Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DrizztD0Urden]

I have a DNS-320 set with 2 standard drives
Z: = 3TB WD WD30EFRX
Y: = 2TB Samsung HD204UI

My connecting computer is an ASUS G73J laptop, gigabit connection with a Seagate Momentus ST9500420AS 7200RPM Hard Drive  
All devices are connected via Cat 5e cables, and are routed through a D-Link DIR-825 gigabit router.
Here are some example speeds I've been getting with different configurations:

NAS performance tester 1.4 http://www.808.dk/?nastester
Running a 100MB file: 4 times...

FW V2.03b write on drive Z: Itr 1: 25.85 MB/s Itr 2: 25.14 MB/s Itr 3: 22.49 MB/s Itr 4: 22.73 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 24.05 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Z: Itr 1:   8.69 MB/s Itr 2: 12.00 MB/s Itr 3: 18.06 MB/s Itr 4: 19.60 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 14.59 MB/s --------------------- write on drive Y: Itr 1: 22.98 MB/s Itr 2: 25.74 MB/s Itr 3: 24.10 MB/s Itr 4: 22.89 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 23.93 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Y: Itr 1:   9.03 MB/s Itr 2: 14.06 MB/s Itr 3: 21.66 MB/s Itr 4: 21.02 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 16.44 MB/s ---------------------

Downgraded to FW V2.02 write on drive Z: Itr 1: 14.54 MB/s Itr 2: 14.50 MB/s Itr 3: 16.52 MB/s Itr 4: 15.75 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 15.33 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Z: Itr 1: 14.70 MB/s Itr 2: 10.68 MB/s Itr 3: 14.15 MB/s Itr 4: 16.44 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 13.99 MB/s --------------------- write on drive Y: Itr 1: 13.06 MB/s Itr 2: 11.57 MB/s Itr 3: 12.16 MB/s Itr 4: 16.11 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 13.22 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Y: Itr 1: 14.41 MB/s Itr 2: 13.87 MB/s Itr 3: 13.79 MB/s Itr 4: 15.37 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 14.36 MB/s ---------------------

Reset Factory Dflt FW V2.02 write on drive Z: Itr 1: 14.60 MB/s Itr 2: 16.69 MB/s Itr 3: 16.44 MB/s Itr 4: 17.51 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 16.31 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Z: Itr 1: 25.54 MB/s Itr 2: 29.01 MB/s Itr 3: 23.92 MB/s Itr 4: 32.54 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 27.75 MB/s --------------------- write on drive Y: Itr 1: 15.19 MB/s Itr 2: 16.91 MB/s Itr 3: 17.00 MB/s Itr 4: 16.74 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 16.46 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Y: Itr 1: 29.14 MB/s Itr 2: 27.63 MB/s Itr 3: 26.16 MB/s Itr 4: 25.33 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 27.07 MB/s ---------------------

Upgraded to FW V2.03 write on drive Z: Itr 1: 24.19 MB/s Itr 2: 19.72 MB/s Itr 3: 24.85 MB/s Itr 4: 25.85 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 23.65 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Z: Itr 1: 13.14 MB/s Itr 2: 17.81 MB/s Itr 3: 14.80 MB/s Itr 4: 16.82 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 15.64 MB/s --------------------- write on drive Y: Itr 1: 25.95 MB/s Itr 2: 26.16 MB/s Itr 3: 25.95 MB/s Itr 4: 22.89 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 25.24 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Y: Itr 1: 12.23 MB/s Itr 2: 14.98 MB/s Itr 3: 15.99 MB/s Itr 4: 14.21 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 14.35 MB/s ---------------------

