Performances in Raid 5
We start with performances in Raid 5, the mode in which these NAS are first and foremost intended to function. These results should therefore be the most representative of day to day use. For the Thecus N5200BR Pro, we give you the results obtained with a RAID 5 storage of five drives and then with four.
Right away we can distinguish three levels of performance:
- With a sustained 30.9 MB/s, the N5200BR Pro is more than twice as fast as the next closest NAS;
– This pack is composed of Buffalo, Qnap and Synology, which vary between 10.6 MB/s and 14.1 MB/s ;
- The Thecus N4100+ which shows its age and finishes last with only 5.2 MB/s!
While results are somewhat equivalent with groups of large and medium sized files, it’s a catastrophe with small files. Only the N5200BR Pro does well with 5.5 MB/s. The others are found between 0.6 MB/s (Synology) and 1.6 MB/s (Qnap) !
Now if we look at performances in FTP, in terms of sustained speeds we can see they are systematically superior to those obtained in file transfers in Windows (SMB/CIFS). The gain varies between 8% (Synology) and 23.5% (N5200BR Pro with 5 drives).
With the collection of small files, the result is more spread out. Performances are best with the N4100+ (+19%) and especially the Synology (almost 4 times faster!) but significantly less for the N5200BR Pro (three times as slow but it started strong), Buffalo (-25%) and Qnap (-22%).
Conclusion : to transfer large volumes of data (movies, MP3s, etc.) to your NAS, systematically use FTP. This is also true for small sized files (photos, word documents, etc.) except with the N5200 Pro and Buffalo systems.
In addition, we noted that in SMB, N5200BR Pro performances are identical with 4 or 5 drives but slightly better with 5 drives in FTP.
In reading, SMB performances are systematically higher in writing except for with Buffalo where they are strictly identical in sustained speeds (twice as high with small files). It seems to suggest that it’s not a limit in power but rather a problem with SMB management. This same impression is confirmed by the speeds found in FTP which literally takes off.
With Thecus’ N5200BR Pro, performances are also higher in reading although only slightly so (5% on average). For this reason, the competition, which was clearly limited by processor power in writing, is able to easily bridge the gap. Qnap thus triples its speeds (!), while Synology doubles them and therefore they exchange positions. The second was ahead in writing (+20%) while the first takes the advantage in reading (+9%).
In the end, Thecus stays on top but only holds a slight lead (+12% over the Qnap model) while clearly dominating in writing. However, this manufacturer also comes in last with the 4100+, which obviously is not in the same league as the competition.
In FTP, performances really do not improve for the transfer of small files. Buffalo stays on the same level, Thecus gleans a few seconds on the N5200 Pro and loses a few with the N4100+, while Qnap is behind and Synology crumbles. Actually, it seems that in file transfers protocol loses a lot of time at each new file request. For this reason, even between collections of large and medium files differences are considerably higher than in SMB (where they are almost non-existent). There are however only 63 files in the « medium sized » file group.
In short, for the reading of small files the advantage is clearly to SMB which is sometimes five or six times faster.
On the other hand, for brute speeds with large files, we often gain 30% compared to SMB or even more with Buffalo (double!) or Qnap (+49%). With medium size files, the advantage is between 1.2% (Synology) and 23% (N5200 Pro) depending on the model except Buffalo that once again doubles its figure.
In the end and once again, we can see that FTP is preferable (and by far) for copying files from NAS although on the precise condition that they each have a size of several megabytes (in fact, the bigger they are and the less there are, the better). In the opposite case, simply opt for SMB.
Finally, we simulated the breakdown of a drive by jerking out the connection during the copying of files to the NAS. We then copied the same file on the PC to verify its integrity. The good news is that this test went well for all models and there were no problems. Each system activated its warning system (a bop, email alert, then turning off.) once the Raid storage broke down. You will then have to replace the faulty unit and reconstruct the storage, something which is not always automatic with all models.
