Maximum PC

Ok I hope I can explain this properly...

At work I have a Catalyst 3550 connected to two Netgear JFS524 24 port switches by a 100Mb/s uplink port. Both Netgear switches are in the same virtual network, and they connect all our workstations, access points, and servers (I know...). Anyway, several times a day everybody will get kicked out of their email, file shares, etc. for about 10 minutes or so. I believe this has something to do with the fact that everybody's "My Documents" resides on the file server which is connected at 100Mb/s. With only 100Mb per switch connecting it back to the Catalyst where the servers are, my theory is that with average files getting larger, while this may have worked X years ago when it was set up, there is no longer sufficient bandwidth to support so many users.

The question is this: Can I connect the switches to each other more than once? For example, if I run two cables from the main switch to each netgear switch, then maybe another from one to the other, will they use that more efficiently to get around the bottlenecks? There is no money ATM to buy networking equipment that doesn't suck, so I am trying to work around it. This isn't something I would usually ask rather than trying it, but if it messes something up it's my job so here I am.

Thanks for any help.

Cisco switches support Etherchannel between switches, but the Netgear JFS524 is an unmanaged switch, so I would say it doesn't as that's a feature that needs to be properly configured. And I can't find anything on Netgear's website that would disagree with that.