DS209 or DS209j?

[aglox]

I'm setting up a NAS device for someone who is a wildlife photographer. He mainly wants it for storage of large (RAW format) images but will probably extend this later to photo sharing, some video streaming and other multimedia stuff. The plan is for a 2-bay Synology NAS with 2x1TB Samsung F1 Spinrite drives in a RAID 1 configuration.
There seem to be 2 choices - the DS209 or the DS209j, mainly differing in processor speed and memory. The 209 has a 1.2 GHz CPU with "16-bit@DDR800" memory bus and 256 MB RAM. The 209j has a 266 MHz CPU with "32-bit@133" memory bus and 64 MB RAM (i'm not sure what the CPU's are). The 209 is considerably more expensive than the 209j ($300 vs. $210), so the question is whether the (possible) extra performance is worth it.
There will only be 2 Win XP PC's attached to the NAS (plus a wireless notebook) and mostly only one of those will be connected at a time (since the photographer and his associate tend to work different hours). With large image files, transfer rate is obviously very important, but cost is also an issue and it's not clear to me how noticeable any extra performance gain would be in this very simple network. Up to now my impression has been that a faster CPU and extra memory in a NAS device only pays off in an environment with multiple users and connections.
I'd really appreciate any thoughts or experiences on this, particularly on the topic of suitability for small/very small LAN's.
Thanks.

BTW I just came across this site and the forum - brilliant! Really helpful, clear, well designed. Great stuff.

 

[thiggins]

A faster NAS processor will generally help transfer rates for even a single user, provided that you are using a Gigabit Ethernet connection. More memory helps for small file transfers, which is not your application.

The DS209j is basically the same hardware as the DS207, which means you'll get 10-15 MB/s or so. I haven't tested the DS209. But based on the DS109 (same HW platform), you should get ~ 40 MB/s if you use Vista SP1 or Win7, which have enhanced filecopy performance. XP will be slower, but you'll still get a significant boost from using the DS209.

 

[aglox]

Thanks, very helpful. It looks like the DS209j would be false economy.

What about using Teracopy (www.codesector.com) on XP? I've tried it on a straight Gigabit connection (no NAS) and it does seem to provide faster (and more convenient) copying, although I haven't done any proper measurements.

 

[thiggins]

I haven't tried Teracopy. But it has been mentioned numerous times by other posters who report that it helps speed up transfers.