Synology NAS vs Atom Nettop

[wesblog]

I currently have a Synology NAS 109. It works fine, but I was hoping to replace it with a nettop that can serve as both a NAS and HTPC.

I have gotten quite comfortable with the Synology's ~50 MB/sec transfer rate.

Theoretically, an Atom Nettop should be faster (better CPU, more RAM, etc). But is there any reason I could might experience slower performance with a nettop? (Want to know before I buy)

Are NASs optimized in some way to achieve high transfer speeds that I would not reach with a Win 7 nettop?

Thanks for your help!

 

[HDClown]

If you look at a NAS that uses the Atom D510 dual-core processor, you'll see that you can sustain > 100 MB/s read and 90-95 MB/s write with a RAID array.

A NAS is not really streamlined at all for the hardware. The run Linux and use mdadm for RAID, and open source services for everything else not built in naively to linux.. They don't have a ton of extra stuff running on them to consume CPU/RAM, but that's it. It's really nothing special but a purpose built Linux box. They all use onboard SATA controllers that are the same kind of stuff you can get on any motherboard.

What you need to consider is what you run on the nettop, and how ports it has relative to RAID you may want to run, etc. But when comparing it to an Atom NAS, it's really no different if you stick with Linux. Throwing Win7 on there will have different results, because of the resources consumed by Win7 vs. those needed by Linux. How much difference will that be in sustained performance? Not sure.

 

[wesblog]

Thanks for your reply. It certainly would be nice to get ~100 MB/sec. I'll probably end up sticking with ubuntu instead on Win 7. On second thought it seems like a bit of a waste to pay for windows on a HTPC.

 

[ntm1275]

Consumer NAS's are specifically designed to do the job that they were designed for and come with a stripped down version of Linux which has been modified and optimised to work on the NAS

It would seem that an assumption could be made that an Atom powered Netbook should have, in theory, at least the same speed as an Atom based NAS, but consider this:-

I have a spare PC with an AMD 4800+ X2 CPU and 4 GB RAM, and an onboard Realtek LAN card
This PC is far more powerful than any Atom powered Netbook, even though it is a few years old
I use it for testing purposes on my home LAN, and this machine cannot get anywhere near the speed of my Atom powered Synology DS1010+

Just something to think about

 

[syncmaster]

Another advantaged that I see in using a NAS device is the lower power consumption... I belive that a ATOM based NAS is at least 20W/30W power consumption, while a NAS should be at ten's....