters [www.macupdate.com]. If your processor pegs out during file transfers, then a gigabit switch isn't going to help you. You're moving as fast as the server can go. A processor upgrade would get you a higher transfer speed.

Also try running an ethernet cable (cat6 if you have it) between the MBP and the DP450 instead of going through a router. See if that increases your speed.

You may also be limited if you're writing to a single drive and not a RAID setup.

I was getting extremely impressive file transfer speeds directly connected to my G5 iMac (close to 60MB/sec IIRC). I have since moved it to running through my Buffalo router (100base-t) and am still able to edit in FCP over that. It's not an ideal solution at this point, but the file transfer speed is still quite high.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2007 09:14AM by blusubaru.

gigabit hubs are relatively cheap now.

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The processor performance part of it is filesize dependent. I did a lot of tests comparing processor usage on 100bT and concluded that a G3/300 is more than enough for transferring large files at 100bT but with tons of small files, even a G4/400 is pegged at 100bT.

I suspect that at gigabit, a DP450 will be fine for medium and large files but if there are tons of small files, then you *might* need more.