nwavguy
03-11-07, 05:27 PM
I wrote the review below for the Infrant and Thecus NAS forums. But figured I'd share it here? It's not specifically written from an A/V perspective, but offers a lot of factual information, benchmarks and my opinions on comparing what are probably the two best selling consumer-grade NAS units.
INTRODUCTION:
Because my Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ currently has some serious performance problems with Vista I purchased a Thecus N5200 which supposedly offers much better performance. After setting up, testing, and using the N5200, I wanted to share my findings.
For those who just want the bottom line: The Thecus has vastly superior performance in many areas compared to the ReadyNAS NV+, but it's not as feature rich and the firmware isn't as polished as the Infrant offerings. For those not familiar with the N5200, it's a 5 drive NAS based on a 600 Mhz Pentium M processor running a similar Linux based operating system as the ReadyNAS. The ReadyNAS is a similar 4 drive NAS based on a slower proprietary Infrant processor. Both are similarly priced.
PERFORMANCE:
First off all, I'll start with the performance as that's why I bought the N5200. For those into the geeky details, the test environment data is at the end of this post. Here's a summary table of the file transfer speeds I obtained using as closely controlled conditions as possible:
http://s199473202.onlinehome.us/177mar07/nas-performance-table.png
The first (black) section shows various PC-to-PC transfer speeds. The next section shows the NV+ performance in blue under both Vista and XP. The last section, in red, shows the N5200 speeds.
Note the write speeds for the Thecus N5200 are very impressive at 33 MB/sec under XP for a single large file and around 16 MB/sec for 1600 files. It generally exceeds the performance of even a very fast PC in this regard. Here's a screenshot of a Vista N5200 transfer:
http://s199473202.onlinehome.us/177mar07/vista-to-n5200-500MB-single.PNG
The read performance of the Thecus isn't nearly as strong but still generally exceeds what you get doing PC to PC transfers. It was about 10 MB/sec to 23 MB/sec depending on the files and operating system.
The NV+, by comparison, is typically about 50% slower in read performance and takes 2 or 3 times as long for writing files. The NV+ is especially bad reading and writing a large number of files using Vista but Infrant is aware of this problem and hopefully will make some improvements.
The speed of the user interfaces is even more dramatically different. Changing screens on the ReadyNAS FrontView web interface typically takes 15 seconds (timed with a stopwatch). On the Thecus it's under one second and essentially instantaneous. It's way easier to navigate around the Thecus menus than the Infrant's.
Likewise the Thecus boots from full power off in only about 30 seconds while the Infrant takes several minutes (or much longer if it needs to do a file check or other maintenance). This normally isn't an issue, but some maintenance operations require a re-boot and the Infrant is very slow.
USER INTERFACE:
The user interface of the Infrant is much more polished and feature rich. Here's a screenshot:
http://s199473202.onlinehome.us/177mar07/infrant-ui.png
The Thecus user interface is functional enough, and much faster, but not as polished or feature rich:
http://s199473202.onlinehome.us/177mar07/thecus-ui.png
THECUS/INFRANT SIMILARITIES:
-Linux/Samba based operating system
-Useful LCD display
-Well designed hardware and mechanical designs
-Similar e-mail notification options
-Similar network protocol support (CIFS, NFS, AFP, FTP, HTTP)
-UPS support (theoretical graceful shutdown)
-USB drive sharing
-Printer sharing
-Similar share and access rights management
-File system checking
-Snapshots
-Backup capabilities (which I haven't tested)
-Both have active user forums and followings
READYNAS NV+ ADVANTAGES:
-Quieter. The NV+ has a variable speed fan and typically makes a bit less noise. The Thecus has a single speed fan that while not really noisy, could be quieter. When you're actually accessing the drives, however, both units are about the same as the drive noise is louder than the fans.
