Strange results testing trx rates of 1Gb/s link

I hope I have found the right forum for my question....I setup a ramdisk on a client system (win xp pro SP2 64bit) and a file server (win 2003 std R2 32bit) each 1GB in size. I then timed how long it took to copy a 589MB iso file in both direction using windows explorer between ramdisks.....It took 9.25 sec average so trx rate was 65MB/s ave.......I wanted to test 1Gb/s link speed avoiding HDD I/O bottlenecks........
I repeated the same test this time using both Mech HDD on client and server for the copy.....I was shocked when I got the same trx rate of 65MB/s......I don't know what this could mean? Hoping someone with more network experience than myself can help me. Server has RAID 5 3 dsk (SATAII 7200rpm RE) storage array on a Ultra 320 SCSI RAID controller riser card and 4GB ram. Client is single disk SATA II 7200 rpm HDD & 8GB ram. Link goes through a 48 port 1Gb 2960G CISCO managed switch.

Cheers
Phil

 

The transfer rate seems about right. Remember that your 1Gb/s link speed is really running in Gigabits, which is about 125 MB/s. In my experience, most network equipment operates at about 1/2 of the speed at which it advertises (after measuring for latency and so forth). So, your speed sounds about correct.

I would also look at your settings in your 2960G CISCO managed switch. You might be throttling certain traffic too... But this is a guess.

~Mjmacka

 

The ramdisk will help internal file transfers... but they won't help network transfers much.

 

Your bottle neck is not the network. It's the hard drives.

I transferred a 275 gig file from one USB drive to another on the same computer (No network involved) and it took 5 hours! Do the math.
The average transfer rate of SATA drives is 25MB/Sec with no calculations.

 

mjmacka What do you mean by internal file transfers? I performed this test because I read an article from Tom's Hardware that suggested ramdisk be a good way to test raw link speed transfer rates avoiding Mech disk I/O bottlenecks?