Really now? Time Capsule slower than USB?

I just bought a 1Tb Time Capsule, and I don't have a wireless internet connection where I live right now, so I thought I'd just set it up as a wireless HDD to Macbook Pro.

Turns out, it works great, but the speed is something along the lines of 4MB/s to 7MB/s. WOW! That's just crazy!

My WD Passport does 20MB/s, and the $500 1Tb Apple HDD can't do at least 10MB/s?

Does anyone have any ideas? Any experience?
I'm still using Tiger, would that have to do with anything?

Any help would be super appreciated!!

Hmm, that's odd because you're clearly running a 802.11n network, which means your transfers should be must faster.

How far away is the Macbook Pro from the router?

Right now, it's on my desk like 15 inches from my Macbook Pro..

Is everybody getting these slow speeds?

Cdnalsi said:

I just bought a 1Tb Time Capsule, and I don't have a wireless internet connection where I live right now, so I thought I'd just set it up as a wireless HDD to Macbook Pro.

Turns out, it works great, but the speed is something along the lines of 4MB/s to 7MB/s. WOW! That's just crazy!

My WD Passport does 20MB/s, and the $500 1Tb Apple HDD can't do at least 10MB/s?

Does anyone have any ideas? Any experience?
I'm still using Tiger, would that have to do with anything?

Any help would be super appreciated!!

Click to expand...

802.11n has a theoretical max throughput of 248Mb/s. There's 8 bits in a byte, so that would equate to roughly 31MB/s, which would be under absolutely ideal conditions with no other machines on the network and no interference in the connection. I honestly don't know if 802.11n is capable of sustained 248Mb/s transfers either, so that is likely a "burst" speed. With that said, I would imagine that 7MB/s wouldn't be inconceivable, particularly if there is interference from other devices running in the 2.4GHz band.

It's relatively simple to switch the computer's Airport and the Time Capsule to 5 GHz in order to get away from possible 2.4 GHz band interference.

I've managed to switch the TC to 5Ghz, but how do I switch the Airport? I'm still on Tiger..

But then again, this is what the guys and galls from discussions.apple.com had to say about it:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1443511&tstart=45

Which sucks. Basically I'm stuck with a very expensive and slow 1Tb drive. FOR 500 FREAKING US DOLLARS.

Am sorry, but if you really expected a wireless connection to be faster than a wired one - would suggest you return the TC.

Otherwise, you can always wire your MBP to the TC for accessing it's drive when you're wanting to do large transfers.

The wireless side shouldn't be that much of an issue after your initial backup (assuming you're using Time Machine) or for streaming audio and video files for play back.

You don't HAVE to use the wifi, it's convenient but not necessary. If you're on a broadband connection you can hook the Time Capsule up to your network and have it back up from there, so it's not a complete loss. I have noticed that transfers from my iMac to my MacBook over wireless N is kinda slow, of course N is slower than a wired connection, but it's supposed to have a good speed and be super spectacular, but it's not as great as everyone makes it out to be. I can get faster speeds with any other medium. N doesn't seem very impressive in the real world situation, even over an adhoc connection.

Hope you get it figured out, I was thinking about buying one myself. I haven't decided if I want to or not.

bobtomay said:

If you really expected a wireless connection to be faster than a wired one - would suggest you return the TC.

Otherwise, you can always wire your MBP to the TC and should have speeds much greater than USB for accessing the TC drive.

Click to expand...

There are some quite (how should I say this) not very smart people in that thread on Apple Discussions. NO WIFI (even N) will allow blazing fast file copy over a Wireless network. If you want speed, hardwire the computer to the Time Capsule. If your machine has Gigabit Ethernet it will fly.

Sorry if my post sounds harsh, but it bugs me to see people bash something and really do not know what they are saying. I have a very large network at the house and am always either backing up or just copying large video files I am editing to another system. Since all my systems now use Gigabit I will never look back! No Wifi can cut it with large files over a network unless you are a very patient person!

Alright, so I hooked up a random Ethernet cable I found lying around, and the speed is indeed faster! Up to 12MB/s as far as iStat Menus can say while transferring files to the disk.

Now does the cable matter? Do I need to get a better quality cable? Does my 2.4Ghz Santa Rosa Macbook Pro have Gigabit Ethernet?

Hmm, if I can squeeze just a little bit more speed on Ethernet, I might just keep it

Or do I need to set up anything else?

Cheers!

Open up Network Utility in the Applications/Utilities folder. On the First TAB that says Info, check your Link Speed and see if it's really Gigabit or 100BaseT.

Some older cables might have issues with Gigabit.

It says this:

Hardware Adress 00:1b:63:93:ec:94
IP Address(es) 10.0.1.200
Link Speed 1Gb
Link Status Active
Vendor Marvell
Model Yukon Gigabit Adapter 88E8055 Singleport Copper

I'll try to get another cable see if there's any difference..

All my tests have been Machine to Machine using either WiFi or Hardwired network connection. You are for sure connected Gigabit. I have no idea how the Time Capsule performs at all, but I would hope with a wired connection it would be as fast as networking to another computer. I would hope so anyway.

I have never owned any external drive that was as fast as in Internal except with a SATA interface.