I was not suggesting moving from a 10/100Mbps hub to a 10/100/1000Mbps switch would cure all your problems, just that your hub is not helping. Switches are intelligent devices that support full duplex mode and are almost immune to collision issues. Hubs are passive (not intelligent) devices, work in half duplex and are subject collisions.
Check this out:
How to Fix WD My Cloud Low Speed Problems Make it Fast
Did you swap Ethernet cables? These are extremely critical but low-tech and fragile devices that can greatly affect network performance - and are often overlooked. They can only survive being yanked on and tripped over so many time - often not even once. And sadly, many come poorly made right from the factory. I always make my own for that reason.
Does this W7 computer work fine otherwise over the network? Since the backup to the Seagate USB device moves along quickly not sure this is a W7 issues. Can you test just copying (not using your backup program) a large file (or a bunch of files) to a different network device (the XP system or may the cloud/Internet storage) and see how those times compare with backing up to the MyCloud device?
Sorry, I forgot that MyCloud devices use an embedded Linux OS and thus uses a different file system that does not typically need defragging.
Many thanks
Yes I have swapped both cables and ports.
I have done some speed tests (attached) and on the basis of your recommendation and some of these figures have ordered a 1GB switch
However, these figures have raised more questions in my mind!!
1. I tried sending a file from the W7 machine to the WD disk; and then the reverse, on each time having deleted the file from the receiving end to give comparable figures. As the send is so slow I used a smaller file here. I then repeated the experiment from the XP machine. This is much older, and almost certainly the C:\ disk and the processor are much slower. On each test the network was not in use by any other program apart from the occasional packets sent out by various software. Results attached.
2. Why is there a factor of circa 20 when a file is moved from the disk to the W7 computer over moving it from the computer to the disk?
3. Directly connecting the disk produced an increase speed ratio of around 60 on sending, 20 on receiving. This potentially showed that the hub was a delaying factor....... Except that...
4. The XP to disk send was about 27 times faster than the W7 test. That is ridiculous bearing in mind that the two computers are attached to the same hub. This starts giving me doubts as to whether the hub is the cause of the slow speed shown by the W7 machine
5. The direct connection speeds on XP were comparable to the transfers via the hub (the variation may well be due to the high speeds attained with the XP machine whether via the hub or direct)
6. The direct connection speeds attained by the XP machine were slower than those on the W7 machine (43% on send; 11% on receive) which is what one would expect from an older machine, which again emphasises the fact that the XP machine was a much better performer than the W7 machine when sending via the hub. This suggests that there is some incompatibility between W7 and hubs which is not occurring with XP
6. It seems very anomalous that an older machine, both in hardware & software, can totally outperform the newer machine, particularly in transferring data from the computer to disk. The figures above seem to remove both the disk and the network from causing the problem
I will retest when the switch arrives at the weekend, but any thoughts in the mean time are welcome!
Regards Chris