HDD performance - effect on NAS performance ?

[Kiangs]

Hi

I'm (still!) considering purchasing a ReadyNAS NVX for home use. This model particularly interests me as I've currently got a small 2-bay NAS which drives me mad with transfer rates in the order of 10-15MB/s, and the NVX appears to give significantly better performance. Now that the prices seem to have come down a bit, its almost, perhaps, possibly, borderline affordable... as long as the wife doesn't find out!

Just thinking about its performance though. I'd be looking at using its X-RAID feature, and reckon I'll need a maximum of 3GB capacity for the forseeable future. Now, that capacity should easily be achieveable by using a number of 1TB, 1.5TB or 2TB drives. My question though is how, if at all, will drive performance have a knock-on effect to the performance I 'see' from the NVX ?

For example, and I know these are 'consumer grade' hard drives not on the official HCL, but the Samsung F3 HD103SJ 1TB drives gets very good reviews for its speed. By populating the NVX with these would I see an improvement over using 'slower' drives (say 1.5TB or 2TB 'Green' models) when pushing it hard, or do the overheads from other factors negate the drive performance ???

Be very interested to hear your thoughts !

Thanks

 

[thiggins]

The NVX provides 50 - 70 MB/s performance. Any SATA drive will provide over 100 MB/s performance.

Basically, no, you're not going to see a difference. Network overhead will be the dominant factor.

 

[Kiangs]

The NVX provides 50 - 70 MB/s performance. Any SATA drive will provide over 100 MB/s performance.

Basically, no, you're not going to see a difference. Network overhead will be the dominant factor.

Hi Tim,

Any SATA drive ? Is it really that straightforward ? I'm currently using a few Samsung HD501LJ drives which according to the charts on www.tomshardware.co.uk only give about 60MB/s. Admittedly these are 2 or 3 years now, but its only the latest 2009 drives which appear to give consistent 100MB/s+ performance.

Just trying to get my head around all the factors involved so hope you excuse the questions. It'd be just my luck to handicap a nice fast NAS with a slow drive, so want to be sure that isn't an issue !

 

[thiggins]

Well, it's a bit more complex. Read more here and here about some experiments I did to find out effect of drive speed on NAS performance.

Stick with the vendor's recommended drive list and you should be fine.