NAS storage speed

Hi all, since some of you have bought the ReadyNAS system, im wondering what the write/read speeds are that you're experiencing in the real world. Im assuming around 10MB/s? Im considering a NAS as a backup system, and am probably going to buy an eSata system as my primairy storage because you can get a much higher throughput.

Cor

Cor

You should reconsider the SATA option. NAS is RAID 5 or 10 hardware driven so losing a drive won't put your data in jeopardy. Through a gigabit ethernet network, you can access the server with a few computers. You can't with SATA. My gigabit ethernet (built-in) can hit 30 MB/s without a problem.

My RAID 0 server for HD capture can hit 200MB/s. But video is recapturable and photos aren't. If you are going with SATA II, make sure you get port multiple ready enclosures. That way you can fit 5 drives into one SATAII port and take advantage of the 3G ability of the new drives.

Drew - Cor runs an ISP, so he is very familiar with RAID and networking. He's asking specifically about the ReadyNAS's throughput.

I get just around 26-28 MB/s from my ReadyNAS box on my gigE network. I prefer networks because the noisy RAID systems can live somewhere acoustically isolated from my workspace.

Cor

You should reconsider the SATA option. NAS is RAID 5 or 10 hardware driven so losing a drive won't put your data in jeopardy. Through a gigabit ethernet network, you can access the server with a few computers. You can't with SATA. My gigabit ethernet (built-in) can hit 30 MB/s without a problem.

My RAID 0 server for HD capture can hit 200MB/s. But video is recapturable and photos aren't. If you are going with SATA II, make sure you get port multiple ready enclosures. That way you can fit 5 drives into one SATAII port and take advantage of the 3G ability of the new drives.

Hi scubadru, unless I misunderstand what you are trying to say, you are incorrect. NAS has nothing to with with anything being RAID or not. It just means 'network attached storage. That could be a single disk, or a raid0 set of disks, or any raid level.

The same goes for SATA, or as I actually said, eSATA (external SATA). You can have a single disk attached, or multiple disks through different raidlevels. Raid5 would be an obvious choice.

The advantage of an eSATA box is that it's usually 2-3 times as fast.

The advantage of a NAS box is, you like mention, easy access for multiple servers. Although that is also no problem whatsoever with an eSATA system as one click with your mouse makes your host system a NAS server Another advantage, and one not to be discounted, is what Eric said. You can put a NAS box in the attic and never even hear it. This is the one thing that has sofar kept me from buying an esata system. Im a little worried about the noise. Although it cant be worse than my current 6 external firewire disks

I have definately decided though to use a NAS box as my backup system, and possibly as my second backup system. It depends on how portable it is and if I can transport it to/from work every couple weeks or so. (ive already calculated that keeping it in sync through my 1mbit upload speed is not going to work

I can reuse the current harddisks in my firewire boxes so that makes it a little bearable.

The ReadyNAS NV seems like an excellent choice for this.

Cor

Cor

I assumed the 30MB/s was understood to be from the ReadyNAS system. Sorry if I was unclear. And yes, 1 drive works as a NAS but seriously, you're looking at the ReadyNAS as a single drive option? I gave you alot more credit than that.

I have a 4 disk NAS from Thecus I bought in Singapore. Works pretty well as a RAID 5 backup server. Around 30MB/s with 1k Base T.

If you want mobility, how about hot swappable drives so you just bring the drives along and leave the casing at either location? I know a few guys who bring work home like that.

Cor

I assumed the 30MB/s was understood to be from the ReadyNAS system. Sorry if I was unclear. And yes, 1 drive works as a NAS but seriously, you're looking at the ReadyNAS as a single drive option? I gave you alot more credit than that.

Ofcourse im not. But you can I was merely pointing out that you can basically do everything you can with a NAS system also with an external sata system. Any OS can run as a NAS server, and many dedicated NAS boxes are nothing but linux systems in a fancy box anyways. I have a home office with 5 machines (1 windows, 2 linux , windows laptop, and a mac laptop) always on, so its not like i have to keep a machine on to be the NAS server. It's on anyways

Just to be clear. Im not at all discounting NAS systems. They rock. Hell, my companies primary storage systems are several multi-TB Network Appliance servers. But in my specific case an esata system may be a good choice too because of the added speed on my photo editting workstation. (70+ MB/s).

Im glad to hear the ReadyNAS systems perform so well in practice. I was fearing somewhere around 10MB/s (sustained 100mbit), but it's good to see it can actually take advantage of the gbit speed. 30MB/s is very nice.

If you want mobility, how about hot swappable drives so you just bring the drives along and leave the casing at either location? I know a few guys who bring work home like that.

Thats a very good suggestion. The ReadyNAS NV comes with hot-swappable bays I think. Wonder if you can buy those seperately Bet you can.

Cor

Cor - I'm doing a backup right now of about 50,000 small-ish files to my NAS box, and I'm sustaining around 500-1500 KB/sec to the box and 60-300KB/sec from the box. It's really slow with small files.

I'm migrating to using internal drives or an eSata striped setup for local file access. NAS boxes in my place will only be for backup and media files (movies, TV shows, and music).

I've got four Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 eSATA drives in my ReadyNAS (250GB each), and get sustained 22 MB/sec read (with a peak of 31 MB/sec) and 12 MB/sec write speeds through a gigabit router. The ReadyNAS is set up to use the X-raid file system, which as I understand it is essentially RAID 5 with on the fly expandability.

As per Eric, it's slower with big numbers of small files, with write speed of about 10 MB/sec and read speed of about 15 MB/sec (peak)

(By the way, I'm really liking this new forum software and the quick editing option)

I've got four Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 eSATA drives in my ReadyNAS (250GB each), and get sustained 22 MB/sec read (with a peak of 31 MB/sec) and 12 MB/sec write speeds through a gigabit router. The ReadyNAS is set up to use the X-raid file system, which as I understand it is essentially RAID 5 with on the fly expandability.

 

As per Eric, it's slower with big numbers of small files, with write speed of about 10 MB/sec and read speed of about 15 MB/sec (peak)

Eric is seeing 1/10th of that speed though, less than 1MB/s. What kind of files are they Eric? Images? I personally have the same attitude that Eric is now experiencing. As Eric mentioned I run a (largish) ISP, and over years and years of practice we've always seen disappointing speeds of network storage. Sure, it's fast if you copy a 2GB movie, but if you random access it things just plummet. All of our import IO happens locally. I dont see what it should be any different at home, although I started this thread with hope

My idea was to use the excellent ReadyNAS for backup of all my important files files (images, music. documents..) but use some form of attached storage for main use. I get sustained 20-30MB/s on my single firewire disks, so surely a raid based system will do better. Tests have shown that esata raid systems can easily top 70MB/s. Although again, tests are not the same as reality.

My quest is to find a somewhat silent running esata enclosure

Cor

Cor -- small files -- text, html, small images. It was the Wetpixel website that was being copied over...

Have lots of space? Get an acoustically isolated rack thingy. I looked at them, but the heat pipe stuff is HUGE and I just don't have the room.

I use the NAS for backups, and it's OK that it takes some time. Better to let it run slow than to have it loud all the time.

Or, you can just wait until the end of the year for the 1TB SATA drives to hit the market, get two of them in fanless eSata enclosures, and use software RAID.

Or, you can just wait until the end of the year for the 1TB SATA drives to hit the market, get two of them in fanless eSata enclosures, and use software RAID.

I am using software raid om my home build Linux based NAS. I cannot complain. It's fast enough to transfer my D2X raw files or my big 16bit tifs based on these raws. The machine currently holds 25 thousend digital images; no performance issues.