Windows 10: Sharing HDD via Wifi - Questions

I would like to share my desktop HDD video files to my Laptop via Wifi in my house. Both my computers are windows 10 and I am the only user in my house. Also, am on 2.4Ghz band with "N" router but upgrading to ".ac" in few days. Apart from the below questions, will I get better speeds if I buy a new router with builtin usb 2.0 port and use that instead ?

Questions am having:
1] I had to disable password to see files while sharing, but when enabled its asking me for userid and password on my laptop. Now I am using Local account with no password set - Any idea what I have to enter in user/pass ?

2] Movies are playing good on my laptop, but getting pixelated with grey screen shades every few moments and the file sizes are 10GB. What can the cause ? I am on 5MB internet line but am sure that is irrelevant.

3] Transfer - I am only getting 7 MB/s while copying files over the network

4] What is the difference between creating homegroup Vs directly placing an folder/drive in sharing mode.

5] How to know how many people are connected if I enable sharing

6] Permissions - I had to manually set it to "everyone" in order to access my drive, but I really just want to add permission for my laptop and nothing else... how to appropriately configure it. On everyone, I think its a huge security issue.

:)

 

Internet sharing in Lumia 520 is not working

This question is on internet sharing.

Start a new question with your problem.

 

Use the PC internet connection to surf on the phone (through USB or Bluetooth)

Just to summarize, we have fixed the problem in of sharing an internet connection through wifi. But we are still looking for a solution to the original question: how to share via bluetooth or USB.

Any help? Nokia?

Paolo

 

In a home setting your best bet is to setup a home group.

• When authenticating to a remote computer for a file share you specify the user as computername\username where computername is the remote computer name and username is a local user on the remote computer. I believe that you must have a password set, blank is not allowed for remote access this way
• The problem is most likely because you are trying to stream it wirelessly. Wireless is one big collision domain, meaning all your wireless devices are fighting to transmit. If you tried wired you'd get better quality
• This is probably going to be due to a hardware bottle neck somewhere (Are you transferring wireless or wired, what standard of wireless are you sending over or what cables are you using end-to-end, hard drive type and speed, how is hardware utilization on both systems during the transfer. Just to name a few
• A home group sets up an environment more akin to a centrally managed network where the group creates a trust between devices so you don't have to keep authenticating every time you wish to connect to a share
• If you setup unique accounts to the share you could use a tool like psloggedon to see who is connected or even netstat to see which local systems are connected LAN addresses listed as the foreign address
• Yes the Everyone group is not a good idea, literally any one that can see your computer on any network you are connected to could get on your computer share. As stated before it would be better to setup unique accounts for each person or simply use a home group.

 

1) At Login Window check the Box "Save my Credentials", will never ask again.
2) WLAN has not a steady output, just need a small interference and speed drops. Just need someone passing between PC AND Router
3) 7MB/s is Normal for N300 and perhaps one of PC is only N150. USB 2.0 allows 40MB/s, 100TBase LAN is 12,5 MB/s, 1GB LAN gives a output 125MB/s . WLAN AC 867 - is 36MB/s
4) Share Folders is a much easier way to share contents. Homegroup is for family where Father want control want to hide par of his PC.
5) In sharing, you can define how many user can log in and also who has rights to access that specific folder
6------

 

How much money do you want to spend? Your best solution would be a Network Attached Storage device such as this:
Amazon.com: WD My Cloud - Network Attached Storage / Data Storage: Electronics

It plugs into a network port on your router instead of a USB port. You can disable the "cloud" feature - accessing it from the internet - if you want so it can only be accessed from computers on your home network. Or if you want to access it away from home you can leave the cloud feature turned on - but you probably won't have enough internet bandwidth to stream videos from it. I use my home cloud setup when I travel to save travel photos onto my network attached drive so my family can then see them and they are stored in relative safety on a hard drive in a very fixed and stable location.

 

If you are having issues streaming across Wifi for media, you need to move up to a better wifi Access Point. I would not even consider streaming anything HD without a 5Ghz capable Access Point that is Wireless-AC. The desktop needs to be connected via Ethernet. Also you have to have a router that can handle the amount of data that you will be streaming across your network, without causing other uses to not be able to use the network at the same time.

 

Yes, Once I set-up password I can access my drive over wifi network easily. But, now even on my desktop PC I have to enter my password everytime I boot-up which is a hassle for me! Any workarounds... ?

As for my Hardware, I am using 7200 RPM drive on Desktop and SSD on laptop. Transferring via wifi while sitting next to the router (N300). Both my computers are high end spec.

My Desktop and Laptop both are .ac but my router is "N" which am upgrading in 10 days.

This seems like a good option, as anyways I wanted to buy new 4Tb internal HDD for my movie collection.
But here pls explain how does it differ from streaming wirelessly from my desktop and via this NAS?
I believe both will give me same shitty transfer speed and video play speed - as end of the day they both are travelling via wifi through my router. Please explain if I am wrong. (PS: I don't mind my desktop being turnedon while streaming)

New router ".ac" coming in 10 days. I have shortlisted two models, but one has no USB port but has 5 antennas and another model has x1 USB 2.0 port but has only 2 antennas - Can u tellme how usefull are the ports in routers. will it satisfy my needs as per my question above ? Shall I give priority to antennas OR USB port ?

