[SATLUG] Re: Linux-based home NAS

[Brad Knowles]

On 11/13/07, Sean Carolan wrote:

>  In sum, I need a device that will allow me to transfer multiple
>  gigabytes of data within a timespan measured in hours, not days.

This is kind of like the issues I've got at home, and wanting a 
high-enough speed disk storage system for doing backups on a frequent 
automated basis -- I wasn't thinking of anything quite as advanced as 
Time Machine, but I'll definitely take it once Mac OS X 10.5.1 (or 
later) is out.

I've taken a particular 1TB external drive and connected it to my 
Apple Airport Express, and run some benchmarks on it to get an idea 
of how fast it can perform -- it is so slow that it makes 802.11b 
look fast, and directly connecting via one of the switched Ethernet 
ports on the back doesn't help.

I've taken the same 1TB external drive and connected it to my Mac 
Mini as an AFP fileserver and benchmarked that (from the same 
clients, albeit across the 802.11g-only wireless network and not via 
direct-connect Ethernet), and it performed much, much faster.

So, I gave the Airport the best test scenario I could, and have not 
(yet) tested the same network capacity for the Mac Mini, and the 
Airport just couldn't begin to keep up with the Mac Mini.


So, I know what I'm going to be doing with my network storage.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>