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Speeding up Firewire File Transfers?

Milo_Mindbender asks: "I've got a pretty common problem: copying a ton of files from an old Windows XP computer to a new one. After noticing how long transfers were taking over my 100mbps Ethernet, I hooked up a IEEE1394/Firewire cable and things were much faster. Strangely though, Windows is still only using about 10% of the cable's 400mbps bandwidth. Does anyone know any tips/tricks for speeding this up or any Shareware mass-file-copy tools that would be faster than Explorer/file sharing? Right now, the older machine is setup with Windows file sharing and the new machine is copying from it, neither machine is using much CPU and the disks are nowhere near their max speed. The number and size of the files might be what's slowing it down, since it's gigabytes of files in the 100-200k size range."

4 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. The Holy War: Mac vs. PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    by Umberto Eco

    Insufficient attention has been paid a new religious war that is unsettling the foundations of our modern world. It's an old idea of mine, but one that I find people immediately recognize to be true.

    Fact is, there exists today a great estrangement between users of the Macintosh and users of IBM-compatible PCs. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that the PC is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist, and derives its aesthetic greatly from the Jesuits' ratio studiorum. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they may proceed step by step to reach, if not the kingdom of Heaven, then at least the orgasmic moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is encountered via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

    The PC, on the other hand, is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and presumes salvation to be reserved for a technical elite. To make the system work, one must interpret the program oneself; far from the baroque community of revelers, the user is imprisoned within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

    You may object that with the passage to Windows, the PC universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true; Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions. You could even decide to ordain women and gays.

    Naturally, the Catholicism and Protestantism of the two systems have nothing to do with the cultural and religious positions of their users. One may wonder whether, as time goes by, the use of one system rather than another leads to profound inner changes. Can you use DOS and be a supporter of Vande? And more: Would Celine have written using Word, WordPerfect, or Wordstar? Would Descartes have programmed in Pascal?

    And machine code, which lies beneath and decides the destiny of both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that belongs to the Old Testament, and is Talmudic and cabalistic. The Jewish lobby, as always.

  2. Re:Move the old hard drive, then copy by Elemenope · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    BTW, this is way, way, WAY off topic, but does anyone else think that the D&D "bag of holding' wiki article is just absolutely ridiculously inbelievably over-detailed? I mean, Wikipedia has stubs way shorter and off inferior quality for 'real-life stuff that actally matters(tm)'. Damn, and I thought the gamer geeks at the local uni were scary.

    --
    All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
  3. Re:OT by BrynM · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    How do you write links like you did in "Magic Folders" and "Holding"? When I follow the URL: instructions it shows the whole URL. The /. help and FAQ does not cover this.

    Pretty simple, it's just a regular HTML link. What you're doing is creating an "auto-link". The auto-link will just display an URL as a link (like http://slashdot.org/). What you want to do is look at the "Allowed HTML" section when you post. If you don't know how to use one of the HTML tags, just google it like this. Slashcode will put the domain name of the address in brackets next to the link automagically.

    I write most of my comments in HTML and have done so for years now. Come to think of it, I can't remember a time when I posted without any HTML. For Example, here's the source code for the first paragraph of this comment (wrapped in <ecode> tags so you can see it):

    <blockquote><em>How do you write links like you did in "Magic Folders" and "Holding"? When I follow the URL: instructions it shows the whole URL. The /. help and FAQ does not cover this.</em></blockquote>

    <p>Pretty simple, it's just a regular HTML link. What you're doing is creating an "auto-link". The auto-link will just display an URL as a link (like <URL:http://slashdot.org>). What you want to do is look at the "Allowed HTML" section when you post. If you don't know how to use one, just google it like <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=html+tag+em"> this</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashcode">Slas hcode</a> will put the domain name of the address in brackets next to the link automagically.</p>

    You'll find that the <em> (emphasis) tag surrounded by the <blockquote> tag is quite common when quoting what you are replying to. So much so that the CSS now seems to recognize it and do it's fancy(pants) formatting. I suspect blockquote is doing this doing this, but have been using the two tags together for so long now it's habit ;)

    Like they say: "News for Nerds". ...And that's our /. HTML formatting lesson for today. Hope it helps.
    --
    US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
  4. MOD PARENT FUNNY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Holy shit. You, Sir, sure know how to make a man laugh.