Gigabit Cards in both PC & Laptop - Transferring sans Gb Router?

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pianoprodigy

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My laptop is getting a new hard drive, so I need to backup at least 10-12 GB worth of stuff off of my laptop before installing the new drive. My Thinkpad has a 10/100/1000 card in it, and my brother's desktop (with loads of hard drive space) also has a 10/100/1000 card. We have a 10/100 Linksys Router that the computers are currently wired to.

I can just connect the computers together and transfer 10x faster, right? Do I need a crossover cable? Do I need to manually enter settings? If so, what are the settings?

Thanks.
 
You are going to need a crossover cable or gigabit switch. Settings shouldn't be to difficult.
 
GlobalFear said:
You are going to need a crossover cable or gigabit switch. Settings shouldn't be to difficult.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my understanding is that I would need a crossover cable.

Settings (I think) would be:

IP Address: 192.168.1.X (replacing X with different numbers for each computer)
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 (for both computers? don't know)
Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1 (for both computers?)

Oh, is this even worth it? Will the transfer be 10x faster? I imagine there's some kind of diminishing return with transfer rates...
 
You will be bottlenecked by the hard drives, still a crossover cable is not all that expensive even if you buy it at a storefront.
 
Talz said:
You will be bottlenecked by the hard drives, still a crossover cable is not all that expensive even if you buy it at a storefront.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was thinking that the hardware might become the restriction and not the the network itself. I already have a crossover cable.

Can anyone confirm the settings?
 
Just assign static ip addresses to each machine and make sure you are on the same subnet, hook up via cross over cable and start transferring.
 
You probably won't even need a crossover cable, most gigabit cards are Auto-MDX. Settings look good, though. I normally see about 250mbit when using a direct gigabit connection between 2 PCs. Since you're going from a laptop to a PC, I'd imagine you'll get 150-200mbit, since laptop drives are usually a bit slower. That's still 50%-100% faster than a 100mbit connection, though.
 
JBark said:
You probably won't even need a crossover cable, most gigabit cards are Auto-MDX.
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Correct, Autodetect is part of the GigE NIC spec and most *reputable* cards do it.
Get a good cable, connect them together and give them static IPs on the same subnet. You don't even need a default gateway.
Make sure you can ping each other then try to do the copies. As others said you'll probably be limited by the laptop HD.
 
If both PCs have their gigabit nics configured for DHCP and are running windows, you wouldn't even need to setup static IPs, just let APIPA do it for you and you'll get a pair of 169.254.x.x addresses on the same subnet.
 
Just as a followup:

I would have tried the crossover cable route; however, I realized when I got home that my crossover cable is not Cat5e so it would not have worked with Gigabit.

I just plugged into the router and transferred at around 8 MB/sec. I'm posting from the computer with the new hard drive now.
 
As many people said, you didn't need the cross over. Any old Cat5 would have *worked* didn't even need to be Cat5e. Might have had some packet loss if the cable was really crappy, but as long as all 4 pairs where punched you would be ok.
 
ambit said:
As many people said, you didn't need the cross over. Any old Cat5 would have *worked* didn't even need to be Cat5e. Might have had some packet loss if the cable was really crappy, but as long as all 4 pairs where punched you would be ok.
Click to expand...

I see. I didn't realize that the 5e was not required. That was never mentioned. Oh well. Things got done with time to spare. Thanks for the knowledge.
 
pianoprodigy said:
Just as a followup:
I just plugged into the router and transferred at around 8 MB/sec. I'm posting from the computer with the new hard drive now.
Click to expand...

With the low speed of a laptop hard drive, you would not have gotten much more throughput had you used a gige connection.
 
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