HD Data Transfer: Wireless or Wired?

I hope this goes into the networking category, if it doesn't please move it to the appropriate section. I am getting my Dell Inspiron 1520 in 2 days and I need a way to transfer most of my desktop's HD, we're talking like 110GB-ish, to my laptop's HD. I know how to do this thru a wireless home network, once i set it up, but due to the immense size of the data im afraid it might take a long time to do it wirelessly. Do you guys think its better to transfer it wirelessly thru my home network, or to buy some sort of cable to connect the desktop HD to the laptop HD (and if so what kind of cable do i get?).

 

I often send large amounts of data from one laptop to another by wireless. But not as large as yours. 1GB takes about 5 minutes depending on the number of files (one large file send faster then many small files). Since your operation is a one time act I would just let it run over night and it would be done in the morning. You could get an ethernet cable (network cable) this would cut the time down alot (depends if you have a Gbit ethernet port on both laptops, if only 100Mbit on one side then not that much faster then wireless).

 

100Mbit is a lot faster than "G" network. "G" gives you no more than 30Mbit/s and I really mean no more- I'd rather expect it to be around 20Mbit/s.

You said 1GB in 5min- that equals some 27Mbit/s.

As for 1Gb/s it's well over 100MB/s so laptop's HD will not make any use of this speed.

 

Actually since it's your PC data (so I assume it's important) and with such a big number in size, I would suggest that you use cable instead. You know for sure that nothing will screw up because of "interference".

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My 2 cents

 

so what kind of transfer time am i looking at with a ethernet cable like this one for 120Gb ish?

 

That cable will work if you go through the router. A Cat5e is good for gigE.

I would recommend using a FTP Client Software like FileZilla. FTP will be faster that Windows drag and drop. Definately use a wired connection, and perferably a GigE if your desktop and router supports it. FTP will give you max speeds typically 10.5 MB/sec where drag and drop is only around 6MB/sec typically. Due to MS Overhead.

 

You will either need to use a crossover cable if you want to directly connect the two computers to each other or connect both into the router, with two cat5e cables.

Wireless will work but will probably end up taking you about twice as long two transfer the data between computers.