In order to gauge performance our standard NAS test procedure was run using the version 1.1.0.0003 firmware that came installed on device. Figures 9 and 10 show the NetCenter's performance using a 64 kByte record size and file sizes from 32 MB to 1 GB, plotted along with comparable previously-reviewed products.

As you can see in the charts below, the performance of the NetCenter was generally low as compared to other NAS devices in its class. In the read test, the NetCenter falls well short of its competitors, often being 25% slower than the Synology DS-106e which led the pack.

Figure 9: Read Comparison (click image to enlarge)

In the write test, the NetCenter avoided the bottom of the scale, but was still quite a bit slower than the DS-106e.

Figure 10: Write Comparison (click image to enlarge)

To give another perspective on performance, I did a simple drag-and-drop test of moving a directory tree back and forth to the NetCenter. This tests were run with Windows XP SP2 running natively on my MacBook Pro - a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo with 1.5 GB of RAM. (This is a different machine than that used for the iozone tests.)

The directory tree I copied contained 4100 files using up just over a gigabyte. Moving from XP to the Netcenter (i.e. write) took on average 4 minutes and 45 seconds. Moving the same directory back to my XP system (i.,e. read) averaged 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

To compare this performance to the full set of devices we've tested over the last couple of years, visit our Network Storage Charts.