While these reviews are interesting as it relates to advances in technology. I sorely miss the opportunity to look at how it impacts every day usage. How often does one do a rebuild ? How often does large amounts of data get transferred to a disk ? Im not suggesting the data isn't usefil in a strict hardware evaluation sense. Being able to see how it delivers in the real world would add a lot to its usefullness. We no longer use an NAS and to my eyes, the best thing about it was if there was a fire... it' real easy to "Grab 'n Go",
We have a SOHO network in a 200 year old dairy barn where the engineering office is in the hayloft. We design water / wastewater/ industrial plants, commercial buildings, bakeries, restaurants, commercial kitchens, etc. The network has (5) office PCs / Laptops w/ 34 years of business and work product files and (6) PCs / Laptops w/ 34 years of personal data on the HO side. On the SO side, one would typically open 1-6 files a day, along with 2-3 spreadsheets, site photographs and 1-3 WP files, as well as web browsing for product info. HO side I imagine is similar to very one else. Would love to see everyday performance .
In consideration of who is using an NAS, it's not datacenters, it's not offices with > 10 - 15 PCs, ... it's not grandma looking at pics of the grandkids or mom keepimg track of her recipes . It's small business owners, its those with substantial media libraries. It would be useful to see how a top end NAS impacts a small network ... is the NAS performance bottlenecked by network performance ? How long does it take to open / save a file from NAS storage device to user's desktop ? How does it differ ?
a) How long to open / save the average size CAD file ? Our largest is < 12 MB. Median size is 300 KB
b) How long to open / save the average size Word Processing file file ? Our largest is < 272 MB with tons of embedded JPGs. Median size is 102 MB
c) How long to open / save the average size Spreadsheet file ? Our largest is < 8 MB. Median size is 35 KB
d) How long to open / save the average size JPG file ? Our largest is < 17 MB. median size is 94 KB
e) How long to open / save the average size MOV file ? Our largest is <1 GB. median size is 2 MB