Measuring Network Attached Storage Drive Performance

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=153' target='_blank'>http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=153</a><br /><br /></div><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/small-net-builder-NAS-drive.gif" /><br /><br />Digital Media Thoughts reader Cameron pointed me to this chart, and this site, and it's a gold-mine of great comparative information if you're look to pick up a Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive. There's a surprising amount of performance disparity between different drives and manufacturers, so it's important to do your research lest you end up with a lemon. The reviews are deliciously detailed, like this <a href="http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/29671/75/">10 pager on the D-Link DNS-323</a> - a drive I'm looking at picking up.

[Dyvim]

The Buffalo LinkStation Pro performs well. I'm thinking about picking up the 500 GB version (currently offers best price per GB of the available sizes). I've had my eye on this ever since DMT posted an article on it a couple months back.

At > 150 GB, my music collection (now in Lossless and 192kbps versions) has gotten way too big to back up to anything other than another hard drive and I'm tired of having to use USB for multiple external drives. With the LinkStation I can hook up my 2 external USB drives to it and back things up between drives.

[Jason Dunn]

The Buffalo LinkStation Pro performs well. I'm thinking about picking up the 500 GB version (currently offers best price per GB of the available sizes)

Are you worried about the hard drive dying though? I really wish it had RAID1 support.

[Dyvim]

Are you worried about the hard drive dying though? I really wish it had RAID1 support.

RAID would be nice. But as long as I can use the backup utilities to backup selected folders from the LinkStation to a connected USB hard drive, I guess that's good enough (nothing mission critical here).

Mainly I want to be able to access all my digital media (music, video, photos) over my home network without having to leave one computer always on and always connected to an external USB hard drive as I have now.

My main machine is a desktop replacement laptop, but it's not so portable if it always needs to be connected to the external hard drive to access my media.

[bcre8v2]

http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10007

I suspect with CES, we'll be seeing more of these devices.
(Storage needs alway increase, especially for those of us using, creating, storing, and managing digital media).

Back to the LaCie: The TB drive has a nice USB expansion port.
As with most LaCie drives, I am skeptical regarding the performance. Hopefully they'll show up soon on an expanded chart @ smallnetbuilders.com.
-Steve

[Mexico]

I got a Ximeta Netdisk. Anybody knows how this drive compares to the ones in the chart? Just curious.

Mex

[Jason Dunn]

I got a Ximeta Netdisk. Anybody knows how this drive compares to the ones in the chart? Just curious.

Ah, I remember Ximeta! That was the first NAS drive I ever bought, and back then it was like voodoo getting it to work. ;-) I didn't think they were even in business any more, but they have some cool stuff coming:

http://www.ximeta.com/web/products/index.php

[dirtboy]

We use a LaCie TB drive at work. All ready sent it back with a drive failure. I've been really interested in the Thecus brand. They have a NAS enclosure that will back itself up to a second attached enclosure if you have two of them.

***[EDIT] I was wrong on the above statement. It isn't Thecus that offers connected backup, but somebody does. I just can't remember who. The Thecus N5200 still looks really cool.***

Something that really bugs me about RAID is the upgrade options. Once you put in some drives you are pretty much stuck with that size until you buy a new NAS with new and larger drives and copy from one to the other. Infrant has auto re-sizing technology called X-RAID that will let you replace with larger disks one at a time to increase capacity without losing the data. I just wish the performance was better.