Gigabit NAS only using about 20% of link speed

Ryom

Ryom

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 11, 2006
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I've got a Buffalo LS-WXL5BF connected directly to one of my PC's gigabit ethernet ports. The link in the Win7 network and connections is showing it connected at 1Gbit but the actual transfer speed tops out around 150-200 Mbit or roughly 15-25MB/s (which is well under what the unit is advertised to perform at.)

Anyone got any ideas for troubleshooting this? I'll be swapping out the cable that came with it for a good CAT5E I got from monoprice but other than that I'm not sure what to try.

linkstation_xfer.jpg
 
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What's the read/write speeds of the slowest hard drive being read or written from?
 
They are 2TB drives, so they should be capable of a minimum speed of at least double what I'm seeing right now. They should be able to nearly saturate the link at their maximum. I'd forgotten to mention that I've enabled jumbo frames on the NAS and my NIC, whiched helped somewhat but the performance is much lower than expected.
 
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Everything is normal. Just because a device has a gigabit port doesn't mean you'll the maximum possible throughput with it. The NAS is not capable of doing anything more.
 
there is no such model as a "LS-WXL5BF", can you post a link to what you have.
 
Just saw in the comments that another person is complaining of slow speeds. If that really is the case with this then I'll be returning it. A 2TB RAID-0 should be able to use most of a gigabit link since the lowest read/write speed of even a single low end 2TB drive should be roughly 40-50MB/s. Frankly I would have been happy with anything over what a USB2.0 external drive can do (about ~30MB/s) but this NAS isn't even hitting that!

I'll give Buffalo a ring on Monday and see what they say, I was just hoping to clear this up over the weekend :/

edit: So far this unit is both slow and loud. As of right now I wouldn't recommend it. It's sad as well that the newegg details list SILENT operation, and this is the loudest thing in my PC room, and I do not have a silent PC! :p

newegg said:
Buffalo’s LinkStation Duo is a high performance...Gigabit Ethernet capability, the LinkStation Duo offers fast... - NOPE
Silent Operation: Noiseless fan design ensures reliable and silent operation - NOPE
Click to expand...
 
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You won't get any higher speeds with any inexpensive NAS like that. Everything is normal and calling them up won't solve anything. If you want better, look at something that is Atom based (QNAP has some for example).
 
The QNAP 800mhz Marvel would cost nearly $500 for similar capacity. The lowest priced Atom would be over $700 once you figure in the cost of drives.

Is there really nothing that is more reasonably priced that will actually USE the capacity of its link?
 
Not really. Might want to consider building your own Atom based NAS. It will be a bit bigger, but it will perform far better and be relatively cheap.
 
Blue Fox said:
Not really. Might want to consider building your own Atom based NAS. It will be a bit bigger, but it will perform far better and be relatively cheap.
Click to expand...

I got an Intel LGA775 board on clearance, a used E2160 and some DDR2 from FS/T here, and a WD Green 1TB, and tossed it all in an old case I had. It was cheaper than that Buffalo, I can add a bunch of drives, the CPU never breaks a sweat, I get sustained transfers over 400Mb/s with FreeNAS, and I have to put my ear literally inside the open drive bays to hear it.

My issue with the Atom boards is trying to find one that has Intel gigabit onboard. My LGA775 board does, and even with the CPU was still cheaper than an Atom.
 
I think this is a better option in my opinion. You get a small tower with 4 hot-swap bays, a real server board, and extremely low power usage.

Board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182232
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811123154
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231069
OS drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220247

Not a bad combination for $280. Just put FreeNAS on the USB drive and plug it into the internal header and you're set. Sad thing is, it's only $40 more than the Buffalo NAS when you add in 2 x 2TB drives.
 
Thanks, that may do the trick Blue Fox. The other thing I was concerned about was form factor, but that looks to be reasonably compact. I actually have a spare 160GB Intel x-25m I can use for a boot drive, even though it would be massive overkill :p
 
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Ryom said:
I actually have a spare 160GB Intel x-25m I can use for a boot drive, even though it would be massive, massive overkill :p
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The reason for the USB drive in Blue Fox's list is that motherboard only has 4 SATA ports. So if you want as much storage as possible, a SATA OS drive would not be a good idea.
 
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