Network imac os x7 and windows server via firewire

Question

Hi Everyone
I am trying to speed up the connection/file transfer between an iMac (2.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.7.4) and a Windows Home Server machine.
I am trying to use Aperture with a very large photo collection (approx. 120,000).  Since the iMac has insufficient internal storage I am using a Windows Server machine with 8TB of storage.  Transfer is currently via Ethernet and is extraordinarily slow - read unusable.  Also, any  request to the server results in a reconnection initiated at the mac end.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Doc

Answer 1

I fear the answer may be more complex than you'd hoped.
On paper, gigabit ethernet (I assume you're using gigabit ethernet, yes?) runs at 1000mbps.
FireWire 800 (I assume you have FireWire 800 ports on the Windows machine, yes?) runs at 800mbps.
That would imply that gigabit ethernet should be faster. Unfortunately it's not that simple. Without getting into too much technicality, FireWire is a more efficient connection (typically point-to-point) than ethernet (typically switched), but you also have to consider protocol overheads (e.g. TCP/IP and SMB).
If the disks were in a FireWire 800 enclosure attached directly to the Mac I think there'd be no contest - a dedicated 800mbps link vs a shared 1gbps link + protocol overheads). However, you're proposing running SMB and TCP/IP over the FireWire link, which eliminates much of the advantage (or, at least, levels the playing field).
At the end of the day, I might expect the FireWire to go faster, but probably not by much. You might need to look at other areas of contention such as the link speeds, broadcast traffic, network load, etc.