Reset Factory Dflt FW V2.03 write on drive Z: Itr 1: 25.14 MB/s Itr 2: 26.38 MB/s Itr 3: 26.49 MB/s Itr 4: 26.38 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 26.10 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Z: Itr 1: 13.50 MB/s Itr 2: 15.71 MB/s Itr 3: 14.98 MB/s Itr 4: 14.15 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 14.58 MB/s --------------------- write on drive Y: Itr 1: 25.85 MB/s Itr 2: 26.27 MB/s Itr 3: 25.74 MB/s Itr 4: 25.74 MB/s --------------------- Avg(w): 25.90 MB/s --------------------- read on drive Y: Itr 1: 14.98 MB/s Itr 2: 14.37 MB/s Itr 3: 15.48 MB/s Itr 4: 14.12 MB/s --------------------- Avg(r): 14.74 MB/s ---------------------

The 2 drives don't have any noticeable performance difference, but clearly FW V2.03 has the best write speeds, and FW V2.02 has the best read speeds.

[mv_cz]

Interesting research, thank you for your numbers. For other people, including me, fw2.03 has terrible read speeds (http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=50988.0). Resetting to default didn't help at all (and I did it after every flash process). With latest firmware, the network data transfer curve is not fluent (e.g oscilates between low and high numbers resulting poor <10MB/s speeda average)
Are you running fun_plug? With which firmware version was your box preinstalled after buying?

[DrizztD0Urden]

Mine was preinstalled with V2.00, but unfortunately I didn't run the tests on that version, and I can't go back to it since I have 3tb drives.

I haven't played around with any funplug stuff (or know what it is, since I haven't researched it).

I tested the box out with 1080p streaming last night on V2.03, and everything ran smoothly (gigabit connetion to a gigabit dlink switch to a pivos aios media player (not using the dns-320 media serving abilities, just accessing the file shares directly).  Since that works nicely, I may stay with the latest FW version for now, and hope they either release the code to the public, or come out with more updates.  I'm not overly optimistic about either.

[mv_cz]

Hi, I almost forgot posting my results and findings between newest beta and "last known decent performance firmware" which is 2.02. I didn't bothered with fw2.03 again (as posted before, it maxed at about 10MB/s read speed which is bad).

I have a DNS-320 set with 2x 1TB drives (Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ, 7200rpm, 3 platters) which are in RAID1 configuration. Not using P2P, FTP and any other services that were not necessary for testing purposes.

Connected with cat5e wiring via D-Link DGS-1008D 8port gigabit switch. Testing computer is an Intel Core i5-750, 8 GB memory, Asus P7P55D-PRO motherboard with onboard Realtek 8112L PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet adapter, system HDD - WD Velociraptor 150GB (WD1500HLFS, SATA300, 10000rpm), OS Win7.  Jumbo frames disabled.

I've been testing with 3 different firmware configurations (after flashing NAS firmware, I always did factory reset):
- FW 2.02
- FW 2.02 with enabled fun plug (fonz fun plug 0.7, running sshd and installed twonky server, which was idling at that time)
- FW 2.04b01 (latest beta with undocumented changelog)

And for each configuration, I've been testing with NAS performance tester 1.4 with two presets:
- Running a 100MB file read/write 4 times (for comparsion with DrizztD0Urden's results)
- Running a 400MB file read/write 5 times (default NAS tester settings)

FW V2.02 100MB file write Itr 1:     13,06 MB/sec Itr 2:     15,83 MB/sec Itr 3:     16,23 MB/sec Itr 4:     17,14 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     15,56 MB/sec ------------------------------ 100MB file read Itr 1:     24,94 MB/sec Itr 2:     25,64 MB/sec Itr 3:     32,05 MB/sec Itr 4:     34,28 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     29,23 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file write Itr 1:     21,19 MB/sec Itr 2:     23,48 MB/sec Itr 3:     21,35 MB/sec Itr 4:     20,69 MB/sec Itr 5:     22,07 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     21,76 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file read Itr 1:     40,64 MB/sec Itr 2:     36,79 MB/sec Itr 3:     37,49 MB/sec Itr 4:     42,52 MB/sec Itr 5:     44,59 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     40,41 MB/sec ------------------------------

