Testing (continued):

Next we will look at the results for all four modes of operation while running ATTO Disk Benchmark, which provides results in units of MB/s (and higher is always better).

The first chart shows 64KB reads, where we see quite a strong performance for such a small file size. RAID 0 offers speeds of almost 237MB/s, while the other configurations offer speeds in the 180MB/s-190MB/s range.



With writes at the 64KB file size we things drop off, but still quite impressive. RAID 0 puts up a speed of 193MB/s, while the other three are just north of 170MB/s.



Reads with 8MB files look about the same as we saw with 64KB reads, which is surprising and impressive. 237MB/s with RAID 0 and around 180MB/s for the other configurations.



We wrap things up with 8MB writes, where we see things look about the same as they did with 64KB writes.. This device is definitely consist, and consistently fast.



While the RAID 0 configuration clearly puts up the best numbers, I am not sure if I would use this mode for a device like this. If one disk fails, the data may all be lost, and to me an external enclosure is more about backing up and being more secure, than it is about speed. If you were writing to the ICYRaid, and then backing up elsewhere, perhaps RAID 0 would be a good choice for something like video editing where you need speed - just don't make that the only place your files reside.

The speed of the other configurations were also quite impressive, and I would be inclined to use RAID 1 for redundancy. The other modes work well, but you can accomplish those configurations with any enclosure and don't need the special RAID controller feature the ICYRaid offers.