Single Client Access - NAS Benchmarks

Evaluation of single client performance in a networked environment was done by configuring three drives in RAID-5 in the QNAP TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP unit. Two of the network links were bonded (configured with 802.3ad LACP). Our usual Intel NASPT / robocopy benchmarks were processed from a virtual machine in our NAS testbed. The results are presented in the graphs below.

HD Video Playback

2x HD Playback

4x HD Playback

HD Video Record

HD Playback and Record

Content Creation

Office Productivity

File Copy to NAS

File Copy from NAS

Dir Copy to NAS

Dir Copy from NAS

Photo Album

robocopy (Write to NAS)

robocopy (Read from NAS)

For almost all workloads, there is no discernible difference between the performance of various drives, indicating that it is the network acting as a bottleneck for single client access. Differences start to appear when there are multiple clients accessing the NAS.

Single Client Access - DAS Benchmarks Multi-Client Access - NAS Environment
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  • cen - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link

    Bought 4 of these for my home NAS and they really are great for the price. The only negative thing is the noise.. I wouldn't have 4 of these in my room for sure.
  • Laststop311 - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link

    I use a 2TB version of this drive in 1 of my pc's and I don't notice any offending noise. The case does have noise dampening foam all around it and the hard drive is elastically suspended and isolated from the frame but I use all noctua fans and a fanless psu so if the HDD was making a lot of noise it should be audible. Maybe it's just your set up. You need to properly suspend the drive off the case with rubber so no vibrations are transferred to the case which is the main cause of noise.
  • Laststop311 - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link

    Maybe the GPU drowns it out but even when the GPU is not in use i still don't hear the HDD even with large file transfers with no gpu activity
  • cen - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link

    You only use a single one, I have 4 of these. This is a big difference.
  • ddriver - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link

    Well, you do have an even number of disks, arrange them the right way and their noise will cancel out ;)
  • melgross - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link

    That would be nice, if it actually worked.
  • ddriver - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link

    Yeah, except it would generate extra heat. If the drives operate in synchrony theoretically they could be arranged in such a manner that their noise cancel out, but it be quite the feat of engineering. It would be tremendously easier to simply dampen and absorb the noise.
  • Zertzable - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link

    Is that why datacenters are so quiet? ;)
  • jota83 - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link

    I am getting 60 of those by the end of the week :) Let's see how they perform within a JBOD (Quanta M4600H)
  • NightShade00013 - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link

    I just got done doing a burn in with five of these for my FreeNAS and inside a 4U sitting on my kitchen table the fans were louder than the drives by far. The case is a rosewill RSV-L4500, the two rear 80mm fans have been changed out to PWM fans but the 120's are the ones that came with the case. Not that it's loud at all but the drives were the least on my mind.

    Burn test was done with BadBlocks and took about 65 hours to run completely. Running a smart long test now and that is the only thing that is a little different. Drives are ranging from 548 minutes to 582 minutes to complete.

    Got the drives for less than a 4TB WD Red (not the pro version) so I am loving it. Still need to get two more to finish out my pool but RaidZ3 should be great with a set of seven drives.

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