Craig's Home Zone: 2012

Choosing a High Capacity Disk Storage Solution

A few months back when my primary 2 x 2TB Drives were nearing capacity, I started looking for a new long term option for backup storage of my digital photo library which is nearing 100,000 or more photos (haven't really counted recently). I wanted something that was large enough to back up all by drivers if necessary and fast enough to use for real-time access if required (e.g. to edit photos and videos from).

Having purchased a 3TB Time Capsule with my iMac, I briefly considered using one or more of these for backup of the photo. Much to my disappointment however, I found that the Time Capsule, although offering gigabit Ethernet ports, was hopelessly to slow to use for real-time access. Even backing up a full 1TB drive seemed to take an eternity. I found that using the time capsule for even a small Lightroom catalogue (just as (dis)proof of concept) was an exercise in tedium.

After excluding the Apple product, I then started to look for other more high-end products to suit my needs. By this time I had decided to concentrate my search on a high speed NAS (network attached storage). Becausae I use both Mac (with Thunderbolt) and PC with USB 3.0 or eSata, I was looking for something that could be equally as useful for both hardware platforms. However, as yet, I have not found a decent high-capacity (at least 10TB) storage device which has both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports. USB 2.0 and Firewire are also far to slow for real-time use in my experience.

At this point, a few ranges of NAS devices took my interest, namely:

After much reading of forums and benchmarks, I settled on a 6-Disk QNAP TS-659 Pro II as it seemed to have the most bang for buck with respect to both performance and features.

Headline features include:

Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0 / 1 / 5 / 5+Hot Spare / 6 / 6+ Hot Spare, 10, 10+Hot Spare
Online RAID Capacity Expansion & Online RAID Level Migration
Dual Gigabit Ethernet Ports which support port trunking/teaming, thus providing 2Gbit/s bandwidth.
Enterprise level encryption and other security features.
Very quiet
Embedded Linux
USB3.0, USB 2.0 and eSata ports allow you to connect external drives to be made available as NAS disks.
Support for USB wireless dongle.
SATA 3 (6Gbit/s)
6 x Hot-swappable and lockable disk trays.

Although the TS-659 Pro II is not exactly cheap for a NAS device (+/- $US 1000 excluding disks), I feel it more than makes up for that with its features and performance. After configuring it (I currently only have 4 slots filled with WD Caviar Black 2 TB SATA Hard Drives ( WD2002FAEX) configured as a RAID 5 array), I immediately knew I had a great product on my hands. A few of the things that struck me immediately:

It is surprisingly quiet, even with 4 drives, dual 10 cm fans and a 4cm.
It is quite easy to set up if you are even half a geek, although the non-geek may have a little more difficulty getting their head around the sheer number of features and settings available.
It is super fast and almost on par, performance wise with a high speed SATA disk.

Adventures in Port Trunking Using a QNAP TS-659 Pro II NAS

Anyway, enough about the QNAP. Why am I writing this entry?

Well, I decided to set up port trunking on the QNAP and my desktop PC to see if I could extract any additional speed from the unit and to compare its performance with various other storage devices that I own.

If you are not familiar with port trunking (also called port teaming), it is a hardware configuration where you combine multiple Ethernet ports into a virtual Ethernet port with a single IP address and MAC address, but with the combined capacity of all of the ports. This feature needs to be supported by you hardware, and of course, each for your devices requires one or more Ethernet ports. In my case, the QNAP has two Gigabit ports and so does my desktop PC. I wont go into the configuration details, but once you have the ports configured, you need to patch both Ethernet ports on each device into a common Gigabit network switch. To get the best performance, you require at least Cat6 Ethernet cables.

Transfer speed comparisons

In order to compare the transfer speed of my NAS with other storage devices, I designed a simple repeatable benchmark test that could be used to the real-world performance of each device. This was done using real file date.

Test Data

For the test transfer data I selected a random set of 36 files ranging in size from 10MB to 735MB and totaling 3.51GB. These files were copied between each device and timed. Total transfer time was recorded each time and transfer rates where thus calculated.

Test Hardware

The hardware tested, comprised a selection of SATA hard drives, several external disk enclosures using USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and eSata, my iMac, my 3TB Time Capsule and my desktop PC and finally, my QNAP TS-659 Pro II NAS. Details are listed below:

System 1:

Apple iMac 27inch i5 3.1GHz 4 Core
14GB Ram
1TB Seagate Baracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS Hard drive

System 2:

Desktop PC - Quad core i7 @ 3.3GHz with 16GB ram on GigaByte X58A-UD7 Motherboard

Storage Devices and Configurations:

Storage	Description
3TB Apple Time Capsule	Using Gigabit Ethernet Connection
iMac	27inch i5 3.1GHz 4 Core with 14GB Ram 1TB Seagate Baracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS
WD 1TB USB 3.0	My Passport Essential USB 3.0 1TB
QNAP Config 1	TS-659 Pro II (with 4x Dual Trunked Gigabit Ethernet - General Switching
QNAP Config 2	TS-659 Pro II Dual Trunked Gigabit Ethernet - LACP
QNAP Config 3	TS-659 Pro II Dual Trunked Gigabit Ethernet - Giga Ether Channel
QNAP Config 4	TS-659 Pro II Single Gigabit Ethernet
QNAP Config 5	TS-659 Pro II From PC Using Dual Trunked Gigabit Ethernet - LACP
QNAP Config 6	TS-659 Pro II Using Web File Manager
WD 640GB Enclosure 1	WD Scorpio Blue 640GB in Welland Turbo Leopard Docking Bay USB 3
WD 640GB Enclosure 2	WD Scorpio Blue 640GB in Vantec NexStar 3 Superspeed Enclosure eSata
WD 640GB Enclosure 3	WD Scorpio Blue 640GB in Welland SunBright Enclosure eSata
WD 640GB Enclosure 4	WD Scorpio Blue 640GB in Welland EZStor Docking Station eSata
WD 640GB Enclosure 5	WD Scorpio Blue 640GB in Vantec NexStar 3 SuperSpeed Enclosure USB3
WD Caviar Black 2TB	WD2001FASS
WD Caviar Green 1TB	5400RPM - WD10EACS
WD MyPassport Elite 500GB USB2	WDBAAC5000ACH
WD Velociraptor 600GB	10000RPM - WD6000HLHX

Results

The transfer speed result are shown below (click to enlarge graph).

