Doubling a network connection?

[Traxan]

I have a 2 computer LAN and do a ton of file sharing between the two, and 1Gbit is proving too sluggish. Both of my motherboards have a pair of NICs on them, 1GBit each. If I enabled both, and connected both to the switch, would that double my throughput?

TIA.

 

[InlineFive]

If your NICs and switch both support bonding then there isn't a reason why you can't do it. However I highly doubt that unless both of your machines have better than average drive arrays that your network is the bottleneck.

 

[Jeff7181]

I'll point out the obvious... open up Task Manager and watch the Network tab to see if you're actually saturating your network, or if the drives in the computers are the weak link.

 

[Traxan]

This is why I love you guys... you never fail me. 🙂

I did a test copying a 1.5GB file over the network. Task Manager->Network showed 7% network utilization. Hokay then. SiSoft Sandra showed my 1GBit network has a 68MB/sec throughput, in line with other 1GBit NICs. But the file system performance blew. It was measured at 50MB/sec, way, way below the other drives in the benchmark, which ranged from 95MB to 144MB. Disk performance showed a drive index of 57MB.

This is a 500GB S-ATA drive, and it's a slave drive, not even running the OS. So, suggestions for improving performance?

 

[InlineFive]

I think SiSoft exaggerates some things. 50MBs is a little low but not entirely out of line. Is the hard drive setup for DMA? Is the BIOS (or OS) forcing it into PIO mode? Usually you can check this by checking the hardware properties for the device in the Windows Device Manager.

 

[Traxan]

Well I checked the device manager and BIOS, could not find anything on PIO mode. How would I check? I use a Gigabyte GA-945P-S3 mobo.

 

[Sunner]

50 MB/Sec isn't too shabby for a consumer grade drive, like InlineFive said, it's a tad low, but nothing to worry about really, you shouldn't expect much more from a drive like that.
7% util on a GigE link is a mere 7 MB/Sec though, so the drive itself doesn't bottleneck you to begin with, I do better than that when transferring things to my web server which is a rather crappy box with a ~5 year old 60 GB drive, across a 100 MBit network.
Have you checked what it looks like on the receiving end?

 

[Traxan]

Ok let me set this up:

Comp1 is the main system. The one I'm typing on now. C2Duo E6400, Gigabyte 945 mobo, 2GB RAM
Comp2 is the backup system. Athlon 64 X2 4200, BCS 939 pin mobo, forgot the make, 2GB RAM.

Problem number one is I cannot open My Network Places on Comp1, go to Comp2's drive and copy files from there onto Comp1. It won't let me. Gives me an access denied error every time. So I HAVE to copy from 2, using its mouse, to 1. And yes of course I have full file and print sharing turned on on both computers.

Ok, doing another 1.3GB file copy, Comp1's networking is 7% utilization. Comp2's network utilization is 0.31%. Again, Comp1 is the receiver, Comp2 is the sender.

 

[Sunner]

Ok, disclaimer first, I'm no Windows guru.

Now, that sounds really funky to me.
7% util on the comp with the GigE interface, and 0.31% on the other.
Obviously something is wrong, if both are running at 1 Gb, since they should have ~the same network utilization.
What's the actual connected speed of the adapters in both machines?
You could try manually setting the speed to 1000 Mbit/Full Duplex(Properties for the adapter -> Configure -> Advanced -> Speed & Duplex, Value: 1000 Mb Full) on both computers.

In case that doesn't help, you could always try ruling out the switch as the source of the problem by connecting the computers directly.

As for your access denied error, are you logging on with a proper user?