Thecus Support Thread ! Thecus Users Come In..

[weap0nx]

how about direct transfer through Windows for a large file, how does it fair?

The speeds seem alright. Plus EARS are slower drives..

 

[none]

Direct Windows file transfer (whether through gigabit switch or gigabit cross) are within my quoted results. Multiple files are slower, 25mb/s read, 9mb/s write, single 4/10GB file are faster, 30mb/s read, 15mb/s write.

No doubt EARS are slow, but their minimum throughput can easily hit half of the gigabit bandwidth. Not to mention they are configured in RAID5.

how about direct transfer through Windows for a large file, how does it fair?

The speeds seem alright. Plus EARS are slower drives..

 

[supremebull]

Currently I have 3 x Caviar Greens 1TB in my N4100PRO in RAID5. Let's say if I get a 2TB drive and stick it into the last slot, and expand raid. The new effective capacity of the RAID array will only be 3TB right?

 

[weap0nx]

No doubt EARS are slow, but their minimum throughput can easily hit half of the gigabit bandwidth. Not to mention they are configured in RAID5.

I run 3 disk RAID5 on my n0503 (its hardware is better than yours but you have more drives for your RAID 5 so plus minus) I do an average of 50-60MB/sec READ for big 4GB files and about 30MB/sec WRITE for similar type of files.
I run on EADS drives, less cache than yours and is 1.5TB

What stripe size do yo use? I find also that my Windows 7 64bit performs a lot better at transfers than my previous Win XP Pro

 

[weap0nx]

Currently I have 3 x Caviar Greens 1TB in my N4100PRO in RAID5. Let's say if I get a 2TB drive and stick it into the last slot, and expand raid. The new effective capacity of the RAID array will only be 3TB right?

Yes sir. but then you can remove one of the first two, insert new 2TB , rebuild. Remove the final one of the first two, insert new 2TB, rebuild. and then expand to 6TB

 

[none]

I tried 256kb and 4096kb, of course I am mostly working on big files >1GB so 4096kb has the slight advantage. MY result is based on 4096kb

If I knew I will be getting this type of below par result, I would have gotten the N0503 instead.

Again the thecus website listed their performance (n0503 and n4100pro) as quite similar.

How much faster is Win7 64bit?

I run 3 disk RAID5 on my n0503 (its hardware is better than yours but you have more drives for your RAID 5 so plus minus) I do an average of 50-60MB/sec READ for big 4GB files and about 30MB/sec WRITE for similar type of files.
I run on EADS drives, less cache than yours and is 1.5TB

What stripe size do yo use? I find also that my Windows 7 64bit performs a lot better at transfers than my previous Win XP Pro

 

[Andrew_Ng]

Yes sir. but then you can remove one of the first two, insert new 2TB , rebuild. Remove the final one of the first two, insert new 2TB, rebuild. and then expand to 6TB

That's the beauty of hotswap and online migration ( need not shutdown the NAS )

 

[FusionCat]

Thks for the reply, how do I check this on windows 7 ?
Transfer speed is around 30MB/sec now,is this normal for gigabit lan

I am able to achieve 80MB/s (crystaldisk mark) even for other gigabit NAS.
There are many conditions
1) Cable (cat 6)
2) cable from point to PC (cat 6)
3) RAID 1+0

Yours truly,
Colin

 

[weap0nx]

I tried 256kb and 4096kb, of course I am mostly working on big files >1GB so 4096kb has the slight advantage. MY result is based on 4096kb

If I knew I will be getting this type of below par result, I would have gotten the N0503 instead.

Again the thecus website listed their performance (n0503 and n4100pro) as quite similar.

How much faster is Win7 64bit?

I use 64kb stripe size, tried many others as well, 256, 512, 1meg.
All produced slightly different results, at most 1 or 2 MB/sec only. But i never had it around long enough to know how they would perform once settled in with data and everything.
I decided on 64kb because
: everyone else is using it so i can ask people how theirs is performing and owe it to the drives for its better/worse performance.
: since there was no recommendation on Thecus' part, just use the default, they may have develop the code to be optimized on 64kb unlike expensive RAID cards they have a guide which applies to their cards. but don't fault me on this, it's just my way of thinking

64kb also gave the best READ speeds eventually i think. I use to get around 40MB/sec on Windows XP, now i easily get 50-60MB/sec on Windows 7 64bit. this is the speed it settles into when moving say 10GB. Caching effect at the beginning doesn't count, i too get 80-90MB/sec for large part of the transfer for smaller files like 2GB.

