Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
If you are looking for some speedy storage to store music or videos then the GAGE104U40SL-SAUF can be a suitable solution for you. The inclusion of high speed connectivity allows you to maximize your throughput and negate any latency issues you might experience with some networked attached storage. Typically, network performance can fluctuate in an environment while directly connected storage devices usually will experience more stable performance. To test, we attached the GAGE104U40SL-SAUF to our bench rig and ran our in house Avatar test for benchmarking. Keep in mind here that we are benchmarking this device with SATA II drives.
The benchmark is conducted by creating a 46.6GB file (Avatar.iso), transferring the file to and from the test unit using Robocopy. The test is run 10 times and then the results are averaged for a final score.
Bench rig:
- Gigabyte 880GA-UD3H
- AMD Phenom II X4 965
- 2x2GB Patriot Sector 5 PC3-12800
- Seagate 500GB ST3500630AS
- Lian Li PC-6 (click to read our review)
- BFG LS-450
- Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
GAGE104U40SL-SAUF:
- 4 x ST31500341AS 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gb/s HDDs in RAID 5
- USB 3.0 Connected
In testing, the GAGE104U40SL-SAUF performed consistently. Our Avatar test indicates that the device was able to sustain an average transfer to speed of 77.26 MB per second and a transfer from speed of 58.44 MB per second. In an optimal environment you can average the same types of speeds from a NAS; however, because there are too many variables with networking, sustaining comparable speeds may prove to be an exercise in patience. To compare results from some of the NAS’s we have tested, the Thecus N4200PRO performed the same test at 73.10 MB/s to and 70.93 MB/s from but costs around two hundred dollars more.
With reliable and sustained transfer speeds, the GAGE104U40SL-SAUF can be used to store large amounts of data and have them readily available for you. The all aluminum design provides a sufficient amount of cooling when paired with the three 40mm cooling fans, and it also looks good too. The side by side drive setup can take up more space than the StarTech S354UFER, but with the way it looks, you won’t mind having it on your desk. I would have liked to see a bit more performance from the USB 3.0 connectivity, but we are limited more by the speed of the drives in the enclosure than the speed of USB 3.0. With easy to configure RAID options and plenty of connectivity options, the GAGE104U40SL-SAUF will be hard to ignore. If you are looking for a desktop or rack mount storage solution then the GAGE104U40SL-SAUF should definitely be considered.
