Any NAS system that is limited to GbE or lower speed will give poor performance compared to even budget SSDs. (A GbE link can transfer about 100MB/sec after allowing for overheads - even low performance SSDs can do much better.) To beat locally mounted SSDs requires 10GbE or faster links. NAS systems are only useful for sharing files (slowly) to multiple computers or providing a backup far enough away to be unlikely to be affected by a common disaster (eg a house fire). As for NAS systems with 100Mb/sec links - AVOID (A USB 2.0 stick can be faster!!!)
But most of the NASes here are well below saturating GigE. A USB 2.0 stick can be faster in extremely limited scenarios but in most cases USB protocol overhead per transfer will make it worse for these kinds of workloads.
Where in the article did anyone suggest using a NAS as a performance alternative to locally attached SSDs? And as for NAS only being useful for sharing files to multiple computers, yeah, that's kind of the whole point for why local area networks and file servers were developed in the first place. That's like saying "A GPU is really only useful for displaying images on your screen"
don't know what 'overheads' you're talking about but my Synology NAS and gb network regularly transfer at 115MB/s (114-116). Still not the max theoretical of 125MB/s, but closer to the max then '100'
No, max theoretical is not 125MB/sec. That is raw data rate, but you can't actually transfer 125MB/sec of usable data over a 1GbE link. SMB max rate is about 117.5MB/sec using 9k jumbo frames and about 115MB/sec using standard 1500MTU. That is covering TCP/IP overhead as well as SMB overhead. Smaller file will reduce the max by a bit no matter how fast the host and server are because of additional SMB overhead involved in "opening" and "closing" each file transfer.
NAS are just fine, at least newer moderately fast ones. But, I do have to say, if running windows based clients...a windows based server, if you can't/don't want to move to 10GbE can be significantly higher performing than a NAS, even in "undemanding" file transfers. My G1610 based server manages 235MB/sec between it and my desktop, both running Windows 8.1. Dual GbE NICs combined with SMB Multichannel is a beautiful thing.
So you decided that comparing apples and walruses is ok? A SSD and a 2 bay NAS have nothing in common for function, capacity, or price. Troll on, dude.
Any SSD system that is limited to SATA or even PCIE will give poor performance compared to even budget RAM disks. (A SATA link can transfer about blah MB/sec after allowing for overheads - even low performance RAM disks can do much better.) To beat locally mounted RAM disks requires bleek GbE or faster links. SSDs are only useful for reading and writing data. As for SSDs with blomps Mb/sec links - AVOID (A USB 3.0 stick can be faster!!!)
"four bays present the best balance between cost and expandability for home consumers ... two bays make the cut for many usage scenarios" Surely it is the rare home consumer who needs more than 4tb on their network? I suppose if they are amassing hidef video somehow more could be required. 4 bays take up quite a bit more space too. I think it is more accurate to say 'to bays make the cut for the vast majority of home use scenarios, ever with RAID 1'.
Personally I've got 6TB of storage running on my server, 2x3TB in RAID0 for performance, but I have the redundancy because it is a mirror of the data on my desktop and I periodically back it up to a 5TB USB3 drive also. Of that, I have 3.18GiB free of the formatted 5.4GiB of storage. I would not consider my video library small at >1200 movies and TV episodes (point of fact, I actually own all of it on DVDs or BR. Well, okay, pretty much all of it. I probably have donated or whatever a few of the DVDs/BR or lost a few over the years, but 80+% of those I do actually own, I just HAVE physical disks and the limitations that imposes). Now if I had kept all of them as disk images, I might not fit it all, but frankly high bit rate transcodes are good enough in most of the cases and 720p for a lot of the stuff that isn't image crucial (yes, because I don't need to watch most comedies or chick flicks in 1080p. Thank you very much).
Even with slow growth of that, plus all of the photos and video I shot with my camera and phone, that takes care of me for probably 4-5 years before I have to worry about running short on storage (less than 25% remaining). I would consider my needs greater than an average home consumer. So I'd say that a 2 bay NAS probably is enough for 98% of home consumers. Maybe higher.
anyone cares or knows about the impact of checksumming on speed? was the review done with checksumming on or off? would the author care to confirm? thanks
Potentially stupid question, but do these just do striping for covering disk failures? I've always thought you couldnt really acheive what youg et with 4/5/8 bay NAS's where if a disk fails, you swap it out and it rebuilds the volume and you move on with life.
