Author Topic: TeraStation Performance Issue. Help, Please!  (Read 1420 times)

d2b

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TeraStation Performance Issue. Help, Please!
« on: July 05, 2010, 11:35:00 AM »

I just built up a Buffalo TeraStation NAS, Model TS-TGL70C, with two 2TB Hitachi DeskStar (7200rpm, 32MB cache) hard drives configured as a RAID1 array. The Ethernet port on the Buffalo is rated as a 1000Mbps port.

The firmware version is 1.12.

I did a test run, transferring approximately 513GB of music files from a USB 2.0 drive on a Dell GX260 desktop through the Dell's 1000Mbps network port via a wired network with a single 1000Mbps switch also rated at 1000Mbps and then directly into the TeraStation's port.

I used the latest version of Beyond Compare (Scooter Software) to sync the NAS with the USB.

It took 25 hours to complete the file transfer! This is an average transfer rate of 45.6 Mbps, far short of what USB 2.0 and a 1000Mbps network and either hard drive setup should be capable of delivering.

Where's the bottleneck?


tanjl

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Re: TeraStation Performance Issue. Help, Please!
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2010, 12:16:18 PM »
that's definitely strange....have u tried connection from USB drive to pc to terastation and check if speed increases? bypassing the switch...

TerenceSmith79

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Re: TeraStation Performance Issue. Help, Please!
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2011, 12:14:30 PM »

I've bumped into the same problem... I expected at least 30MB/sec (240Mbps) from the device, as the physical hard-drives are a good spec (32MB cache, 7.2K RPM)

 

I've researched this nearly to death, and have found the apparent cause:

Many of the Buffalo LinkStation and TeraStation devices only have SATA-150 (150Mbps) connectivity to the physical drives. So even though the physical disks can perform at SATA-300 speeds (300Mbps), the controller on the Buffalo mainboard is only able to perform at 150Mbps (just under 20MB/sec)

 

If you take away some overhead for RAID throughput, and possibly some buffer throughput, let's assume the NAS performs at 14MB/sec (seems to be the average I've seen), that's just 112Mbps of actual performance. Not far off from the SATA-150 controller's best.

 

My only hope is to save up for a more expensive (unreasonably so!) SATA-300 or even SATA-600 capable NAS. I've seen throughputs of up to 100MB/sec, such as the Synology DS411+. But they're around £550-£600... so perhaps when that bonus comes through!

 

I hope this has been helpful in at least explaining the performance.


Jotin

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Re: TeraStation Performance Issue. Help, Please!
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2011, 01:16:11 PM »

Going through the USB port and then through the network alone causes a slow down. And this unit is one of our first models and is pretty old. The average transfer speed with out have the USB in there is 20MBps.