In reply to a post by 4M2:

prizx,

Could the Mac machine be networked locally to a Windows machine and the 200GB of data written to an external NTFS drive (preferably in an enclosure over eSATA or usb3) connected to the Windows machine? The NTFS HDD could then be posted/couriered as a fragile package to the remote Windows user.

Unfortunately I have no experience with networking Mac to Windows and can not advise the folks regarding this issue...

I assumed from earlier replies the Mac end had no access to a Windows box.

Indeed one could network a Mac and Windows box together, can patch them directly to each other if they both have Gbit network cards. Either computer can be doing file sharing. It's ok to leave things on auto private addresses (169.254) for this kind of networking even if Windows moans about limited connectivity it is not a fault just means there is no router.

A) Easier: Turn on Windows sharing on the Mac for the folder containing the files, then from the Windows machine, open that networked folder and copy to external drive.

B) Turn on File Sharing on the Windows box and Share the whole external drive letter. From the Mac connect to the Window share and copy the files to it. Probably best to stop sharing the external drive before doing Safely Remove.

If it's Windows Home and it gets too fussy about the right user/password, could install FileZilla FTP server on the Windows box and share the drive that way. Some versions of Mac can't upload to FTP without additional (free) software.

Yep, two-a-penny XP Windows machines should be easy enough to find/borrow for the job - just concerned about the local networking, but FileZilla FTP should hopefully solve any problems if they happen

Are gigabit cards a necessity? Guess 100Mbps might do the job although it would be a fair bit slower...

I think one of the key points in your post that people may have missed here is:

to a Windows user half way round the world

So the first bottle neck is going to be the latency drag of transferring data to a peer that is nearly 350 ms away (round trip).

To maximise the speed, it's going to be beneficial to try and multiplex the transfer of the file across several parallel TCP streams to get maximum through put. There's manual/hacky ways of doing this (speaking as a technical user, also googling turns up some results). But as for off the shelf software that does any of this, I have no idea.

Coming from a Linux background, if it was me, I would use rsync, but further more, I'd try and split the file up into 4 or 5 pieces and then run 4 or 5 parallel rsyncs at the same time. Then let the remote user join the files back up. I did something similar to this when moving 1.5TB of data between London and New York for a company a couple of years ago - a single TCP transfer just wasn't cutting it, but multiplexing transfers like this ended up maxing out their 100Mbit switches (at about 60Mbits) allowing the transfer to be completed in a couple of days (rather than possibly an entire week).

PS - just checked under Linux, there is a command called "split" which does exactly this - splits large files into smaller segments. If this is available on the MAC, this is definitely the approach I would take. Split the file into multiple pieces, and then parallel rsync them all across. As for having a Windows box support rsync and rejoining the files, that's going to require more research. Sounds like a classic case for the Windows user to buy a NAS that supports SMB file shares + rsync (like the small Buffalo unit I have) so that can be left on all the time allowing files to be dumped on it when ever is convenient. Or possibly, just for the Windows user to download Virtual Box running a CentOS VM which would then have all the tools he/she needs to support receiving rsync transfers and then rejoining the files.

Edited by deleted (Sun 12-Feb-12 16:53:02)

Just checked there is indeed a command in OS X called split,
If you need some assistance using, open a terminal windows and type
man split

this will bring up the manual pages for the command including syntax, so then its just a case if the split command versions are compatible between whichever Linux distro it was to be pieced back together with, and the OS X version.

Other option is to use something like rar, and this can split the files, depending on the type of files you may get some compression, which would help reduce transmission time.

But as people have already mentioned however many tcp streams you can send simultaneously, the ability to resume essential.

Many thanks for your input mixt

Thing is that this may or may not be a regular transfer of a large amount of data - keeping the initial transfer as simple a possible without committing to a more complex setup for future transfers would be preferable.

That's fair enough - wasn't sure if speed was of concern or not.

So in that respect, anything that allows resumes is essential. Personally, it would be rsync.

In reply to a post by 4M2:

Yep, two-a-penny XP Windows machines should be easy enough to find/borrow for the job - just concerned about the local networking, but FileZilla FTP should hopefully solve any problems if they happen

Are gigabit cards a necessity? Guess 100Mbps might do the job although it would be a fair bit slower...

Not necessary as such - am guessing people are more likely to have gigabit NICs as standard - whereas many (home users) would not have gigabit switches or routers so it was just about speeding up that part of the copying.

Windows networking seems to be a recurring theme especially with changes from XP to Vista and 7.

For those just joining the thread the above is still based on physically sending a hard disk.

The stuff about the multi-stream transfers is technically valid but I imagine the persons involved don't have access to 100M symmetric at both ends or they would probably have run some small scale tests before asking about this.

I do have access to 100M symmetric and I still wouldn't dream of attempting this (other than overnight or deliberately capped at 20%) because the connection can't just be monopolised for this one purpose.

Edited by prlzx (Sun 12-Feb-12 17:33:24)

I know he doesn't want to split files into 4GB chunks but what about 25GB that would fit on blu-ray discs? Might be cheaper to purchase and discs should be cheaper to post and possibly more robust. If UK and remote location each had burner this would solve the problem if it were required to continue sending large files in the future.

A very good idea Dick-B

That is certainly the way that I would personally do it because the video file will probably stand being chopped into 25GB sections whereas 4GB is too small. However, obviously, a blu-ray burner would be required at the Mac end and a blu-ray reader at the Windows end which I don't believe are currently available.

In reply to a post by 4M2:

However, obviously, a blu-ray burner would be required at the Mac end and a blu-ray reader at the Windows end which I don't believe are currently available.

But may not cost much more than a HDD and it will be there for future similar use should that be required.