Larger Graph

Transfer Scenario	Transfer Time	Average Rate (MB/s)
WD Velociraptor 600GB to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:35	102.7
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:00:37	97.1
QNAP Config 1 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:40	89.9
QNAP Config 1 to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:00:40	89.9
QNAP Config 3 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:41	87.7
QNAP Config 2 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:41	87.7
QNAP Config 2 to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:00:42	85.6
QNAP Config 4 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:42	85.6
QNAP Config 4 to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:00:42	85.6
QNAP Config 3 to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:00:43	83.6
WD 1TB USB 3.0 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:43	83.6
WD 1TB USB 3.0 to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:00:43	83.6
QNAP to QNAP Config 6	0:00:45	79.9
WD 640GB Enclosure 1 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:45	79.9
WD 640GB Enclosure 2 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:46	78.1
WD 640GB Enclosure 3 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:46	78.1
WD Velociraptor 600GB to WD MyPassport 1TB USB3	0:00:46	78.1
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD 640GB Enclosure 4	0:00:47	76.5
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD MyPassport 1TB USB3	0:00:47	76.5
WD 640GB Enclosure 4 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:00:50	71.9
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD 640GB Enclosure 2	0:00:52	69.1
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD 640GB Enclosure 3	0:00:52	69.1
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD 640GB Enclosure 1	0:00:58	62.0
QNAP Config 2 to WD MyPassport 1TB USB3	0:00:59	60.9
WD 640GB Enclosure 5 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:01:02	58.0
WD Caviar Green 1TB to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:01:02	58.0
QNAP Config 1 to WD MyPassport 1TB USB3	0:01:03	57.1
WD Velociraptor 600GB to WD Caviar Green 1TB	0:01:03	57.1
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD 640GB Enclosure 5	0:01:04	56.2
QNAP Config 2 to WD Caviar Green 1TB	0:01:04	56.2
WD Caviar Green 1TB to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:01:04	56.2
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD Caviar Green 1TB	0:01:06	54.5
WD 1TB USB 3.0 to WD Caviar Green 1TB	0:01:07	53.6
QNAP Config 3 to WD Caviar Green 1TB	0:01:08	52.9
WD Velociraptor 600GB to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:01:08	52.9
WD Caviar Black 2TB to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:01:09	52.1
QNAP Config 4 to WD Caviar Green 1TB	0:01:09	52.1
QNAP Config 1 to WD Caviar Green 1TB	0:01:10	51.3
WD Caviar Black 2TB to QNAP Config 2	0:01:13	49.2
WD Caviar Green 1TB to QNAP Config 2	0:01:13	49.2
WD Caviar Black 2TB to QNAP Config 4	0:01:16	47.3
WD Velociraptor 600GB to QNAP Config 2	0:01:16	47.3
WD Velociraptor 600GB to QNAP Config 4	0:01:17	46.7
WD Caviar Green 1TB to QNAP Config 4	0:01:18	46.1
WD 1TB USB 3.0 to QNAP Config 2	0:01:19	45.5
QNAP to QNAP Config 2	0:01:20	44.9
iMac to iMac	0:01:32	39.1
QNAP Config 2 to iMac	0:01:47	33.6
iMac to QNAP Config 4	0:01:54	31.5
3TB Apple Time Capsule to WD Velociraptor 600GB	0:02:02	29.5
3TB Apple Time Capsule to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:02:07	28.3
QNAP Config 5 to QNAP Config 4	0:02:14	26.8
WD Caviar Black 2TB to 3TB Apple Time Capsule	0:02:35	23.2
WD Velociraptor 600GB to 3TB Apple Time Capsule	0:02:35	23.2
WD MyPassport Elite 500GB USB2 to 2 x WD Caviar Black 2TB (RAID 0)	0:02:36	23.0
WD Caviar Green 1TB to WD Caviar Green 1TB	0:02:52	20.9
WD Caviar Black 2TB to WD MyPassport Elite 500GB USB2	0:02:56	20.4

Observations

Although I won't discuss the results in detail (as they are self explanatory), the following are notable:

The QNAP TS-659 Pro II fares very well (for a NAS device) for read speed against both the Western Digital 600GB Velociraptor and the 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black Edition, which is no mean feat considering they are two of the fastest SATA (non SSD) drives available.
At 89MB/s transfer speed, the QNAP is more than capable of being used as a work drive if required. I have heard of transfer speeds up to 115MB/s for this NAS, and given that the enclosure was only loaded with 4 disks, I could easily imagine it exceeding 100MB/s in RAID5 or RAID0 modes.
The Apple Time Capsule fared very poorly compared to almost all drives.
The improvement provided by port trunking on the QNAP seems almost negligible over the single Gigabit Ethernet configuration.
There is a very large performance difference between the cheaper and lower power Western Digital Caviar Green range and their high performance Caviar Black range.