Windows Easy Transfer, Windows 8 and a wireless network transfer

[silver-surfer]

I bought myself a new laptop running Windows 8, to replace my old laptop which has XP (SP2). I decided to use Windows Easy transfer to copy the data across from old to new, using the Wireless Network option. I have a Netgear router which supports wireless connections up to 54Mbps. Windows Easy Transfer started and informed me that the transfer would take nearly 2 hours, quite a long time I thought given there is only about 4Gb of data to be transferred. I logged on to the router, which supports SNMP and found that the link was only running at 5Mbps, this was confirmed on the Windows 8 laptop by Task Manager which showed the WiFi interface running at 5 Mbps. Does anyone have any idea why it runs so slowly?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

R

Edited May 7, 2013 by silver-surfer

[KenB]

Hi

 

I suspect the problem lies with the USB port of your XP machine.

This is probably USB 1.1

TheUSB port on your Win 8 machine will be a much faster USB 2.0 or 3.0

 

The transfer speed of USB 1.1 will be somewhere between 1.5 and 12 Mb/s ..........so your 5Mb/s seems to indicate that this is what you have.

 

By the way - XP is up to SP3

You could do with upgrading if you are going to continue to use the machine on a regular basis.

[silver-surfer]

Hi,

 

Ok, firstly, my mistake, the xp machine has SP3.

 

There are no USB ports used in this connection, it's purely WiFi. The laptops connect to each other via my router over a wireless link. The router supports 802.11g which, theoretically, can run at up to 54Mbps. When the two laptops were connected and, Easy Transfer running, the link speed was only 5Mbps.

 

R.

[KenB]

using the Wireless Network option

I really must wear my glasses :)

 

Although - theoretically - your system should be capable of 54Mb/s this is a theoretical value.

The true value is often half of this.

 

Also:

If the network cards are not compliant with the router then this could affect the transfer speed.

Some routers are very fussy and function better if the network card is specified compatible.

 

Some routers perform better than others.

 

Also Hard drives can affect the transfer rate.

Some older ones spin at 54,000 r/m and the later ones at 72,000 r/m

 

If the XP machine is short of RAM this could affect the transfer rate too.

 

It is probably a combination of factors.

[silver-surfer]

Hi KenB. What you've said makes sense, the network cards are Realtek. The disk spin speed on the XP machine is almost certainly 5400 rpm, not sure about the new one although I know it's a Sata II. Anyway, thanks for your input.

[Plastic Nev]

Just as a spin off here, when I first got my Windows 7 machine, I connected it to the same router as the XP machine, using cables not wireless. I then used the network wizard to get them both to see each other and then just copied over the files and data individually, some folders being quite large of several MB, yet they copied seamlessly in just around a couple of minutes or a little more, even for the biggest one of quite a lot of video.

In other words I didn't bother with the Windows easy transfer, mainly because some stuff I didn't want on the new computer.

 

Nev.

[KenB]

thanks for your input.

No problem :)