HP DataVault X510 or QNAP TS-439 Pro II?

[jfk8680]

Hi Guys,

Im looking to buy a NAS and I can't seem to make up my mind on which NAS to buy. I am planning to use it for backing up my documents, stream full HD video content to my Dune BD Prime 3.0, store a large MP3 collection and download from usenet.

I have a pretty fast internet connection (120mbps) so my most important concern is performance of the NAS when downloading at 120mbps and PAR and UNRAR at the same time. The HP DataVault X510 has a pretty fast CPU (E5200) and 2GB of RAM so I'm leaning towards this model but the QNAP of course has more NAS features.

I have an all Windows environment btw...

Which device should I purchase?

Thanks!!

 

[thiggins]

120 Mbps is only 15 MB/s, which even previous-generation NASes can handle.

Your selection really depends on whether you prefer the Windows Home Server way of doing things or the more conventional RAID NAS approach.

 

[jfk8680]

Thanks for your reply. I know that downloading won't be such of a big issue but I think PARing and UNRARing will generate quite a load on the CPU. Is the Atom D410 used in the QNAP TS-439 Pro II up to that task AND give 'normal' NAS performance in the meantime???

If the QNAP is up to that task it definitely has my preference because I think it has a richer feature set and RAID5 is more efficient than the folder copy mechanism used by WHS (right?)...

Questions, questions haha...

Thanks!

 

[thiggins]

Are you sure that both products can perform the PAR and UNRAR?

I can't speak to the performance hit on either product. But I'd guess the more CPU and memory you throw at it, the better.

RAID incurs a real time overhead for moving the bits among the drives. Folder copy is a scheduled batch process. That's why WHS products tend to do better in our performance tests (lack of RAID overhead).

But when WHS filecopy runs, it will kill your streaming performance.

 

[jfk8680]

Are you sure that both products can perform the PAR and UNRAR?

I can't speak to the performance hit on either product. But I'd guess the more CPU and memory you throw at it, the better.

RAID incurs a real time overhead for moving the bits among the drives. Folder copy is a scheduled batch process. That's why WHS products tend to do better in our performance tests (lack of RAID overhead).

But when WHS filecopy runs, it will kill your streaming performance.

In that case I think I'll favor the X510 with it's E5200 and 2GB RAM. I'm pretty sure that both support SABnzb which will par and unrar automatically.

Do you know if there's a way to control the replication schemes of WHS so the filecopies run after hours?

Thanks for your time!

 

[thiggins]

Do you know if there's a way to control the replication schemes of WHS so the filecopies run after hours?

I don't, no. But there is a lot of discussion about this on the WHS sites and forums.