HI everyone, i write to you to know what you think about general NAS performance. I wanna know that cause in last days i was thinkin to buy a NAS for my home network (actually i got i pseudo-server that acts like file server). I've checked some of reviews on www.smallnetbuilder.com and campared their perfomances results provided by the site.
For my task i wont to spend too much say i tried to do the same test of smallnetbuilder on my actually file server and i've discovered that none of NAS reviwed there got performances comparable to my actual file-server, mainly on write performances!
So now i want to understand if i did some mistakes or if the hardware makes the differences between a computer that is a file server and a NAS, so it's better use a computer instead of a real NAS.

This is a link for the pdf file in which i've compared results from smallnetbuilder of three NAS i was interested into and results (obtained with the same benchmark software) of my file-server computer: http://www.mediafire.com/?8ezgdewz1jg

Let me know what you think about it!

Generally a consumer NAS (the type reviewed on SmallNetBuilder) will never be able to perform as well as your custom-built server. Normally the Consumer NAS is running similar software (usually Linux and Samba) but it is MUCH lower CPU and IO performance than your server.

I'm not sure performance is a huge issue for the average home user looking for a NAS. I think simplicity and reliability trump performance for most home users.

Which is more important for you

- speed
- power, size

If you favor speed, then just add more drives to your psuedo-server as you need it.

If you want to save power, and have a smaller footprint, then a consumer NAS would be better. You can get the storage up pretty high, but it will not be fast.

Consumer NAS's in general are slower than external HDs, so think about what your needs actually are.