FW V2.02 + fun plug 100MB file write Itr 1:     12,64 MB/sec Itr 2:     14,80 MB/sec Itr 3:     15,56 MB/sec Itr 4:     14,18 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     14,30 MB/sec ------------------------------ 100MB file read Itr 1:     12,12 MB/sec Itr 2:     14,47 MB/sec Itr 3:     13,22 MB/sec Itr 4:     12,85 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     13,16 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file write Itr 1:     20,32 MB/sec Itr 2:     19,24 MB/sec Itr 3:     20,48 MB/sec Itr 4:     20,75 MB/sec Itr 5:     19,14 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     19,98 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file read Itr 1:     11,69 MB/sec Itr 2:     10,93 MB/sec Itr 3:     11,04 MB/sec Itr 4:     10,55 MB/sec Itr 5:     11,11 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     11,06 MB/sec ------------------------------

FW V2.04b01 100MB file write Itr 1:     20,52 MB/sec Itr 2:     19,64 MB/sec Itr 3:     23,67 MB/sec Itr 4:     23,34 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     21,79 MB/sec ------------------------------ 100MB file read Itr 1:     14,03 MB/sec Itr 2:     19,16 MB/sec Itr 3:     17,85 MB/sec Itr 4:     18,55 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     17,40 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file write Itr 1:     20,76 MB/sec Itr 2:     19,38 MB/sec Itr 3:     21,26 MB/sec Itr 4:     21,14 MB/sec Itr 5:     20,63 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     20,63 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file read Itr 1:     14,20 MB/sec Itr 2:     15,56 MB/sec Itr 3:     14,61 MB/sec Itr 4:     15,59 MB/sec Itr 5:     14,50 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     14,89 MB/sec ------------------------------

So to sum this up:
- newest firmware (2.04b01 and 2.03) has the best write speed, which is consistent among smaller (100MB) and larger (400MB) files.
- best read performace is achieved with 2.02 firmware, reaching over 40MB/s (that's 320Mbps) with larger files and good ~30 MB/s with smaller files (these numbers, maybe little higher were possible with good old FW v2.00 which is unfortunatelly impossible to downgrade to)
- for highest performance possible, using funplug is not a good idea. Even when you are not using any of it's services, disable it. It eats up too much memory.
- this lack of free memory is happening with FW v2.03/2.04 without funplug, thus resulting in simmilar poor read performance (on the other hand, some write performance optimization has clearly been made). If you can't downgrade to 2.02 for some reasons, try using 2.04b01 (!!at your own risk!!) which provides about +50% read speed boost over FW v2.03
- this test is an ideal scenario (1 client connected to NAS and reading/writing 1 file), real-word performance will be lower in case you are using this NAS in usual way (multiple clients/files transfer at a time. In other case, it's better going with USB enclosure, which easily solves these performance problems :-)) so every extra MB/s counts 

[Papa Charlie]

Great post :

Currently running 2.02+ffplug and my transfer speeds are similar to those.

ffplug is great, but consumes too much resources and then transfer speeds are somewhat bad. (i only had buffering issues on xbmc, from this nas with ffplug enabled).

Or Firmware is redesigned to optimise cpu and ram resources or we´ll stick with this slow piece of hardware.

[JuLx64]

Now it would be interesting to run the same benchmark with 2.04b02...

[cable2]

Hi,
Great post.  Question, where do you find FW V2.04b01 beta?  Please and thank you.

[JuLx64]

Same place 2.04b01 was... Apparently you're not allowed to tell that here, but if you look for it you you'll easily find it.

[mv_cz]

Now it would be interesting to run the same benchmark with 2.04b02...

Thanks for your post. Well if somebody tests this new beta firmware and posts findings, that this release is worth trying, i could give it a chance. Please note, that my new bechmark numbers will not be 100% comparable. Meanwhile I upgraded hard drives inside my NAS and also in my PC, which will not make such a big difference as another "slow" firmware would do.