This is not achieved with the 2 disk models. You will be limited to things like Raid 0 which is just striping, no parity so no recovery if one fails, a very fast, but very risky method. Raid 1, mirroring which just makes 2 copies of the data, one on each disk so you end up with 2 exact copies. Great for mission critical data, but it is basically just one normal disk. And JBOD, Just a Bunch of Disks.
You need a minimum of 3 disks to do something like Raid 5 which is striping with parity so that you can rebuild if one disk fails.
Ok, i had a sneaking suspicion that was the case. So basically im looking at minimum of a 4bay, preferrably a 5bay to have something like a raid 5 or 6
How can you mention the QNAP TS-231 in the last sentence of the article like "Taken in the context of units such as the QNAP TS-231, the $282 diskless pricing of the RN202 is a bit too high for our liking." and not mention it anywhere else???? How does the Netgear ReadyNAS RN202 compare to that??
It has the worst HELP, FAQ and manual I have ever seen! Almost never ever ever I have solved my problem or found my answer from them (or support) and always I have done try and error or just guess to solve the issues! then just ask myself why they have not mentioned this simple solution in just one sentence instead of confusing people and ask you to contact expensive support!!!!!!
I will never buy any #Netgear products because of this kind of support!
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Duncan Macdonald - Friday, September 25, 2015 - link
Any NAS system that is limited to GbE or lower speed will give poor performance compared to even budget SSDs. (A GbE link can transfer about 100MB/sec after allowing for overheads - even low performance SSDs can do much better.) To beat locally mounted SSDs requires 10GbE or faster links. NAS systems are only useful for sharing files (slowly) to multiple computers or providing a backup far enough away to be unlikely to be affected by a common disaster (eg a house fire).As for NAS systems with 100Mb/sec links - AVOID (A USB 2.0 stick can be faster!!!)
BillyONeal - Friday, September 25, 2015 - link
But most of the NASes here are well below saturating GigE. A USB 2.0 stick can be faster in extremely limited scenarios but in most cases USB protocol overhead per transfer will make it worse for these kinds of workloads.Metaluna - Friday, September 25, 2015 - link
Where in the article did anyone suggest using a NAS as a performance alternative to locally attached SSDs? And as for NAS only being useful for sharing files to multiple computers, yeah, that's kind of the whole point for why local area networks and file servers were developed in the first place. That's like saying "A GPU is really only useful for displaying images on your screen"colinstu - Friday, September 25, 2015 - link
don't know what 'overheads' you're talking about but my Synology NAS and gb network regularly transfer at 115MB/s (114-116). Still not the max theoretical of 125MB/s, but closer to the max then '100'azazel1024 - Saturday, September 26, 2015 - link
No, max theoretical is not 125MB/sec. That is raw data rate, but you can't actually transfer 125MB/sec of usable data over a 1GbE link. SMB max rate is about 117.5MB/sec using 9k jumbo frames and about 115MB/sec using standard 1500MTU. That is covering TCP/IP overhead as well as SMB overhead. Smaller file will reduce the max by a bit no matter how fast the host and server are because of additional SMB overhead involved in "opening" and "closing" each file transfer.NAS are just fine, at least newer moderately fast ones. But, I do have to say, if running windows based clients...a windows based server, if you can't/don't want to move to 10GbE can be significantly higher performing than a NAS, even in "undemanding" file transfers. My G1610 based server manages 235MB/sec between it and my desktop, both running Windows 8.1. Dual GbE NICs combined with SMB Multichannel is a beautiful thing.
UtilityMax - Sunday, September 27, 2015 - link
NAS storage is slower than a directly attached storage! Shocking stuff! News at 11.GiE is is actually pretty acceptable for most applications, except a few specialist tasks. 10GbE can still be pretty expensive and power hungry.
UtilityMax - Sunday, September 27, 2015 - link
Sorry mean 10GbE instead of GiEWixman666 - Sunday, September 27, 2015 - link
So you decided that comparing apples and walruses is ok? A SSD and a 2 bay NAS have nothing in common for function, capacity, or price. Troll on, dude.johnny_boy - Thursday, October 1, 2015 - link
Any SSD system that is limited to SATA or even PCIE will give poor performance compared to even budget RAM disks. (A SATA link can transfer about blah MB/sec after allowing for overheads - even low performance RAM disks can do much better.) To beat locally mounted RAM disks requires bleek GbE or faster links. SSDs are only useful for reading and writing data.As for SSDs with blomps Mb/sec links - AVOID (A USB 3.0 stick can be faster!!!)
