Benchmarks
Unless specified otherwise, we tested using four WD Red Pro 4TB hard drives. NAS devices with just two bays were tested using RAID 1, while those supporting three or more drives ran RAID 5. During benchmarking, the NAS device in question was connected directly to a Netgear GS108T v2 switch, while the test PC is always our most high-end desktop using an SSD to read and write the data.
The plan is to start reviewing NAS type devices on a more regular basis at TechSpot so we'll be building up benchmark results from this point forward. For now, we don't have anything to compare the TS-853A against, at least nothing that would be in the same league. Still with performance numbers based on RAID 5, 6 and 10 modes we get a pretty good idea of just how capable this device really is.
When transferring large files, the QNAP TS-853A is limited by the Gigabit Ethernet connection, meaning around 100MB/s is the fastest speed users will be able to transfer data in any direction.
When transferring hundreds of large 36.3 megapixel photos, the TS-853A was able to average 91MB/s download speeds using RAID 5 and RAID 6 while it was able to upload at a little over 70MB/s. Similar upload performance was seen when using RAID 10, though the download performance was also limited to a little over 70MB/s.
Finally, we have the website backup test which is comprised of almost 11,000 files in 200 folders totaling 1.7GB. Network bandwidth certainly isn't the issue here as we are capped at around 20MB/s when downloading. RAID 5 provided the best performance followed by RAID 6, whereas the RAID 10 upload speeds were noticeably slower.