[JuLx64]

I have installed this 2.04b02 firmware, and I can't see any noticeable difference over 2.04b01. It doesn't seem to have any particular issue. But any benchmark would be welcome.

[Vega320]

Hi, did someone noticed a difference in the speed between Rev.A and Rev.B.
Thanks

[mv_cz]

Hi, after some time (I'm giving my dlink his last chance before upgrading to something quiet, more faster with AtomCE cpu and HDMI out) I've further investigated reading/writing behaviour with stock 2.02 firmware without FFP.

This morning, I've encountered strange performance while backing up my data before another flash (more on this later  ). Last week, I had my typical read speeds around 30MB/s, today only 10MB/s. No one else was using my nas, only me. Then, I've realized, that I had forgot to turn P2P service off (i regularly disable it, after torrents finish downloading, but apparently not last time  ). Strange thing is, that no torrents were in the torrent list, so nothing was downloaded/uploaded or waiting to download.
Only the presence of P2P service being turned on, results in (maybe) large memory allocation, thus slowing the nas down.

But even in this case you get better results when you copy to nas and read from it at the same time, than in the case when you only read from it... something is terribly wrong, I think 

With P2P on:


With P2P off:

[mv_cz]

Hi, as I've posted before, after an year I've measured transfer speed again. Meanwhile I replaced HDDs in my DNS-320 to 2TB WD green drives (silent ones with only two platters). I thought, that speeds didn't change (the new drives max out at about 150 MB/s directly connected to s-ata ports in my computer, so they are not the limit), but that's not exactly true. It may have something to do with 4K sectors, maybe not, I don't know.

May actual config has changed to: DNS-320 set with 2x 2TB drives (WD Green WD20EZRX, 2 platters) which are in RAID1 configuration. Not using P2P, FTP and any other services that were not necessary for testing purposes.

Connected with cat5e wiring via TP-Link TL-WDR3600 router with gigabit switch. Testing computer is an Intel Core i5-750, 8 GB memory, Asus P7P55D-PRO motherboard with onboard Realtek 8112L PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet adapter, system HDD - Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive (ST750LX003, SATA300, 7200rpm, 750GB + 8GB SLC), OS Win7.  Jumbo frames disabled.

So the first try was benchmark with firmware 2.02 again (without FFP) to directly compare to my previous results (http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=51588.msg194097#msg194097)

The next try was something completely different. I flashed an alternative firmware which is Alt-F 0.1RC4 This really marvellous piece of work has been recently ported to DNS-320 (and DNS-325  too). As Alt-F's author describes it "has Samba and NFS; supports ext2/3/4, VFAT, NTFS and ISO9660 filesystems; RAID 0, 1, 5 (with external USB disk) and JBD; greater than 2.2TB disks; rsync, ftp, sftp, ftps, ssh, lpd, DNS and DHCP servers, DDNS, fan and leds control, clean power up and down... and more."
More to be find here http://sourceforge.net/projects/alt-f/?source=navbar

So there are many things we've all discussed and added to a wishlist, but have never been fixed by D-Link. If you are interested, you are (of course) flashing it on your own risk, it's recommended to have full backup, serial console prepared and you may void your warranty (my warranty is long gone and I was not afraid flashing my box without console, so what  ). In exchange you get full access to your NAS - ssh, nice web administration, included miniDLNA and torrent (transmission) client (I've not tested them yet to save up memory and measure samba speed, which I think, I've tested long enough with no problems so far).
I must confirm author's statement, that your data are not touched (if you don't brick your box during flashing  ). In my case, after flash, my data disks were accessible in read-only mode because of parition layout, that was somewhat damaged (various parition sizes on my drives in RAID1) by dlink's firmware  
Anyway I wanted to test ext4 performance, so I've wiped my disks, did raid rebuild and than copied my data (~1TB) back over the network.

