Game Data

Since most people will use their NAS as a data storage and retrieval device, we've created a set of sequential file copying tests that should help demonstrate how well a NAS handles different types of data. The first dataset is a 96.2 GB game library that is copied as is from an NVMe SSD on the host computer to the NAS. This is then copied back from the NAS to the host PC. Everything is timed and converted to transfer speeds in MB/s. In addition, we also performed this test with an SSD as data cache, where we copied the data five times from the NAS to the host PC. As TerraMaster claims to also offer write cache benefits, we also tested the write-cache performance in RAID 5 mode by coping the same data from the host PC to the NAS, but saw little to no performance gains, as you'll see in the graphs. We noted down the speed-up on the fifth time the data was copied over, as it often took at least three or four times of copying the data before there was any improvements to the read performance. Even though the F4-424 only has a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet interface, we saw performance numbers that equalled or sometimes even bested those when we only used SSDs. This was rather surprising and shows that TerraMaster has implemented a good SSD caching solution on its products.

Single Large File

Next up we copied a single 66.9 GB large file to simulate something like a large video file or a compressed backup file being copied to and from the NAS. This was again done a second time with the SSD cache enabled.

Photos

The third and final test consists of 10.6 GB of photos across 4,084 files and this is also where the SSD cache made a huge difference.