We generally liked this product, but found the gigabit Ethernet performance a bit slow. Have you seen better speed? If you have, how did you measure it?

[quote="thiggins"]We generally liked this product, but found the gigabit Ethernet performance a bit slow.

You said you used a Netgear GA511 gigabit PC card in your laptop. Are you sure the PC Card wasn’t causing a bottleneck?

Does the PC Card interface have the required bandwidth? And Is the Netgear PC Card up to the job? Any chance you can retest the Iomega with a Gigabit port on a desktop?

Thanks!

Hi Kahuna, This was my first experience with a consumer NAS device so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. After I ran the test quoted in the article, I repeated the test using a different laptop with an integrated Broadcom Gigabit ethernet adaptor. This gave very similar results to the Netgear test, so my conclusion was that the Netgear results were representative. It's possible that a desktop system might have seen different results, but I retired my last desktop system a year or so ago. I'm a laptop-only house!

Jim

If you're looking for the version v1.27 firmware referred to in the article, here's the word from Iomega:

We expect to have the firmware for the StorCenter Network Hard Drive available for download sometime by the end of Q1[2006] at
https://iomega-na-en.custhelp.com/c [...] roduct.php

Now lets. Think here.

Slow Laptop Hard Drive -> Super Fast Gigabit -> Faster Hard Drive in NAS

Can you see the bottleneck here?

Why would you use a slow laptop hard drive to test these speeds?

If you have a decent amount of ram in the laptop (512mb+) make a ramdisk and transfer from there. Then you have no more bottleneck. You can setup a ramdisk with the very simple software from here:
http://www.cenatek.com/product_ramdisk.cfm

I was planning on using this technique for benchmarking some gigabit switches.

Please re-do the benchmarks with a non-slow laptop hard drive. Even if it's a 7200rpm laptop drive (which is doubtful) the sequential read speeds of a laptop drive aren't nearly as fast as their desktop counterparts. Didn't you think of this?

It's unlikely that the drive in the notebook running iozone is a factor. Iozone is a pretty compact application and shouldn't have to page much if at all

Finally, an in depth review of the Iomega Network Storage Drive to help me decide which gigabit net drive to buy. Given the growing popularity of these devices I'd like to see similar reviews from Toms Networking for the new Linkstation HS-D300GL/D400GL gigabit connected drive and for the new Synology Disk Station 101g+ gigabit connected enclosure. For a while, I thought the new Iomega gigabit and the old Linkstation HG-300LAN/400LAN were the only contestants with gigabit connectivity in this price range. I looked around a couple weeks later... and BANG! the new Linkstation and Synology show up. So, back to the drawing board.

Given the high fan noise level reported and the unimpressive file transfer performance from its 10/100/1000 connection; the Iomega will stay in the shopping cart and won't move into the check out process unless Iomega releases firmware updates that fixes these shortcommings... or if I find a better solution. The reason I was leaning towards the Iomega was because of its UPnp support and because its backup program allows a full system backup/restore. For me, disaster recovery is indispensable in case of a system crash. I'm always changing the configuration of my laptop installing beta stuff. I have not seen this full system backup/restore capabilty in the other drives I've looked... but maybe I missed something.

Has anyone out there been able to get their hands on any of these new gigabit storage devices?

After reading the specs I'm impressed with the features in the Synology... specially the SmartFan, Sleep Mode, Web hosting and One Touch copy to transfer photos and video from a camera via its USB Port. It appears that it does not provide a way to get a full system backup/restore as I'm not familiar with the Synology data replicator for backups. Also, it does not appear to have UPnp or DLNA support and it ships without a drive.

The new LinkStation emphasizes its gigabit networking with Jumbo Frame support. It uses DLNA server technology to stream digital content and Memeo backup software. I wonder how this JUMBO frame works and if there is client requirement to support it. The Hard drive is included, but I could not find in the documentation how fast it is.

Which one do you guys think is better? Is there something else up there I should be looking at? My ultimate goal is to access this drive from my laptop running XP Media Center Edition for additional storage/backup and also from an Xbox 360 with Media Center Extensions to access music, photos and video.

Two more questions... Do any these vendors drives support or plan to support Media Center "Extensions"? How does this DLNA technology differ from UPnp?

