4100+ speed vs. Firewire?

[paintbrush]

I've just installed a 4100+ with 4 X 750GB Seagate drives. The highest rate I've gotten transferring (writing) files to it is about 20GB per hour. Note however, that this is over Cat5e cables. Note also that this speed is when the files are relatively large, such as 100MB each. When transferring numerous smaller files, the speed decreases drastically, for example 3GB per hour or even slower. Also, it sometimes produces an error message that a file is an unreadable format and it then stops transferring all of the files in that batch.

We got the 4100+ to act as a networked backup device, but the slow speed in typical use (most files are small) makes it dysfunctional for this purpose.

Questions for board members:

Would simply upgrading to Cat6 cables provide a significant boost in speed?
Would this carry over to the typical backup of many small files which the 4100+ currently chokes on?
Would we be better off with a networked firewire device for our primary purpose of backing up numerous small files? This is for 3 separate computers (1 - Mac G5; 1 - Intel IMac; 1 - PC) with about 250GB of data total, mostly in small files?

The setup I originally intended was to run the 4100+ as RAID 1. Once a week there would be a complete backup onto this RAID. During the week there would also be numerous "snapshots" with Time Machine of changed files backed up onto the RAID. Every week swap out 1 drive for offsite storage. With 4 drives, there will always be the 2 drives in the RAID and 2 copies offsite.

4100+ RAID 1 with spare
4 x 750GB Seagate HDDs
2.0 dual Mac G5 with 8GB RAM and 2 x 250GB HDDs RAID 1

[itlity]

I won't comment about the speed, there are some references in the product reviews and in this forum.

If the performances concern you, you should rather make a quick move to the N5200x series.

If you want to optimize your performances, it would be better to move to a full Gb LAN and setup your NIC cards with Jumbo Frames @ max i.e. 7kB.

Note that as far as I know the N4100+ won't accept a RAID1 configuration with more than 2 disks: I tried, failed and got confirmation from TheCus this is not feasible. I think this configuration is OK for N5200x series.

[dbridges]

Firstly swapping drives out is going to result in a lot of raid rebuilding.

Changing the cables is not going to fix your small file issue. It's a samba problem IIRC.

You're probably better of zipping/taring the small files first (if possible)

[paintbrush]

dbridges:
I'm not that much of a geek.

What is a "samba problem IIRC"?

What is "zipping/taring the small files first"?

Assuming I can solve the small file problem, then you think I'd be better off abandoning swapping drives out of the NAS RAID for the off site backups and instead, i.e. copying from the NAS RAID via USB to an external drive? Of course, if I can't solve the small file issue, then that isn't going to be an issue because I'll have to go another route for backups. An hour for a couple of gigs just isn't functional!

Also, I still haven't heard any opinions on the gigabit ethernet vs. firewire speed question (actual, not just theoretical). Besides the speed question, If I can't solve the small file problem on the Thecus NAS ethernet device, would I have this same problem with a networked firewire device?

I'm just an ecologist, not a geek, so any help with this is really appreciated.

[dbridges]

Have a look at this thread about the small files...

thecususergroup.proboards106.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=installationissues&thread=200&page=1


I have never used a firewire device of any king so I cannot offer comparisons.

As for ZIPping and/or TARing they are mechanisms for bundling file(s) into another file, with or without compressing them.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_(file_format)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(file_format)

The single file can then be copied easily.