Since the cached performance expands the scale such that you can't see the non-cached performance details, I've generated plots that zero in on those areas. Figure 11 shows non-cached Write performance and Figure 12 non-cached Read.

Figure 11: Non-cached NAS Write performance
(click on the image for a larger view)

Figure 12: Non-cached NAS Read performance
(click on the image for a larger view)

Of interest here is that non-cached Read performance improves with larger file sizes.

Finally, Figures 13 and 14 will help put the NSL's performance in perspective. They show a comparison of Write and Read performance for varying record sizes for 128MByte file transfers for three devices:

The NSL with Maxtor USB drive The Maxtor USB 2.0 drive directly attached to a WinXP Home SP1 system running iozone The 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 ATA/133 drive on the WinXP Home SP1 system running iozone

Figure 13: Write performance comparison
(click on the image for a larger view)

Figure 14: Read performance comparison
(click on the image for a larger view)

These plots show that NSL performance limitations certainly aren't due to the Maxtor USB 2.0 drive. They also show that you're more likely to notice that retrieving files from the NSL is slower than getting them from your computer's local drive, than you are to notice a difference in how long it takes to save files.