Thanks

Use of Jumbo frames requires a gigabit NIC that supports the feature and also that your switch support jumbo frames. Very few consumer-level gigabit switches do. The NETGEAR GS108 is one, but you need to to get the correct one. See this thread for details
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/net [...] ic&t=20404

Don't know about specific plans for WMCE support, but I'd say manufacturers are moving away from doing anything special to support it. The move is toward at least supporting UPnP AV and more toward DLNA.

You can think of UPnP AV as a lower level protocol and DLNA as a higher level one that includes UPnP AV as well as other protocols.

Agreed. I just about begged Jim Buzbee in an email about a month ago to do a review of the D-Link DSM-G600... But he blamed Tim for what gets reviewed and what doesn't. So how about it Tim?

I'd love to see more 10/100/1000 NAS reviews. The DLink I just mentioned (and bought btw) bears a striking "under the covers" similarity to the StorCenter. Both are FreeScale PowerPC based, both busybox based, and both are 10/100/1000. The main difference is the DLink is a BYOD solution where you install a PATA HD of your choosing in the enclosure.

All that said, I've been hungering for reviews to compare the 100/1000 speeds of these new NAS's. Seems many of them just don't seem to have the horsies to really utilize the GigE ports.

Oh, and lest I forget, great review Jim and Tim.

You know we reviewed the Buffalo Technology Gigabit LinkStation, right?
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2005 [...] dhg250lan/

We're still waiting for the new Buffalos to be available.

Meanwhile we'll see if we can line up the DSM-G600.

I searched around and did find a few reviews for the Synology. Apparently it compares favorably to other single drive units (non-redundant units). It has ok but not great speed. It does have drive spin-down and a thermostat controlled fan. Sounds like it unfortunately used an extremely small fan so when it does run, it's a screamer.

It's unfortunate that more drives don't have at least a configuration option to sleep like the Synology.

The laptop hard drive is most likely a bottleneck here. The whole reason why desktop computers feel snappier is because of the faster hard drives. If you want to see the real performance of Gigabit Ethernet you need to test again using a Raptor 10,000 RPM drive or at least a new 7200 RPM with 8MB cache. Now I don't know what laptop drive you have, but you really need to eliminate the source drive as the bottleneck in order to conclude how fast the Iomega is.

Go build a $400-500 desktop with a fast hard drive to use for testing purposes, it will help your reviews out a lot.

Most laptop hard drives just don't cut the mustard when it comes to hard drive performance.

-Mark

Iozone is a compact program and is not largely dependent on the drive of the system it is running on.

Iozone results are more dependent on the processing power and networking - processor bus structure.

While the results may be lower than would be obtained from running iozone on a more powerful system, the comparative results presented are valid, because all testing was done with the same machine running iozone.

Hello
I have a question about the iomega storcenter:
How can I connect to the device via Telnet? The port 23 used for telnet is closed. So how is it possible?
I am about to figure out how to combine the storcenter with a mediaplayer (like squeezebox or roku soundbridge). Therefor I might have to install slimserver or twonkyvision. Or does it work with the built-in Upnp of the storcenter? Does someone have experience with this configuration?
Thanks.
Dada

As described in the review, a Telnet daemon is not part of the factory configuration. The example described in the "Under the Covers" section was connecting to the UPnP port (usually Port 5000) using a Telnet client.

If you're willing to void your warranty, it might be easier to modify the file system by physically removing the drive and mounting it on a Linux system that supports EXT2 or XFS.

Hi,

I haven't figured out exactly how to get a telnetd client on there, but I did make I think progress in that direction.

Exploiting the cgi hole that was mentioned in the article you can share some pretty important directories off of the root directory. So far I've shared /etc, /bin, and /sbin. No telnetd services or anything that I can see as being directly useful. But it's a start.

I guess the next step would be to figure out how to build a telnetd client for the platform in question? I'm not really sure, I've never done this kind of thing directly, but it seems like the right 'next step'.

Any other ideas out there??

