Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
For testing the transfer speed of the NAS we really didn’t do anything fancy. Our benchmark was transferring a 46.6GB Blu-Ray ISO (Avatar) from the TS-419P+ to our workstation. We just initiated the file transfer and watched the networking tab in Windows Task Manager and the Bandwidth Usage Tab in the Resource Monitor for the TS-419P+. We experienced around a 34 MB/s transfer for the duration of the test but also noticed that the CPU in the NAS was steadily near 100% usage. This could potentially add up to some lag if you have multiple applications running on the NAS and transferring large files around.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t match the speeds of our in house server which averaged right around 78MB/s for the sustained transfer.
Further testing with Intel’s NAS Performance Toolkit demonstrated that the TS-419P+ still lagged behind our in house custom server, even though it was fitted with faster hard drives.
Personally, I like to keep my server up and running at all times and this is typically reflected in my electricity bill. However, according to QNAP, the TS-419P+ can help my energy consumption woes by designing a NAS that only uses 23 watts in sleep mode and 34 during normal operation. These claims of electricity usage make this NAS more efficient than a light bulb. In testing, we were able to determine that the NAS actually used 15.88 W in HDD standby mode, 29.82 W during normal usage, and 121.8 W during heavy transfers. This bests our in house server which averages 87.08 W in HDD standby mode, 122.4 W in normal usage, and 136 W during heavy file transfers.
Testing was conducted using a Kill A Watt EZ P4460 Power Meter and measurements were taken every minute for 10 minutes then averaged for the results.
The TS-419P+ has proven to be a worthy component with its feature rich software and small footprint. Team that up with its low power consumption and adequate file transfer speeds and you have a real contender to replace a home built server. The web interface and the multimedia server make this a useful solution for streaming audio and video throughout your home but by providing a UPNP media and iTunes server QNAP makes the TS-419P+ hard to pass up. Outside of the home, useful features like iSCSI support and advanced ACL makes this a viable solution for the home office or small office instead of purchasing an expensive server and hiring an IT person to manage it. I would have liked to see better file transfer speeds but if you add everything the the TS-419P+ packs up you get a product that delivers nicely on all fronts. Priced between five and 6 hundred dollars, the TS-419P+ isn’t expensive considering what you get. Bottom line, is it worth the money? Yes.
Note: It turns out there are two versions of the TS-419P+, one version has the Marvel 9125 SATA controller and the newest has been changed to a 7042. The HDD activity LEDs will not react to activity with the 9125 SATA controller.