-Better native media server support. The Thecus includes the Mediabolic Media Manager which is a uPnP media server. I haven't tested it, but it's supposedly buggy. The Infrant natively supports uPnP (Windows Media Connect), slimserver, itunes and home media servers. But there's an excellent TwonkyVision media server plug-in module for the Thecus as well as Firefly for iTunes.
-Better manufacture support. While apparently Thecus is good about responding to e-mails, they don't participate (that I've seen) in the Thecus user forum like Infrant does. The Infrant website is also vastly better than the Thecus website.
-Lots of little ReadyNAS features. Such as the ability to put the entire NAS to sleep and wake it up on a schedule. The ReadyNAS has more complete system monitoring as well. The NV+ can also upgrade itself over the internet. The Thecus requires you to manually download the file and make it available to the NAS. In general, you can tell more thought went into the Infrant firmware. The Thecus firmware looks like it was probably done in Taiwan. And it's not horrible but it's not nearly as nice.
-More mature hardware/firmware. The ReadyNAS products have been shipping longer and all share the same firmware. The Thecus N5200 just became available late in 2006 and uses different firmware from previous Thecus products. The ReadyNAS is a much more mature product--especially the firmware--and has a larger user base. I've seen some small bugs in the N5200 and have read about others. Some are hard to excuse but none seem to be fatal. For example, if you power the unit up with a USB drive connected it can't see it until you unplug it and plug it back in.
-X-Raid support. I'm not convinced there's much real world advantage to X-Raid for most users. In theory, it offers better streaming performance for large files (i.e. video server support) and it allows easier expansion of a "grow as you go" RAID array. But the vastly faster performance of the Thecus overcomes any advantage X-Raid has for performance. And drives are so cheap these days, I suspect most people load up their NAS when they get it so there's no room to grow anyway?
-Recycle bin support. I can't find where the Thecus supports recovering deleted files? The ReadyNAS does.
-Lower power consumption. In terms of watts (versus VA) the Infrant uses about 20 watts less than the Thecus (adjusting for 4 vs 5 drives). That's about $17 a year more electricity running 7/24.
THECUS N5200 ADVANTAGES:
-Support for 5 drives. This means less of a capacity hit for RAID 5 (80% vs 72% of total capacity), more total storage, and the option of a "hot spare" with 4 RAID drives. With five 500 gig drives in the Thecus (actual 2384 gigs), you get a net usable RAID 5 capacity of 1903 gigs or 80% of the drive capacity--nearly 2 Terrabytes. In contrast, my NV+ with four 250G drives (actual 928 gigs), yields only 680 gig or 73% of the drive capacity.
-Support for RAID 6 and RAID 10. I'm not sure RAID 6 is a big deal as you take a capacity hit. The plus is you can lose TWO drives and not lose any data. RAID 10 is supposedly the best of RAID 5 and RAID 6 with only a slight performance hit over RAID 5. I haven't tested it as I don't really want to be on the bleeding edge with my data? RAID 5 is well proven and, in the Thecus, supposedly comes straight from the Linux world where it's been running on a zillion servers around the world.
-Faster hardware. The Thecus has the power of a mobile Pentium. It's still a fanless CPU with a small heatsink but it runs circles around the processor in the ReadyNAS in everything from boot time, to the user interface, to file transfer speed.
-Much better file transfer speeds! I can't stress this enough, as to me, speed is the most important aspect of a NAS. In my opinion, a $600 NAS should perform at least as well as a $600 PC. The Thecus exceeds the performance of even a $1000 PC, while the ReadyNAS is generally slower than even a cheap PC.
-No PC software required. The Thecus does not require anything like Infrant's RAIDar to access it. While this may be less secure, it's also easier and one less thing to install on your PC. It does ship with PC software, but it's optional. You can set up the unit partially from the front panel LCD, and fully from the web interface alone. I turned off http (forcing https) on my Thecus to enhance the admin security.
