Testing (continued):

Real World File Transfers:

In the first phase of transfer testing, the Thecus N2310 will be compared to a Windows Server with 4x 3TB drives in RAID5 and a Synology Diskstation DS414j with 4x 2TB drives in Synology's Hybrid RAID. For all tests, the files described were transferred while a stopwatch was used to record the elapsed time. The file size and the transfer time were then used to calculate a transfer rate.

The large file transfer test involved moving a single 5.96GB (6103MB) MPG video file around the network to the storage servers of interest. A reboot of the Windows desktop system was executed between each test, and different folders were used for reading and writing.

The chart below shows that while reading this file from the Thecus N2310 NAS server the transfer rate was just over 62MB/s. A bit slower than the Synology Diskstation, but faster than the Windows server.



Writing this large file to the N2310 took just about the same amount of time as reading it, and the transfer rate was just under 62MB/s in this direction. This time the N2310 is just quicker than the Diskstation, but much slower than the Windows server.



The small file transfer test involved moving a folder full of MP3 music files around the network. One main folder comprised of 10 sub-folders and a total of 198 MP3 files totaling 643MB was copied and pasted to the storage servers of interest. A reboot of the Windows desktop system was executed between each test, and different folders were used for reading and writing.

When reading this collection of small files from the N2310 the transfer rate was just under 36MB/s. This puts the N2310 about in the middle of the three servers tested, with all of them performing in about the same range of speeds.



At just over 40MB/s, the Thecus device wrote these small files the slowest, and just about 10MB/s slower than the Diskstation.



After the large file transfer testing from the internal drives, I tested the USB 3.0 connection on the back of the N2310. In the past I have been disappointed by routers and NAS servers that feature USB 3.0 ports because the transfer rates to/from these drives when shared with the network would be far worse than even a USB 2.0 drive. I connected this Team Group 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive to the USB 3.0 port and repeated the large file read/write test using the single 5.96GB (6103MB) MPG video file. I was quite pleased to see that I could write the file to the N2310 at just under 30MB/s and could read the file from the N2310 at about 70MB/s.