 

[weap0nx]

I'm using XFS file system by the way. I have not tried any EXT file systems or ZFS. Could could be dependent on this as well.

 

[none]

Now testing Windows 7 64bit.

Result is slightly better (+-1mb/s)

Read:25-31MB/s
Write:9-16MB/s

I wonder if I should rebuild the RAID5 on 64kb strip size.
The NAS CPU is already near max load when copying files, going into smaller strip size, it's going to be even slower theoretically.

 

[blackestvoid]

I just got the n0503 last week & was rather disappointed as it failed to live up to expectations as it was not intuitive:

1. the manual need a lot of work to make it comprehensible (eg it was not especially clear what, why when, how to use which WAN/LAN port)

2. the new UI is very much different from what was described in the manual (including the modules) which caused some issues on setting up (eg 3 buttons on the http://n0503 page but no explanation what does each button do)

3. THIS ESPECIALLY REQUIRE ATTENTION: webserver module once started, the other functions just show "loading..." but does not load, essentially hang & needs cold reboot. However the service seems to be working fine. After reboot the service was stopped & if the service were to be restarted the other functions hang again. Have tried uninstalling & reinstalling but still the same. Anyone encounter this issue also?

4. to be continued once point 3 is resolved, if resolved...

 

[riderxps]

I am able to achieve 80MB/s (crystaldisk mark) even for other gigabit NAS.
There are many conditions
1) Cable (cat 6)
2) cable from point to PC (cat 6)
3) RAID 1+0

Yours truly,
Colin

I am getting only around 30/mbs on my N503 using giga lan n cat 6 cable.The NAS is just next to my comp,nowhere near your speed though

 

[blackestvoid]

3. THIS ESPECIALLY REQUIRE ATTENTION: webserver module once started, the other functions just show "loading..." but does not load, essentially hang & needs cold reboot. However the service seems to be working fine. After reboot the service was stopped & if the service were to be restarted the other functions hang again. Have tried uninstalling & reinstalling but still the same. Anyone encounter this issue also?

4. to be continued once point 3 is resolved, if resolved...

So far managed to find out the cause. The starting of the service caused the browser to hang & the browser needs to be closed, otherwise nothing can be accessed.

Not sure if the famed AJAX interface was the cause...

New firmware released but problem remains

 

[weap0nx]

Noted. Will check with Thecus engineers.

OMG! New firmware can set Passive Port range for FTP! ARE YOU responsible for this?!?

Haha in any case, big thank you, you are our voice to the manufacturer's!

 

[Andrew_Ng]

I'm using XFS file system by the way. I have not tried any EXT file systems or ZFS. Could could be dependent on this as well.

fastest is XFS file system

 

[jahon2013]

i think the problem is in WD EARS HDD,Thecus didn't recommend this WD model in their HDD compatibility list

I have got the N4100Pro (with 3 x 2TB WD EARS20 HDD in RAID 5 configuration) at the last Comex.

Been performing extensive benchmark on the NAS for the past few days and was terribly disappointed with the results.

The result was nowhere near the result published on thecus website for N4100pro:
Read:57.1MB/s
Write:44.5MB/s
Intel NAS Performance Toolkit V1.7.0

What I have got from the Intel NAS performance toolkit, NAS tester and real world file copy results were not even 50% of the stated performance.
My results are:
Read:25-30MB/s
Write:9-15MB/s

I had tried using different computers, different OS (Vista, WinXP Pro), different links (cross cable, gigabit switch), different cables (CAT5E/6 cables), tweak windows registry, NIC settings, change NIC drivers, disable NAS/OS services, use FTP, use different strip size, use jumbo frames etc .... all give similar results.

I wonder if I have got a lemon hardware?
How did thecus manage to get the speed as stated? RAID 0 with 15k rpm harddisk?

 

[none]

yes, i know, had logged a ticket with them.
Asked them whether they will support the new 4k sector harddisks, but no reply for weeks.

i think the problem is in WD EARS HDD,Thecus didn't recommend this WD model in their HDD compatibility list

 

[jahon2013]

as i know Thecus N2200 had beta Firmware support WD EARS 4K, My N2200 also had this issue but now beta is ok.
and about other models need wait the new V5.0 firmware in 2010 Q1,them still didn't support it now.

i also know WD EARS is not good for NAS,so when i will upgrade my 2 bay NAS,i will thing about Thecus 4 bay NAS+Hitachi HDD.

 

[evq]

is 4200PRO or 4200ECO avail? how much are they?