-Better Vista support. The Thecus takes much less of a performance hit transferring a large number of files compared to the ReadyNAS under Vista. With my 1600 file test folder, the ReadyNAS slowed to around 2 MB/sec reading or writing while the Thecus managed 9 - 16 MB/sec. The Thecus does not require desktop software so there's no Vista compatibility issues there either.
-Native support for adding third party modules. There are 15 or more modules available that add functionality and/or the ability to gain "root" access to the N5200 operating system for making your own tweaks, writing your own applications, etc. A partial list of the modules is available here: http://onbeat.dk/thecus/index.php/N5200_Resources
-The Thecus can act as a USB drive to directly attach it to a PC without using the LAN. This doesn't seem like a very useful thing to me, but might be for some users?
-The basic version of the N5200 has dual ethernet ports. One is for primary access (WAN) and the other is for a secondary network (LAN). The N5200 can then offer limited routing capability between these two networks. If you want more ports, the N5200R offers 4 LAN ports and gigabit switch functionality.
MORE INFORMATION:
N5200 User Forum: http://thecususergroup.proboards106.com/index.cgi#n5200
N5200 Wiki: http://onbeat.dk/thecus/index.php/N5200_Resources
N5200 Review: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6181&page=1
Infrant Website: http://www.infrant.com
CONCLUSIONS:
Both units are about the same cost so it comes down to this: Do you want features, maturity and "polish" or raw performance? The Thecus flat runs circles around the NV+ (and even most desktop PCs) in overall file transfer performance (and the online reviews, such as the one linked above, confirm this). If you just want a media server and you don't need to do many large operations on your music/movie collection (like global tag editing, volume normalizing, etc.) the performance of the ReadyNAS under XP is just fine and probably a safer place for your data.
On the other hand, if performance does matter and you don't want to wait all day for a big backup to complete, or to re-tag your 30,000 track music collection, the Thecus might be a better choice? If you're running Vista, it's no contest right now--buy the Thecus. But hopefully Infrant will make some improvements soon for Vista? Likewise the Thecus firmware will hopefully get better after it's been out longer and there are a few more revisions?
GEEK STUFF (test info):
For those interested, I used the following for my testing:
The main PC was a 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo dual boot machine running Vista Ultimate and XP Pro SP2. It has Gigabit lan support via Marvell Yukon on the Gigabyte GA965 motherboard using the Intel 965 chipset. The system has 2 gigs of RAM, dual RAID1 drives, and scores very high on most benchmarks.
For the PC to PC transfers, I used a fast AMD Athlon 4000 XP machine and a 2.1 Ghz Core2 Duo Vista machine. All of them support gigabit lan speeds.
The ReadyNAS is a NV+ with 256MB of RAM running the latest firmware (3.01p6) using 4 Hitachi 250G HDT722525DA380 Drives configured for RAID 5. Optimized for performance: All journaling turned off, write cache enabled.
The Thecus is a N5200 with 256MB of RAM without the router option. It's running the latest 1.07 firmware and is using 5 Hitachi 500G HDS725050KLA360 drives configured for RAID 5 with a 128K stripe size and only CIFS enabled (all other settings are default). No modules are installed.
The LAN is Cat6 wired gigabit with a single Dell PowerConnect 3000 series business class managed gigabit ethernet switch. Jumbo frames were disabled.
I ran the tests by dragging and dropping a single 500MB file and a folder containing 1600 random sized files that total 500MB (no single file is larger than 1MB) on the XP and Vista desktops. The total copy times were timed using a stopwatch. In addition, Vista displays the speed of the transfer in MB/sec. The file transfers were sufficiently large to prevent caching in the NAS units and other methods were used to make sure the files were not cached on the PC end.
Power consumption was measured with a PowerAngel power consumption meter. With the drives sleeping (not spinning) the ReadyNAS uses 30 watts and the Thecus uses 50 watts. With the drives idling, the ReadyNAS uses about 60 watts while the Thecus uses about 80 watts. The Thecus has a power factor corrected power supply so the VA and WATT readings are the same. The Infrant does not and the VA readings are about double (i.e. 120 VA idle). The high VA reading really only matters for loading on a UPS or if you had a rack full of these ReadyNAS units.
