Boosting File Transfer Speeds Through Techniques and Tweaks

We all know the frustration of staring at a progress bar slowly crawling across the screen as you wait for a file transfer to complete. Whether it’s uploading vacation photos, downloading that hot new album, or transferring work files to collaborate with colleagues, large file transfers can feel like they take forever. The progress bar inches along while you drum your fingers impatiently…10%…25%…ugh. At this rate, your hair may turn gray before the transfer finishes! But what if you could speed things up and send files zipping from point A to point B much faster? Well, you’re in luck because you don’t just have to sit there and accept the creep-pace of your current file transfers. There are things you can do to optimize, boost, and expedite your file transfer speeds.

In this post, we’ll explore various tips and tricks to slash your file transfer times and keep your sanity. We’ll show you how making a few hardware upgrades, software setting tweaks, pre-transfer preparations, and network optimizations can get your data moving much more swiftly, so you spend less time waiting and more time getting things done. Let’s get into it!

Upgrade Your Hardware for Lightning Transfer Speeds

One of the easiest ways to instantly accelerate your file transfers is to upgrade the hardware involved. By replacing aging routers, switches, cables, and storage devices with modern hardware optimized for faster data transfer, you can slash those long waits. Let’s go over the key hardware components that impact transfer speed and some affordable upgrades to help your files fly:

Cables

If you still use Cat5 or early generation Cat5e cables, switch to the latest Cat6a or Cat7 Ethernet cables which offer major speed boosts. These newer standards give you more headroom to max out gigabit transfer rates over longer distances. Upgrade any patch cables connecting routers, switches, or network devices too for the fastest backbones between your equipment.

Routers

Covering your home or office in fast WiFi is great, but you want to ensure your router isn’t a bottleneck for wired file transfers. Top consumer routers now have multi-gig WAN and LAN ports as well as processors powerful enough to push high throughput without choking. The ASUS RT-AX86S is an excellent upgrade pick, delivering WiFi 6, link aggregation, and 2.5GbE LAN ports at a reasonable price point.

NAS Drives

If your Network Attached Storage (NAS) device is over five years old, all your new cables and routers won’t make much difference. Modern NAS drives have CPUs several times more powerful, allowing them to queue up and manage concurrent transfers much better. They also pack more memory to cache IO and prevent slowdowns when writing data to disks. The Synology DS220j is a reasonably priced model with solid performance gains over older storage hardware.

Tweak Your Software for Faster File Transfers

Beyond hardware, the software side of things can also help accelerate your file transfers. The operating systems, protocols, and applications controlling the sending and receiving of your data often have settings that can be tweaked for extra speed. Here are some tips:

Disable Windows Security Scans

Anti-virus software and other security scanners in Windows can detect and automatically scan files being transferred, which adds delays. Temporarily disable real-time protection in Windows Security to let large file transfers complete quicker. Just be sure to re-enable it after.

Enable FTP Multi-Channel Transfer

When sending files between servers with File Transfer Protocol (FTP), you can parallelize transfers across multiple TCP channels at once for faster throughput. In FileZilla and other FTP clients, explicitly enable multi-channel transfer to use more bandwidth and let you saturate available capacity.

MacOS Large File Transfer Timeout

When dealing with enormous files in the multi-gigabyte range, MacOS may time out transfers prematurely, leaving you stranded. Bump up the timeout duration to longer periods in Finder preferences to ensure even giant files have time to complete. Try tweaking these settings in the software managing your file transfers and see if it makes a difference in speed. Sometimes small configuration changes can have big impacts!

Shrink Files with Compression Before Transferring

If you can’t make the file transfer itself faster, make the files smaller before sending them over the network. By compressing your files before transferring them, they will take up less space and require less time to move from one location to another. The two main benefits of compression are:

Smaller File Size

Compressing large files like video, photo libraries, and media files can shrink them down by 40% or more. This means faster sending from your device and faster receipt for someone else downloading it.

Lower Network Load

Even if your network hardware is fast, sending an uncompressed 100 GB file takes more of a toll than a 60 GB compressed version. Compressing reduces the overall bandwidth hit for better network performance all around. There are many great free compressor tools out there, but some top options include:

• 7Zip: Open source tool for Windows and Mac providing extremely high compression ratios for nearly any file type. Integrates easily into context menus for right-click compressing files and folders.
• Keka: Easy-to-use compressor for MacOS, which is perfect for things like creating Zip archives of your family photos and videos before sharing them in the cloud. Preserves original filenames and directory structures nicely.

Take advantage of compression before you transfer big batches of files. It cuts down on transfer fatigue as you watch progress bars quickly leap ahead. Just be sure to notify recipients so they can decompress accordingly on their end!

