Thecus N2520 with Mac OSX File Transfer Performance Report

Thecus Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 is slow with OSX but how about ThecusOS 6? It’s based on Linux and perform well in my previous tests. Maybe it is a better alternative solution if you preferred Thecus. Let’s see how it compete with others.

Thecus N2520 with ThecusOS 6

Thecus N2520 uses an Intel Atom CE5315 which is a 1.2GHz dual-core SoC based on Berryville. It has 512KB L2 Cache , 32-bit PAE, and 1GB DDR3 RAM.

I install two Seagate Barracuda Desktop HDD as RAID 1 in it.

ThecusOS 6.1.17.1 for N2520 is a 32-bit Linux used in this test.

Mac Mini Late 2012

I have upgrade my Mac mini to 16GB RAM and use a Seagate Laptop SSHD 1 TB which spins at 5400rpm and comes with 8GB MLC cache build-in to replace the slow hard drive.

Test Method

It is detail explained in Prepare Your NAS File Transfer Performance Test with Mac OSX Client. I test both Samba and NFS.

I also add test results from Thecus w5000 and QNAP TS-119PII with OSX.

1. Thecus W5000 with Mac OSX File Transfer Performance Report
2. QNAP TS-119PII with Mac OSX File Transfer Performance Report

Performance

File transfer performance on Thecus N2520 with Mac OSX via Samba.

File transfer performance on Thecus N2520 with Mac OSX via NFS.

* Numbers in green means informal test.

Analyze

N2520 is faster on reading but slower on writing to W5000 in Samba. It catch up with TS-119PII in NFS, less than 10% difference. TS-119PII is top performer on all tests.

According to these numbers, Thecus WSS and ThecusOS 6 are slower than QTS when accessed by OSX via Samba.

These green numbers indicate no significant improvement with different Samba options in ThecusOS 6.

More Thoughts

TS-119PII has a 2.0GHz Marvell 88F6282 SoC with single drive while N2520 is a 1.2GHz Intel Atom CE5315 in RAID 1. It’s not fare to conclude ThecusOS 6 has Samba compatibility issue with OSX. I need more test with different models.

Reference

1. Apple: Mac mini (Late 2012) – Technical Specifications
2. Apple: OS X
3. Intel: New Storage Solutions Based on the Intel® Atom™ Processor CE5300 Series Simplifies HD Content Sharing and Delivery Between Mobile Devices and Smart TV
4. Linux.org
5. Marvell: Marvell 88F6282 SoC
6. Prepare Your NAS File Transfer Performance Test with Mac OSX Client
7. QNAP TS-119PII
8. QNAP TS-119PII with Mac OSX File Transfer Performance Report
9. QNAP: QTS
10. Samba
11. Seagate Barracuda Desktop Datasheet
12. Seagate Laptop SSHD Datasheet
13. Thecus
14. Thecus N2520
15. Thecus W5000
16. Thecus W5000 with Mac OSX File Transfer Performance Report
17. Thecus Windows Storage Server 2012 R2
18. ThecusOS 6
19. Wiki: Multi-level cell
20. Wiki: Network File System
21. Wiki: Physical Address Extension
22. Wiki: Standard RAID levels: 2 RAID 1
23. Wiki: System on a chip