 

With any WiFi connections there are multiple factors that affect transfer rates. Of course there is the maximum rated speed of both the router and the network adapter connecting to it. But there is also how many different networks are on the same WiFi channel? Do you have neighbors on the same WiFi channel? As you move further from the router, transfer rates drop off. Electrical devices near either the client computer or the router can interfere with the signal and the transfer speed.

In your current setup of both the host (desktop) computer and the client (laptop) computer - all of these outside affects on the WiFi link are doubled. They affect the link between the desktop and the router - and then they also affect the link between the laptop and the router. Also, your router can't talk to more than one device on the same channel at a time. So the chunks of the streaming file, called packets, must each one be sent from the desktop to the router, then from the router to the laptop.

With the NAS connected by CAT6 network cable to a gigabit router, you are creating a superhighway for the traffic between the router and the host. This super highway is not affected by any of the WiFi factors, although the connection between the router and the laptop will be. This cuts down interference with the signal and the transfer rate in half.

Not only is the connection between the host and the router many, many times faster than over WiFi, but also when you are streaming from the desktop, the desktop is only sending the packets of the file in between all the other tasks running in the background. The NAS has it's own processor dedicated to doing one task - serving the files on it to the network. Also setting up security on the NAS is much easier than setting up security on a normal Windows 10 file sharing because the software on the NAS is designed, again, with only 1 purpose, serving the files only to those clients that are allowed to connect.

Finally, the NAS is better than USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 connected to the router because, again, it eliminates the router's processor resources need to process the USB connection, process the file structure, process the security permissions, etc. The router's processor resources can then be used solely to route network traffic and not have to be used to do file serving as well.

 

Well, as I write this I'm using my laptop to Cast an HD mp4 located on a HDD connected to my router's USB2 port to my TV. Router, PC and TV are all on 2.4Ghz WiFi. I'm having no problems at all, in fact network utilisation seems to have plenty in reserve.





Throughput peaks at more than: Send: 13 Mbps Receive: 12 Mbps





I put this down to a careful choice of WiFi channel...

http://www.howtogeek.com/197268/how-...rating-system/

 

Thx for explaining, I wonder now if I do buy a NAS how would I be able to connect it to my Desktop directly - I assume I have to connect it via desktops ethernet port only, Any other ways ?

Next, if I do connect NAS via my routers ethernet port and say I am downloading a file from internet and directly saving into my NAS, what transfer speed can I expect in that case ?

Also, can u assist me regarding password management as mentioned in post #6 and with router buying as mentioned below *Smile

Yup, already using it beforehand and am on clear channel

Now, I totally understand that the main culprit is my router and now I have to make final decision as to which one to buy out of the below two final choices :
http://www.tp-link.in/products/detai...rcher-C50.html
http://www.tp-link.in/products/detai...rcher-C60.html

Both, are same specs as for speed but one has x2 antennas and x1 usb port and other x5antennas and no usb port.

Do I give more weightage to usb port OR antennas for clear ability to stream Full HD movies across my house (700 Sq.ft)

 

You do not want a NAS connected directly to your desktop, then it is not a NAS. Smallnetbuilder.com has everything you need to know about networking Gateways and Access Points.

I built my network so that it is scalable and that I can change jus the Access Point out to something better, without having to spend more on replacing gateways everytime a new wifi tech comes out.

The gear listed in my System Spec's runs circles around anything that you can buy at Best Buy or even regular Consumer stuff. That was because as I built my network, I had the future of media sharing with Plex in mind when the Wireless-AC A/P's came down so that I could cast from a wireless device to our tv, which now has a NVIDIA Shield TV. I lost count of how many times I have changed out streaming devices because they were behind anything that cost more at that time.

 

That would depend on the NAS hardware. Some NAS devices also have two-way USB ports that allow it to connect via USB to a computer just like any external hard drive. Some NAS devices have only one-way USB ports that only allow connecting a USB flash drive or hard drive in order to copy their contents onto the NAS. Some NAS devices don't have any USB capability. Like bro67 stated, there isn't much to gain by connecting the NAS directly to the desktop if you have a decent network.

As fast as the file comes in from the internet. Your internet connection will be the limiting factor unless both you and the location you are downloading from have phenomenal internet speeds.

The router will manage passwords/access to your WiFi network. The router will also manage passwords/access to devices connected to it's USB port if you decide to go that way. If you go with a NAS, the passwords/access to the files on the NAS are managed by the NAS device.

That depends on a lot of factors, but you have to remember there are two parts to the WiFi connection. There is the access point (router) and there is the network adapter in the computer. The WiFi connection will only be good as the weakest of the two. Unless you have great dual band network adapters in the desktop and laptop, your WiFi will be limited at the computer end and not by the router.

Big question - where is the desktop computer located in reference to the router? Can you run an ethernet cable between the desktop and router? That would not only make the connection between the router and desktop many times faster, but would also increase your bandwidth available to the WiFi clients because the traffic going to/from the desktop would be via wired ethernet. The same benefit is true by connecting a NAS to the router via ethernet cable - it reduces the streaming traffic over WiFi in half because the file gets sent to the router over wired ethernet instead of WiFi.

 

Can u suggest me multiple good options in NAS manufacturers. I only knew WD to which you have linked earlier.
Also, everytime I turn on my computer I don't want to enter password for my local account - Do u know how to avoid this and login directly ?

 

Check this product:




Can I use this to plug into my routers Ethernet port and plug my external HHD ?
Product link: http://www.weiku.com/products/980111...et_Router.html