Transfer to Local Device to Avoid Internet Bottlenecks

Here’s a slick trick to accelerate transfers between two devices on the same network, say your desktop and your NAS storage box. Rather than transferring directly over your local network, transfer files locally to your computer first. This takes advantage of your computer’s fast internal hard drive read/write speeds compared to routing through Ethernet cables and switches just to go from one local device to another nearby local device. For example, to move files from your NAS to your laptop on the same WiFi:

1. First transfer from the NAS to a folder on your desktop PC over the local network. Your desktop and NAS are linked through fast gigabit LAN, so this first leg is quick.
2. Now transfer the files from the temporary folder on your desktop directly to your WiFi-connected laptop. This second transfer only has to deal with the “last mile” local WiFi hop, which is generally faster than routing a full NAS-to-laptop transfer through your entire network.

Using your desktop PC or laptop’s local drive as an interim stopping point before jumping to the final destination bypasses choke points and takes less time. Give it a try next time two devices on your local area network need to exchange hefty files!

Schedule Large Transfers During Off-Peak Hours

You just got back from a major photography shoot with gigs of raw images that now need to be transferred from your local storage to a cloud backup service. Transferring hundreds of gigabytes is going to tie up your internet connection for ages! The solution? Use your network traffic patterns to determine peak usage times when connectivity slows to a crawl and schedule big file transfers during off-peak periods so they can complete unimpeded at top speeds.

Track Your Network Usage

Pay attention to when connections seem slowest due to household activity and determine your typical “rush hour” windows. Often early morning or late evening sees the least competition for bandwidth.

Queue Transfers Before Bed

Scheduling transfers to start after you go to sleep allows them to complete overnight without network congestion when people are streaming video or gaming during waking hours.

Set Bandwidth Limits If Needed

If you’ll still use the internet briefly off-peak, consider capping your file transfer bandwidth usage at 50-75% so some capacity remains for web browsing and light use.

Taking advantage of unused evening or early AM internet capacity gives big file transfers much-needed breathing room. Routing files when fewer users and applications are hitting the network keeps transfers consistently at top speed, so you wake up to fully completed file migrations!

Optimize Your Network for Smoother File Transfers

Even with modern hardware and software settings tuned for speed, an overtaxed congested network can still hinder file transfers. Optimizing the infrastructure between your devices clears bottlenecks for maximum data communication performance. Here are key areas to optimize:

WiFi Channels

If your router’s auto-channel selection is crammed into an overused band, file transfers from WiFi devices will suffer. Manually set an uncongested 5GHz channel for a cleaner pipe.

QoS Controls

Quality of Service (QoS) settings allow you to prioritize traffic from devices doing important file transfers above casual web browsing and streaming for smoother data flow.

Cables & Switches

Inspect all network cabling for damage that could impact speeds. Also, confirm switches and hubs balancing wired traffic aren’t dated 10/100 models in need of 1GbE replacements.

Firmware

Keep router, NAS, and other network hardware firmware fully updated so bugs that could cripple speeds are patched. Check release notes to confirm if transfer optimizations were specifically addressed.

Watch activity monitor apps like Glasswire to pinpoint any software or devices taking up unexpected bandwidth during transfers so you can pause them. Keeping your local network in shape ensures files move swiftly from start to finish regardless of size. Triaging infrastructure helps you proactively pull out obstacles rather than just accepting sluggish transfers.

Apply These File Transfer Tips to Rapidly Speed Up Your Workflow and Regain Lost Hours Waiting

After going through tips targeting hardware, software, file preparation, scheduling, and network infrastructure, you now have an arsenal of techniques to slash frustratingly long file transfer times. While no single tweak may completely solve all your file movement woes, combining several methods compounded together can accelerate transfers by up to double or more!

Don’t just accept that a gigantic 100GB video project will take an hour to get from your PC to the

network NAS. Run some quick compression with 7zip to crunch it down smaller beforehand, disable any security scanning if possible, and kick off the transfer late Sunday evening when fewer users are hitting the network. Those efforts working in tandem may cut the time to under 30 minutes.

Likewise, remember small local network transfers that still creep along can be optimized by routing file movement through local PC storage as a shortcut between end destinations instead of pushing everything straight through the network. And if speeds still disappoint, revisit router QoS controls, confirm firmware updates, and check if any WiFi interference or congested channels need sorting.

While hands-off convenience makes simply clicking transfer and walking away appealing, an ounce of proactive preparation, scheduling, and optimization goes a long way towards faster file migration. Saving previous headaches hunched over a desk drumming fingers as progress bars crawl should motivate you to implement some of the tips suggested. Now that you know several ways to take control and accelerate file transfers by reducing loads, bypassing bottlenecks, and upgrading capability, test changes that make sense for your common workflows. Don’t settle for shrugged shoulders over the creeping pace of moving data – take back your time and sanity armed with these speed-boosting techniques instead!