Performance

We used three Seagate 7200.11 1TB drives (it was four, but one died) and one Samsung F1 1TB drive, to build a four disk RAID 5 array. We figure that this will probably be the most popular configuration given it offers the best redundancy to performance and space ratio.

We firstly tested file transfer performance using Windows Vista SP1 with SMB shares using 19GB of small (music) files and found that the performance was not that great - only 8.2MB/s on average and it took 39 minutes to complete. Copying from the NAS to a separate hard drive in our system took only half that time though - 20 minutes at around 17MB/s average.

We then tried a single large 2.3GB Rar file which was slightly faster at 10MB/s and took 3 minutes and 49 seconds, but the speed pulling it from the NAS to our drive was again significantly faster at 27.5MB/s

Testing the performance over FTP we say some very positive gains in performance for large file transfer - we recorded around 12-18.5MB/s copying the 2.3GB file across to the TS-409, which still took 3 minutes and 24 seconds, however we did get a whopping 50MB/s copying it back to our machine in just 45 seconds!

Copying small files over FTP was no faster than SMB though and it took around 37 and a half minutes but compared to copying from NAS to local hard drive it's eclipsed by a 4 minute download of all 19GB!

We have to say that read speeds are very good, especially for FTP and other "lighter" connections rather than SMB shares, even if SMB is simpler to use. We found it was completely dependent on what needs processing though - if you run a complicated RAID array with lots of parity then write speeds will plummet because the CPU is overloaded, however if you run a simple RAID 0/1 or JBOD array you get closer to the full speed of the drive(s), depending on your networks performance.

Power Consumption

For four hard drives and numerous other devices rolled into one, under 50W load is certainly not that much - in contrast the Intel Atom system with just one optical and hard drive we recently put together came to about the same power consumption, however the Atom board is limited to just two SATA so RAID 5 or 6 are out of the question. On the other hand, 50W is not exactly an insignificant amount, but you can tell it to turn off the hard drives off after a certain period of inactivity which will save a ton of power, because ~30W of it is keeping those platters spinning.

Conclusions

I have to admit I'm somewhat disappointed with the performance - the 500MHz CPU seems to be the limiting factor here as there's plenty of memory spare and the 1TB hard drives are easily capable of 70+MB/s write performance. Simply put, the RAID 5 XOR parity calculation is just too much for it and we regularly saw the CPU usage hitting 90-100 percent in the web interface control panel. If you were using the box to download, web serve, bit-torrent etc it will undoubtedly affect the performance to some degree if you're also managing your files as well. In addition - you can't partition the available memory for use as RAID cache like there is available on professional RAID cards, however at the same time the two aren't made for the same market - the TS-409 CPU has to handle network traffic, transfers, disk access and RAID parity information all together, so it has a lot to think about and isn't made for specifically a single function.

Having used the TS-409 for several days it's got an awesome feature-set and on the basis of not needing X, Y or Z extra hardware or leaving a full PC on for menial tasks like downloading or media serving, it's a great little device. Running a blog or small company website from it might be tempting, but given the cost of hosting and a real domain these days. shelling out over £400 for one of these on that basis is not practical unless you need it to handle and administer large files.

The real killer feature for us though is the RAID expansion and migration - being able to drop in more or larger drives and have it simply expand the same array without having to start again is not just a great feature, its invaluable. While the software side is wrapped up, hardware wise it could certainly be better kitted though as it needs some vibration dampening for the hard drives and a better processor for those XOR RAID calculations.

Compared to the likes of Netgear's ReadyNAS NV+ the QNAP TS-409 Pro Turbo is significantly cheaper - over £150 - but the Netgear has upgradable DDR2 memory, bigger flash memory, a bigger (and potentially quieter) fan, a small LCD screen and basically looks better. The Netgear X-RAID similarly corresponds to the RAID migration and expansion on the TS-409 and if you don't care about upgrading it or how it looks - grab the TS-409 Pro and save yourself a ton of cash.

What about doing it yourself though? We've already showed you how to Build your own server and then improve on it - and you can have whatever hardware combination you like as long as it's got drivers for Linux. Old CPUs, motherboards and small amounts of memory are dirt cheap now and modding is our thing, yet while it's incredibly fun to do this kind of project a lot of us just want a complete solution and you're unlikely to make anything this compact and easy to use without either a significant time and skill investment.

It certainly seems expensive on the surface but in actual fact it's quite a bargain compared to other four disk NAS drives worth owning. There are many external drive solutions ranging from local USB and eSATA, but if you've ever felt the need for a completely independent and self sufficient NAS, the TS-409 has become one of those things that once we've used it, we'll find it hard to go back. Having owned a two disk NAS myself and now using this, my Thecus N2100 now feels woefully insufficient and while £420+ is a lot of money, if you're serious about managing your data properly, it's certainly a case of getting what you pay for.

• Performance
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• 7/10

• Features
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• 8/10

• Value
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• 8/10

• Overall
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• 8/10

What do these scores mean?