Hi, Free-One,
I don't have enough information. But from what you have said I will give my thoughts.
Question 2. first. When E-Smith is setup it formats the disk and uses all of it. Other than partitioning of the disk itself. Therefore if you have more than 1 partition delete partitions. If you have 1 partition to 1 disk get a bigger disk.
Question 1. Depends on the network cards, hubs, switches etc before any comment can be made. The difference in speed when copying files between a 10MB & 100 MB Ethernet cards can be far more than 10 times.
Hope this helps.
Ron