Again, I've been testing with NAS performance tester 1.4 with two presets:
- Running a 100MB file read/write 4 times (for comparsion with DrizztD0Urden's results)
- Running a 400MB file read/write 5 times (default NAS tester settings)

FW V2.02 (2x2TB WD Green RAID1) 100MB file write Iteration 1:     13,90 MB/sec Iteration 2:     14,09 MB/sec Iteration 3:     12,94 MB/sec Iteration 4:     14,33 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     13,81 MB/sec ------------------------------ 100MB file read Iteration 1:     26,21 MB/sec Iteration 2:     22,60 MB/sec Iteration 3:     25,05 MB/sec Iteration 4:     31,41 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     26,32 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file write Iteration 1:     19,12 MB/sec Iteration 2:     19,90 MB/sec Iteration 3:     20,53 MB/sec Iteration 4:     21,23 MB/sec Iteration 5:     19,17 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     19,99 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file read Iteration 1:     38,62 MB/sec Iteration 2:     39,87 MB/sec Iteration 3:     34,09 MB/sec Iteration 4:     38,67 MB/sec Iteration 5:     36,84 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     37,62 MB/sec ------------------------------

Alt-F firmware 0.1RC4 ext4 (2x2TB WD Green RAID1) 100MB file write Iteration 1:     15,14 MB/sec Iteration 2:     15,82 MB/sec Iteration 3:     14,52 MB/sec Iteration 4:     16,07 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     15,39 MB/sec ------------------------------ 100MB file read Iteration 1:     31,03 MB/sec Iteration 2:     33,58 MB/sec Iteration 3:     32,28 MB/sec Iteration 4:     33,71 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     32,65 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file write Iteration 1:     14,42 MB/sec Iteration 2:     14,43 MB/sec Iteration 3:     14,08 MB/sec Iteration 4:     14,79 MB/sec Iteration 5:     14,25 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (W):     14,40 MB/sec ------------------------------ 400MB file read Iteration 1:     31,78 MB/sec Iteration 2:     33,83 MB/sec Iteration 3:     33,16 MB/sec Iteration 4:     34,32 MB/sec Iteration 5:     33,97 MB/sec ------------------------------ Avg (R):     33,41 MB/sec ------------------------------

So that's it, now you have an alternative to dlink firmware with full access to everything.
UPDATE: With an effort of always helping Alt-F's developer, I've managed to easily improve samba performance, so I updated results above

Actual speed of reading and copying is fully comparable to d-link's firmware (yes, reading/writing larger files using samba should be a bit better, but you hardly notice it in real-world scenario and you are always open to tune samba yourself) a bit trade-off, if you don't use ffp. If you use ffp or have flashed fw 2.03, using Alt-F is no brainer, because it is the only way you can "get back" to good performance without sacrificing advanced features and you'll get almost triple twice speed boost with Alt-F's. Nowadays it doesn't seem, that d-link will suprise us with new firmware, so Alt-F is the only viable future....  
Read performance with Alt-F firmware is consistent among larger and smaller files and maxes out at about 33 MB/s 19 MB/s. But in the real world usage, my dlink feels more responding ("alive"), i.e - browsing folders is faster, seeking while watching movies is quicker.
Also reading from nas using FTP server is quicker and easily reaches over 41 MB/s.

I must admit, that Alt-F's performance with ext3 drives in read-only mode was a little higher (~ 21MB/s), so there is definitely some room for improvements.

Maybe I'll also try Raid5 performance out of my old 80GB drives to give you a scenario of usability with raid across internal+external drives (there won't be great may be some differences compared to Raid1, because I'm convinced that transfers over USB won't reach over 20MB/s).

[nrushforth]

Can you tell me which package you installed as I am struggling to find one for the DNS-320.

[mv_cz]

Hi, i installed RC4 firmware from http://sourceforge.net/projects/alt-f/files/Releases/Experimental/
filename Alt-F-0.1RC4-DNS-320.bin

But it's highly recommended to read readme.txt file first. It is right flashing instead of dlink's original firmware, so you'd better backup your data first