Mediasonic SU2LA Dual Bay RAID + NAS Review

Performance

Testing Methodology

Testing an external storage array is not as simple as putting together a bunch of files, dragging them onto the arrays drive folder in Windows and using a stopwatch to time how long the transfer takes. Rather, there are factors such as read / write speed and data burst speed to take into account.

For these tests I used a combination of the ATTO Disk Benchmark, HDTach and the SIS Sandra Removable Storage benchmark for testing the USB connection. For Network Testing IOZone was used.

For all USB & RJ45 testing a Gigabyte PA35-DS4 motherboard was used, with it’s built in USB and network controllers.

All tests were run 4 times and only best results are represented.

For information purposes here is the theoretical maximum each connection is capable of:
USB 2.0 = 60,000KB/s (480Mbit/s)
100Mbit Ethernet = 12,500KB/S

Complete Test System:

Processor: Q6600 @ 3.2 GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte p35 DS4
Memory: 4GB G.Skill PC2-6400
Graphics card: XFX 7200gt 128mb
Hard Drives: 1x Western Digital Se16 500GB
Power Supply: Seasonic S12 600W
Case: CM 690 w/ 6 Scythe E 120mm fans
Router: 5 port 10/100 D-Link 604
Cable: Cat 5e shielded 5ft runs max distance used
NAS hard drives: 2 x Seagate 7200.10 320GB


HDTach

Read Bandwidth

For this benchmark, HDTach was used. It shows the potential read speed that you are likely to experience with these enclosures.



As we suspected, there was little to no difference between any of the HUR1 enclosures when USB was used. These numbers are very good for any USB enclosure and for a NAS they are also very impressive, we just wish we had seen this speed when using its RJ45 connection.


Random Access Time

Once again, HDTach was used for the benchmark. This benchmark tests how quickly different areas of the drive’s memory can be accessed. A low number means that the drive space can be accessed quickly while a high number means that more time is taken trying to access different parts of the drive.



Once again there was no difference between the enclosures when USB was used. Overall, such a small increase in random access is to be expected as a second controller is now involved in data communications.


ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO disk benchmark tests the drives read and write speeds using gradually larger size files. For these tests, the ATTO program was set to run from its smallest to largest value (.5KB to 8192KB) and the total length was set to 256MB. The test program then spits out an extrapolated performance figure in megabytes per second.

Please note: USB results were exactly the same for ALL three enclosures. For ease of viewing only one set has been included.





34MB a second is not bad performance at all and it if this had been over Ethernet instead of USB it would have been down right amazing given the price of this NAS.


Sandra Removable Storage Benchmark

This test was run with the removable storage benchmark in Sandra XII Standard. All of the scores are calculated in operations per second and have been averaged out from the scores of 4 test runs.

Please note that both enclosures USB results were the same with the biggest deviation being 6ops/min. For ease of use only 2 sets of USB results have been included, the NAS and a USB only model.



As you can see, all three enclosures have nearly identical numbers when it comes to USB. Obviously we will have to use different tests over RJ45 to see if the SU2LA can distinguish itself from the other models.


IOZone

The IoZone test is a much more thorough and exhaustive test of the network bandwidth and hard drive performance of a given NAS being tested. The true power of IoZone is that it can be configured in a near endless variety of ways with the use of command line swtichs. These switches quite litteraly tell IOzone what it should use for its testing methodology. We have included a detailed break down of exactly what switchs we used but to sum up the command that we have put together, IoZone will be reading and writing files varied from 64KB in small 4KB chunks up to 1GB in 16MB chunks and every combination in-between. This provides us with an extremely complete picture of how the device handles a variety of traffic over the network. The following command was used for the testing:
iozone -Rab MediaSonic.wks -i 0 -i 1 -g 1G -+u -f y:\iozone\001.tmp
-Rab
is 3 settings in one
R generate excel report
a auto mode 1(the “short” or quick test run
b filename of excell spreadsheet to use (in this case “MediaSonic.wks”)
-g 1G sets max size to 1GB for auto mode
-+U Enable CPU utilization output (IF there is large spikes, it means OS caching and / or buffering is taking place)
-i options are tests to run
-i 0 = write/rewrite
-i 1 = read/re-read


READ



As you can see this Mediasonic enclosure is quite slow with a “peak” of about 6,000 KB/s reading the single large file and even for 100 Ethernet it is not a great performer.


WRITE



At first these numbers look better than those in the read tests (which is counter intuitive to say the least), however, as this is a 100 megabit Ethernet capable device so any numbers over 12,500KB/s (red bar in graph) are nothing more than CPU buffering and/ or OS caching. This is actually a very good example of how IOzone cannot be totally trusted at face value with its default “area graph” results.


Simplified Read



On first look such a flat line across such a wide range of file sizes is puzzling until one remembers that this is only a 10/100 capable device. This enclosure obviously has much more potential, but its highs are being capped by its limited network interface. If this unit was gigabit capable we would certainly have seen a much nicer looking graph. Who knows, it may have even given more expensive NAS appliances a run for their money. As it stands it is a slow but fairly consistent NAS when it comes to read speeds.


Simplified Write



While these numbers are better looking than the read graph they still have a tendency to hover around the 5000 KB/s range just as the read did. It is not until the size of the files increases above 32MB that we see any significant decrease in speeds.