INTRODUCTION:
Because my Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ currently has some serious performance problems with Vista I purchased a Thecus N5200 which supposedly offers much better performance. After setting up, testing, and using the N5200, I wanted to share my findings.
For those who just want the bottom line: The Thecus has vastly superior performance in many areas compared to the ReadyNAS NV+, but it's not as feature rich and the firmware isn't as polished as the Infrant offerings. For those not familiar with the N5200, it's a 5 drive NAS based on a 600 Mhz Pentium M processor running a similar Linux based operating system as the ReadyNAS. The ReadyNAS is a similar 4 drive NAS based on a slower proprietary Infrant processor. Both are similarly priced.
PERFORMANCE:
First off all, I'll start with the performance as that's why I bought the N5200. For those into the geeky details, the test environment data is at the end of this post. Here's a summary table of the file transfer speeds I obtained using as closely controlled conditions as possible:
http://s199473202.onlinehome.us/177mar07/nas-performance-table.png
The first (black) section shows various PC-to-PC transfer speeds. The next section shows the NV+ performance in blue under both Vista and XP. The last section, in red, shows the N5200 speeds.
Note the write speeds for the Thecus N5200 are very impressive at 33 MB/sec under XP for a single large file and around 16 MB/sec for 1600 files. It generally exceeds the performance of even a very fast PC in this regard. Here's a screenshot of a Vista N5200 transfer:
http://s199473202.onlinehome.us/177mar07/vista-to-n5200-500MB-single.PNG
The read performance of the Thecus isn't nearly as strong but still generally exceeds what you get doing PC to PC transfers. It was about 10 MB/sec to 23 MB/sec depending on the files and operating system.
The NV+, by comparison, is typically about 50% slower in read performance and takes 2 or 3 times as long for writing files. The NV+ is especially bad reading and writing a large number of files using Vista but Infrant is aware of this problem and hopefully will make some improvements.
The speed of the user interfaces is even more dramatically different. Changing screens on the ReadyNAS FrontView web interface typically takes 15 seconds (timed with a stopwatch). On the Thecus it's under one second and essentially instantaneous. It's way easier to navigate around the Thecus menus than the Infrant's.
Likewise the Thecus boots from full power off in only about 30 seconds while the Infrant takes several minutes (or much longer if it needs to do a file check or other maintenance). This normally isn't an issue, but some maintenance operations require a re-boot and the Infrant is very slow.
USER INTERFACE:
The user interface of the Infrant is much more polished and feature rich. Here's a screenshot:
http://s199473202.onlinehome.us/177mar07/infrant-ui.png
The Thecus user interface is functional enough, and much faster, but not as polished or feature rich:
http://s199473202.onlinehome.us/177mar07/thecus-ui.png
THECUS/INFRANT SIMILARITIES:
-Linux/Samba based operating system
-Useful LCD display
-Well designed hardware and mechanical designs
-Similar e-mail notification options
-Similar network protocol support (CIFS, NFS, AFP, FTP, HTTP)
-UPS support (theoretical graceful shutdown)
-USB drive sharing
-Printer sharing
-Similar share and access rights management
-File system checking
-Snapshots
-Backup capabilities (which I haven't tested)
-Both have active user forums and followings
READYNAS NV+ ADVANTAGES:
-Quieter. The NV+ has a variable speed fan and typically makes a bit less noise. The Thecus has a single speed fan that while not really noisy, could be quieter. When you're actually accessing the drives, however, both units are about the same as the drive noise is louder than the fans.
-Better native media server support. The Thecus includes the Mediabolic Media Manager which is a uPnP media server. I haven't tested it, but it's supposedly buggy. The Infrant natively supports uPnP (Windows Media Connect), slimserver, itunes and home media servers. But there's an excellent TwonkyVision media server plug-in module for the Thecus as well as Firefly for iTunes.
