MacPro and LaCie Big Disk

I haven't done the homework on this yet but I am hoping someone with
experience might point me in the right direction and save me time.

I have a MacPro on OSX.4.11 with a 2 x 3 gHz Quad Core processor and 4
gigs of RAM. I also have an ethernet LaCie 1000 gig external drive. At
present the only way to connect to this drive is to plug it into the
router I use for internet stuff via the ethernet cable and network it.

The LaCie is supposed to be capable of gigabit transmission speeds, but
the data transfer rate via the router is simply painful. I seem to
recall when I had a PC networked to the Mac system I had, I could get
data through the same network I'm using now from that old PC laptop a
hundred times faster than the MacPro can talk to this drive via the
router.

Any ideas on how I can get the data transfer speed to an acceptable
level? I have HDV movie files of up to 80 gigs each, and I don't want to
spend 10 hours transferring each of them to a drive that is supposed to
be really fast!

Is there a way to connect the MacPro via one of its ethernet ****ts
directly to the ethernet ****t of the drive, without a router to
negotiate between them? I can't make them talk to each other doing that.

Rifty

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