Although the SS4000-E's performance is disappointing compared to that of direct-attached or internal drives, it does pretty well when compared to other NAS products. We tested the box with its drives in a RAID 5 configuration and using a gigabit Ethernet connection.

NOTES:
• Keep in mind that the maximum raw data rate for 100Mbps Ethernet is 12.5 MB/s and 125 MB/s for gigabit Ethernet

Test Configuration

As the charts below show, the SS4000-E achieved a data rate of 7 MB/s for writing and 13-14 MB/s for sequential reads (the red bars in the Read chart) when tested in a RAID 5 configuration using our Robocopy benchmark. This test basically uses a Microsoft utility to automatically copy a number of folders containing files of various sizes and types between our test computer and the NAS under test and measure the time it takes.

In a RAID 0 configuration, the device takes a noticeable jump upward in performance and reaches 11 MB/s for writing due to the reduced overhead of RAID 0 operation. So while the NAS can slightly outrun 100 MBit Ethernet bandwidth, it can't take much advantage of the additional bandwidth provided by gigabit Ethernet.