-Better manufacture support. While apparently Thecus is good about responding to e-mails, they don't participate (that I've seen) in the Thecus user forum like Infrant does. The Infrant website is also vastly better than the Thecus website.
-Lots of little ReadyNAS features. Such as the ability to put the entire NAS to sleep and wake it up on a schedule. The ReadyNAS has more complete system monitoring as well. The NV+ can also upgrade itself over the internet. The Thecus requires you to manually download the file and make it available to the NAS. In general, you can tell more thought went into the Infrant firmware. The Thecus firmware looks like it was probably done in Taiwan. And it's not horrible but it's not nearly as nice.
-More mature hardware/firmware. The ReadyNAS products have been shipping longer and all share the same firmware. The Thecus N5200 just became available late in 2006 and uses different firmware from previous Thecus products. The ReadyNAS is a much more mature product--especially the firmware--and has a larger user base. I've seen some small bugs in the N5200 and have read about others. Some are hard to excuse but none seem to be fatal. For example, if you power the unit up with a USB drive connected it can't see it until you unplug it and plug it back in.
-X-Raid support. I'm not convinced there's much real world advantage to X-Raid for most users. In theory, it offers better streaming performance for large files (i.e. video server support) and it allows easier expansion of a "grow as you go" RAID array. But the vastly faster performance of the Thecus overcomes any advantage X-Raid has for performance. And drives are so cheap these days, I suspect most people load up their NAS when they get it so there's no room to grow anyway?
-Recycle bin support. I can't find where the Thecus supports recovering deleted files? The ReadyNAS does.
-Lower power consumption. In terms of watts (versus VA) the Infrant uses about 20 watts less than the Thecus (adjusting for 4 vs 5 drives). That's about $17 a year more electricity running 7/24.
THECUS N5200 ADVANTAGES:
-Support for 5 drives. This means less of a capacity hit for RAID 5 (80% vs 72% of total capacity), more total storage, and the option of a "hot spare" with 4 RAID drives. With five 500 gig drives in the Thecus (actual 2384 gigs), you get a net usable RAID 5 capacity of 1903 gigs or 80% of the drive capacity--nearly 2 Terrabytes. In contrast, my NV+ with four 250G drives (actual 928 gigs), yields only 680 gig or 73% of the drive capacity.
-Support for RAID 6 and RAID 10. I'm not sure RAID 6 is a big deal as you take a capacity hit. The plus is you can lose TWO drives and not lose any data. RAID 10 is supposedly the best of RAID 5 and RAID 6 with only a slight performance hit over RAID 5. I haven't tested it as I don't really want to be on the bleeding edge with my data? RAID 5 is well proven and, in the Thecus, supposedly comes straight from the Linux world where it's been running on a zillion servers around the world.
-Faster hardware. The Thecus has the power of a mobile Pentium. It's still a fanless CPU with a small heatsink but it runs circles around the processor in the ReadyNAS in everything from boot time, to the user interface, to file transfer speed.
-Much better file transfer speeds! I can't stress this enough, as to me, speed is the most important aspect of a NAS. In my opinion, a $600 NAS should perform at least as well as a $600 PC. The Thecus exceeds the performance of even a $1000 PC, while the ReadyNAS is generally slower than even a cheap PC.
-No PC software required. The Thecus does not require anything like Infrant's RAIDar to access it. While this may be less secure, it's also easier and one less thing to install on your PC. It does ship with PC software, but it's optional. You can set up the unit partially from the front panel LCD, and fully from the web interface alone. I turned off http (forcing https) on my Thecus to enhance the admin security.
-Better Vista support. The Thecus takes much less of a performance hit transferring a large number of files compared to the ReadyNAS under Vista. With my 1600 file test folder, the ReadyNAS slowed to around 2 MB/sec reading or writing while the Thecus managed 9 - 16 MB/sec. The Thecus does not require desktop software so there's no Vista compatibility issues there either.
