Do I need to run it directly from a DOS CD (I have no floppy drives left)? Yes, and your controller must be in IDE-Mode, AHCI didn't work at least for me. I've no floppy-drive either, I downloaded the ultimate boot-CD (UBCD) and injected the wdidle3.exe using UltraISO in the dosapps-subdirectory - ...

Main page for netio:
http://www.ars.de/ars/ars.nsf/docs/netio

I'm surprised nobody recommended some Cisco Catalyst-Switches and a pair of 4-port Intel-NICs yet - that's what usually happens when networking is the thread-topic... I too was searching for some definite answers for the "how to get may files quickly from a to b using a network"-topic around a year ...