Use and Benchmarks
I used the Windows-based tool provided with the NAS to configure it initially. I found the tool to be very rudimentary and virtually unnecessary, as it just finds the IP of the device.
For benchmarks, I copied a ~476 MB file to the device from a RAMdisk on my desktop, and then back to the RAMdisk from the NAS. I configured the four 500 GB drives in a RAID5 array with the default settings for filesystem type and such. I’ve included benchmarks from my few-year-old QNAP TS-809 Pro NAS, with a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of DDR2 RAM with four 750 GB, 7200 RPM Seagate hard drives from various generations in RAID5
SMB
| Device | Write | Read |
| Plextor PX-NAS4 | 5.63 MB/s | 35.25 MB/s |
| Qnap TS-809 Pro | 6.31 MB/s | 48.14 MB/s |
The QNAP edges out here, but it should — it’s highly performant for SMB transfers.
NFS
| Device | Write | Read |
| Plextor PX-NAS4 | 25.72 MB/s | 105.75 MB/s |
| Qnap TS-809 Pro | 45.04 MB/s | 60.72 MB/s |
I’ve found tat QNAP’s NFS performance isn’t as good as others, and Plextor is no exception. Except that the write speed on the Plextor was considerably lower than most of the units I’ve tested. It kinda makes up for it on the read test, performing better than I’ve previously seen. This was even on a cold start!
An annoying thing about the NFS share: one must use full on-disk path to NFS share when specifying its endpoint. It’s not easy to remember, either.
Burst NFS
For my burst NFS test, I dump zeros from /dev/zero directly onto the share, pumping out as fast as the receiving end will take them. For read, I read the file from the server directly to /dev/null.
| Device | Write | Read |
| Plextor PX-NAS4 | 29.9 MB/s | 46.9 MB/s |
| Qnap TS-809 Pro | 17.90 MB/s | 53.92 MB/s |
The Plextor edges out on the write test, but hurts on the read test.
During these tests, and even when the device was idle between tests, I noticed that the fans were incredibly loud. When the unit is idle, the fans are very, very audible and distracting. One probably wouldn’t want this unit in a populated area. Once drives powered down, fans went off and it’s bareable. Fans seem to come on at ~46°C, kicking from ~1500 rpm to 2000 rpm. The topped at 2300 RPM, went down to 43°C. In my mid-70° apartment, though, it was’t down that low for long. I would say the unit spent more than 90% of its time with the fans on high.