-Native support for adding third party modules. There are 15 or more modules available that add functionality and/or the ability to gain "root" access to the N5200 operating system for making your own tweaks, writing your own applications, etc. A partial list of the modules is available here: http://onbeat.dk/thecus/index.php/N5200_Resources
-The Thecus can act as a USB drive to directly attach it to a PC without using the LAN. This doesn't seem like a very useful thing to me, but might be for some users?
-The basic version of the N5200 has dual ethernet ports. One is for primary access (WAN) and the other is for a secondary network (LAN). The N5200 can then offer limited routing capability between these two networks. If you want more ports, the N5200R offers 4 LAN ports and gigabit switch functionality.
MORE INFORMATION:
N5200 User Forum: http://thecususergroup.proboards106.com/index.cgi#n5200
N5200 Wiki: http://onbeat.dk/thecus/index.php/N5200_Resources
N5200 Review: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6181&page=1
Infrant Website: http://www.infrant.com
CONCLUSIONS:
Both units are about the same cost so it comes down to this: Do you want features, maturity and "polish" or raw performance? The Thecus flat runs circles around the NV+ (and even most desktop PCs) in overall file transfer performance (and the online reviews, such as the one linked above, confirm this). If you just want a media server and you don't need to do many large operations on your music/movie collection (like global tag editing, volume normalizing, etc.) the performance of the ReadyNAS under XP is just fine and probably a safer place for your data.
On the other hand, if performance does matter and you don't want to wait all day for a big backup to complete, or to re-tag your 30,000 track music collection, the Thecus might be a better choice? If you're running Vista, it's no contest right now--buy the Thecus. But hopefully Infrant will make some improvements soon for Vista? Likewise the Thecus firmware will hopefully get better after it's been out longer and there are a few more revisions?
GEEK STUFF (test info):
For those interested, I used the following for my testing:
The main PC was a 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo dual boot machine running Vista Ultimate and XP Pro SP2. It has Gigabit lan support via Marvell Yukon on the Gigabyte GA965 motherboard using the Intel 965 chipset. The system has 2 gigs of RAM, dual RAID1 drives, and scores very high on most benchmarks.
For the PC to PC transfers, I used a fast AMD Athlon 4000 XP machine and a 2.1 Ghz Core2 Duo Vista machine. All of them support gigabit lan speeds.
The ReadyNAS is a NV+ with 256MB of RAM running the latest firmware (3.01p6) using 4 Hitachi 250G HDT722525DA380 Drives configured for RAID 5. Optimized for performance: All journaling turned off, write cache enabled.
The Thecus is a N5200 with 256MB of RAM without the router option. It's running the latest 1.07 firmware and is using 5 Hitachi 500G HDS725050KLA360 drives configured for RAID 5 with a 128K stripe size and only CIFS enabled (all other settings are default). No modules are installed.
The LAN is Cat6 wired gigabit with a single Dell PowerConnect 3000 series business class managed gigabit ethernet switch. Jumbo frames were disabled.
I ran the tests by dragging and dropping a single 500MB file and a folder containing 1600 random sized files that total 500MB (no single file is larger than 1MB) on the XP and Vista desktops. The total copy times were timed using a stopwatch. In addition, Vista displays the speed of the transfer in MB/sec. The file transfers were sufficiently large to prevent caching in the NAS units and other methods were used to make sure the files were not cached on the PC end.
Power consumption was measured with a PowerAngel power consumption meter. With the drives sleeping (not spinning) the ReadyNAS uses 30 watts and the Thecus uses 50 watts. With the drives idling, the ReadyNAS uses about 60 watts while the Thecus uses about 80 watts. The Thecus has a power factor corrected power supply so the VA and WATT readings are the same. The Infrant does not and the VA readings are about double (i.e. 120 VA idle). The high VA reading really only matters for loading on a UPS or if you had a rack full of these ReadyNAS units.