Wardrop - Friday, September 25, 2015 - link
Do the btrfs snapshots show up in Windows under the "Previous versions" tab?ganeshts - Saturday, September 26, 2015 - link
Yes, they do show up.Mickatroid - Saturday, September 26, 2015 - link
"four bays present the best balance between cost and expandability for home consumers ... two bays make the cut for many usage scenarios" Surely it is the rare home consumer who needs more than 4tb on their network? I suppose if they are amassing hidef video somehow more could be required. 4 bays take up quite a bit more space too. I think it is more accurate to say 'to bays make the cut for the vast majority of home use scenarios, ever with RAID 1'.azazel1024 - Saturday, September 26, 2015 - link
Personally I've got 6TB of storage running on my server, 2x3TB in RAID0 for performance, but I have the redundancy because it is a mirror of the data on my desktop and I periodically back it up to a 5TB USB3 drive also. Of that, I have 3.18GiB free of the formatted 5.4GiB of storage. I would not consider my video library small at >1200 movies and TV episodes (point of fact, I actually own all of it on DVDs or BR. Well, okay, pretty much all of it. I probably have donated or whatever a few of the DVDs/BR or lost a few over the years, but 80+% of those I do actually own, I just HAVE physical disks and the limitations that imposes). Now if I had kept all of them as disk images, I might not fit it all, but frankly high bit rate transcodes are good enough in most of the cases and 720p for a lot of the stuff that isn't image crucial (yes, because I don't need to watch most comedies or chick flicks in 1080p. Thank you very much).Even with slow growth of that, plus all of the photos and video I shot with my camera and phone, that takes care of me for probably 4-5 years before I have to worry about running short on storage (less than 25% remaining). I would consider my needs greater than an average home consumer. So I'd say that a 2 bay NAS probably is enough for 98% of home consumers. Maybe higher.
dimadima - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link
I was hoping to see a comparison of checksums On vs. Off to see the performance penalty it introduces.Could you please run some benchmarks?
dimadima - Thursday, October 1, 2015 - link
anyone cares or knows about the impact of checksumming on speed? was the review done with checksumming on or off?would the author care to confirm?
thanks
dimadima - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
hello:(Kutark - Tuesday, September 29, 2015 - link
Potentially stupid question, but do these just do striping for covering disk failures? I've always thought you couldnt really acheive what youg et with 4/5/8 bay NAS's where if a disk fails, you swap it out and it rebuilds the volume and you move on with life.How is this acheived with a 2bay?
Margalus - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
This is not achieved with the 2 disk models. You will be limited to things like Raid 0 which is just striping, no parity so no recovery if one fails, a very fast, but very risky method. Raid 1, mirroring which just makes 2 copies of the data, one on each disk so you end up with 2 exact copies. Great for mission critical data, but it is basically just one normal disk. And JBOD, Just a Bunch of Disks.You need a minimum of 3 disks to do something like Raid 5 which is striping with parity so that you can rebuild if one disk fails.
Kutark - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
Ok, i had a sneaking suspicion that was the case. So basically im looking at minimum of a 4bay, preferrably a 5bay to have something like a raid 5 or 6adithyay328 - Thursday, October 1, 2015 - link
I always get hyped whenever I see a NAS, but I'm not sure why.mikato - Monday, November 9, 2015 - link
How can you mention the QNAP TS-231 in the last sentence of the article like"Taken in the context of units such as the QNAP TS-231, the $282 diskless pricing of the RN202 is a bit too high for our liking."
and not mention it anywhere else???? How does the Netgear ReadyNAS RN202 compare to that??
Argh!
rama13 - Friday, June 10, 2016 - link
It has the worst HELP, FAQ and manual I have ever seen!Almost never ever ever I have solved my problem or found my answer from them (or support) and always I have done try and error or just guess to solve the issues! then just ask myself why they have not mentioned this simple solution in just one sentence instead of confusing people and ask you to contact expensive support!!!!!!
I will never buy any #Netgear products because of this kind of support!