To see how well the G600 performed, I used IOzone to check the G600's file system performance as described here. The test was run under Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop with 384 MB of RAM. A Seagate 120 GB Barracuda 7200 RPM with 8MB Cache was the hard drive loaded into the G600.

For my Gigabit network setup, I used a Netgear GA511 Gigabit PC card in my laptop, which was directly connected to the G600 with a network cable. For wireless, the G600 was connected to my WPA encrypted Apple Airport Express access point running in 802.11g mode.

NOTES:

How fast a computer can read or write data to a drive depends on many factors specific to the system running the test, so this test may not represent the actual performance you'd see on your own system. The maximum theoretical data transfer rate possible on a 100 Mbit network is around 12,000 kBps, so any values that exceed that number are as a result of caching behavior, not network speed. Wireless performance will vary greatly depending on the speed and reliability of your wireless connection.

For my wireless tests, I didn't try to optimize wireless signal quality, nor to test the limits of the G600's wireless range. I just used the device where and how I naturally would in my house. This meant that the G600 was on a different floor, and probably about 20 to 30 feet from the 802.11g Apple Airport Express access point to which it was connected.

I should also mention that when I started running my IOzone tests, I was consistently disconnected from the device; this persisted over reboots of both my test system and the G600 itself. I consulted with engineers at D-Link, but they were unable to replicate my problem using the same IOzone test. After a day or so, I went back to the tests and the disconnects no longer occurred. I had seemingly changed nothing, so it is not clear what made the problem go away.

Figures 11 through 13 show read performance for a range of file and record sizes, using 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps Ethernet connections, as well as the 802.11g wireless connection that I described above.

Figure 11: 100 MBit Read Performance
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100 Mbps read performance was on par with other drives in this class, and Figure 11 shows a slight performance benefit from using a Gigabit Ethernet connection.

Figure 12: 1000 MBit Read performance
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As expected, wireless connection causes a significant throughput hit, so you would probably only want to use that mode as a last resort.

Figure 13: Wireless Read Performance
(click image to enlarge)