Connection to Mac via router?

[Nick F]

I'm thinking about buying a Thecus model to use for external storage and have a quick question.

I'll be linking it to my Mac through my broadband router, I assume that will be okay and it doesn't need to be connected directly to the Mac?

[Thecus - Yvon]

Dear Sir,

The Thecus NAS is a Network Attached Storage, which means we could access to this network storage via netwrok.

Yvon.

[DR]

As long as you buy a 'NAS' solution you can use it on any system just plugged in to your router - if you have a USB one then the Router needs to support USB disk - or you need to plug it in to the local machine

[paintbrush]

You should be able to run it over your ethernet LAN with no problem.
However, since you're Mac I'll share my experience with the 4100+ (with 4 X 750 GB Seagate drives). We got this for backup. Speed is middlin' with batches of large files (say, 100 MB per file). But when I try to backup batches of small files on to it, it chokes. We're talking maybe 1 GB per hour.
In response to my queries on the other Thecus forum, another Mac user reported the exact same experience with the 4100+. They say that their network checked out fine and what fixed the problem was upgrading to the 5200. Speeds about doubled and the choke problem with small files went away. So now I'm weighing the pros and cons of upgrading to the 5200 series or going Firewire (firewire 800 = faster, but the networking wouldn't be as seamless).

[sietierney]

Paintbrush

I am running a 5200BRPro with macs and I can quite honestly say after a few teething problems its a beast see my other posts for speed comparisons etc, we have 4 macs accessing it at the same time it has no problems what so ever. I have also added the latest airport N standard to my network this gave me 3 more ethernet ports and the benefit of secure fast wifi.

[paintbrush]

Sie
Are you getting good speed when writing lots of small files to the 5200? That's my problem. When I do a drag & drop to the 4100+ speed is ridicuously slow, less than a GB per hour!

[sietierney]

Hi Paint

I have just done a test for you:-

I copied from my desktop a 221mb fonts folder containing over 5000 items ie fonts and folders subfolders etc

to my 5200 and it took less than a minute!

It is very fast

If you want me to do anything else give me a shout!

[paintbrush]

Sie:
Thanks. There's nothing like actual empirical tests; far more reliable than manufacturer's "up to" numbers!

Your test speed is much faster than I have gotten for writing batches of small files to the 4100+. For small files, I was getting about 1GB/hr. By my calculations, your write speed was about 4mb/sec or about 15GB/hr. However, that's still less than I'm getting for large files (about 20GB/hr). But I am using cat5e cables and that probably slows things (compared to cat6).

By way of comparison, on another forum someone posted this experience with a Firewire 800 external drive and Mac:
"I've just bought a Firewire 800 capable external disk and wanted to know the speed. So I've done a test to give you contextual information about what kind of performance to expect.
I've copied a directory with a few large movie files to my HFS+ formatted disk over the 9 pin Firewire 800 connection. I turned off spotlight for the external disk I wrote to and that disk isn't being backedup either.
1.47 billion bytes in 45 seconds equates to 31.2 Megabyte per second and 249 Megabit per second."
So, this person reports a rate of over 100GB/hr. at least for large files and presumably not onto a RAID, which will slow it down.

So, I'm balancing three factors:
1. cost
2. ease of use
3. speed (which definitely relates back to ease of use)

So, I think we're going to try a firewire RAID (800, 400, & USB), probably the CalDigit 2-Bay FV. Unfortunately, they don't sell trays separately, but I can get one for $180 delivered with 2 x 160GB drives and swap them out for some 750's I've got.

I know I'll be plugging/unplugging a lot, that should be the most vulnerable point of this hardware system. So I'll set this up so the plug/unplug point is cable to cable, not cable to computer or cable to RAID enclosure.

Thanks for sharing your experience.