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Tsayre

The data transmission from my Seagate NAS220 to my Mac (running OSX Lion) is slow. Any suggestions?

I have a large library of Mp3s that I want to copy back to my MacBook Pro long enough to have iTunes Music Match scan them into my account. I left it running all night copying from the NAS220 to the Mac, and it only moved 3GB of data. It seems like I should be able to move data much faster. I have the computer plugged into the same router as the NAS220 and so no WiFi is involved.
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NotHotWater

I'm not an expert in NAS, but I feel like there are a couple of limiting reactants in this data transfer.
  1. WiFi might not be involved, but your internet still is. That means that if your router isn't a Gigabit router, or your house uses Cat5 cable instead of Cat5e or Cat6, you're only going to get 100mbps theoretical transfer to other devices on your network. It would be faster to directly connect your MPB to the NAS over USB.
  2. The only other thing I can think of is that your computer fell asleep during the night and started limiting the transfer. I've noticed when I'm downloading things on my MacBook Air that when it falls asleep, they slow down considerably.
You might want to either 1) directly connect your NAS to your MBP to ensure quick download speeds, and 2) make sure your MBP isn't falling asleep in the middle of the transfer.
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ArmpitOfDeath

You probably have the Mac set to sleep at around 4-5 hours. You'll need to set it never to sleep.

The NAS220 is a low-end NAS, and as such will offer transfer speeds in the megabit range regardless of whether you have it connected to a megabit or gigabit network.

Looking at the specs, I'd say it will take about an hour <-> an hour and a quarter to transfer every Gb of your music.

Edit: Read performance appears to be higher - if you're transferring NAS -> Mac, then expect it to be about twice as fast (assuming you're on a gigabit network - i.e. it's about 250mbits/sec. Otherwise expect it to be about the same as the above - i.e. ~1Gb/hour), so perhaps you've got the Mac to sleep in a couple of hours?
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groovechicken

I would say that the most likely culprits are either dying drives in the NAS or bad network cables. I have seen a LOT of bad Seagate drives over the last 2 years or so. They usually start getting really slow as the sectors start going bad and it takes them a while to completely die. Sketchy cables can cause dropped packets which will also slow things down.
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frankspin

What kind of drives are in the device? Is your router gigabit?
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