---
update
---

well, I guess I spoke too soon. So I looked at the CD and lo and behold it includes all the sources and build files for all of the open source stuff that they used. First thing I notice is busybox, which apparantly is a combination of several basic commands, including a telnetd. Hmm, but according to the config file that iomega used, they disabled the telnet and telnetd stuff. So I guess the first thing to try is to recompile busybox with telnetd, add a service in /etc/init.d/ and put it into /etc/rc3.d/.

i'll look around and see if I got a linux box I could compile this on...

I have the 250GB Storcenter and my complaints are:
1. Quite noisy, the fan is either on or off, no variable speed...
2. No DAAP/Bonjour or iTunes compatible media server.
3. Extra storage is not indexed by UPNP server (have a 300GB USB2/FW400 FAT32 drive hooked up), it is possible to access it through a 'Filesystem' menu item in the UPNP menus though which is good.

Have tested the UPNP server with the D-link DSM320, music is fine but Video stutters. However, this seem to be the case with every UPNP server but D-links own when used with the DSM320. Have tried it over 100MBit CAT5 cable and Wireless.

4. No shell access, FTP or SFTP server. Foldershare sucks...

I have high hopes that a firmware update will address some of the issues mentioned. Is there anyone with news on the alleged update?

On a sidenote I noticed that iomega lists a 300GB version of the Storcenter here:
http://www.iomega-europe.com/eu/pr [...] SBEthernet
Which is stated to have:
• Wireless USB adapter support included


/Klas

Hi Klas,
You have tested the UPNP server with the D-link DSM320, music is fine but Video stutters.

I tested my SorCenter (250GB) UPnP compatibility with a Terratec NOXON 2 Audio (connected both: wired/wireless). MP3s are stored on the StorCenter. The UPnP-server of the StorCenter is activated and can be seen from the NOXON; but the database of the StorCenter seems to be empty. I can browse through the database (Music -> Genre etc.) but the contents is completely empty.

The NOXON does work with a UPnP-server. I tested it with a TwonkyVision installed on a PC. => runs perfectly!

Anyone any idea?

It might be that you have too many files in the root, try removing some or organize them in sub-folders.

Check this link:
http://www.iomegasupportforums.com [...] c.php?t=91

What if you select the 'File System' entry in the UPnP menu? Can you see all folders and files?

Hi Klas,
thanks very much for your hints.

What I found out up to now:
In the UPnP menu actually not all folders of the root were visible. Don´t ask me why. I reorganised them (i.e. renamed them), then they were visible.
But this did not help for the database. It was still empty; even after rebuilding the database.
So I created a new folder and just copied one artist with one album and several MP3-files to it. Initiated the UPnP search and rebuilt the database => all MP3s available.
Then I tried to copy other artist folders to that newly created media folder.
All of these were visible except artists with german umlaut (ä,ö,ü). These were not visible but their MP3s (under All Music) could be seen as e.g. "03-Millionär.mp3".
My conclusion (up to now) is: UPnP-server on Storcenter is running (much slower than the Twonky on the PC, but it runs!), database size might be limited (? I have to test deeply over the weekend, hopefully the weather is not too good this WE!), german umlaut (ä,ö,ü) are definitively not properly supported by the Storcenter.

I will report the results.
Bye.

-------

The weather was/is good this Weekend. Nevertheless:
I stop testing this uggly Media-server on the StorCenter! It was crazy. I renamed some of the german artist names to a more convenient name ("Bläck Föss" to "Blaeck Foess" ). Afterwards the Artist was also not visible, but the songs were listed in the Genre part of the media server! Crazy!
The I tested to rename the filenames of german songs (with umlaut) to filenames without umlaut. The same happened to the ID3 tags.
suddenly these renamed songs (filenames and ID3 tags) were no more listed by the Media server! Rebuild of the database brought no better result!
I concluded to live with that, if the rest of my MP3 songs would be available. I copied all my collection (around 300 subfolders) to that folder ("mp3" ) and rebuild the database (=> around 8000 MP3s). Even after half a day of waiting and an additional restart of the Media server the MP3s were not available for the client. It seems as the Media server crashes when handling a lot of data or when an invalid ID3 tag occurs.
I will send the Iomega drive back and further run my MP3 collection with my PC and the Twonky Vision Media server!

If anyone has different/better experience or knows when a firmware upgrade changes the situation, please feel free to inform me by email.

Bye.