NAS104 Raid decision? Xraid vs Raid 10 etc #24296869

Thanks for all the continued input everyone.

StephenB wrote:
Skywalker wrote: StephenB wrote: Moving back on topic, the software RAID packages used in OS6 clearly don't have optimizations like that, since it took 28 hours to create the array.

This seems to be at the crux of my next step. 48 hours actually was the time to build the raid 6. This concerns me very much as well as the support people telling me different things. Some have said this is absolutely not normal and the latest says it is. I don't get the sense that the raid implementations other than xraid have been optimized. It also makes me wonder how tested they are. Not many people seem to be using them on the 104 at least.

After the build I did another benchmark:

============================RAID 6
NAS performance tester 1.7 http://www.808.dk/?nastester
Running warmup...
Running a 100MB file write on Z: 3 times...
Iteration 1: 11.44 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 11.78 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 11.78 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (W): 11.66 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running a 100MB file read on Z: 3 times...
Iteration 1: 10.77 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 11.73 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 11.11 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (R): 11.20 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on Z: 3 times...
Iteration 1: 11.77 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 11.78 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 11.79 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (W): 11.78 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on Z: 3 times...
Iteration 1: 11.64 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 11.70 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 11.67 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (R): 11.67 MB/sec

Running a 2000MB file write on Z: 3 times...
Iteration 1: 11.81 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 11.81 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 11.81 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (W): 11.81 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Running a 2000MB file read on Z: 3 times...
Iteration 1: 11.79 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 11.41 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 11.38 MB/sec
-----------------------------
Average (R): 11.53 MB/sec
-----------------------------

As you can see the results are only marginally slower than the raid 10 implementation. Per your earlier point one of the limiting factors seem to be the network. Frankly though I would imagine most users of the NAS104 will be using it via a wireless network. This isn't the device you buy for a robust business environment.

My original goals were to have a storage device that heavily protected me against disk failure that also performed well. The results seem to depreciate the value of Raid 10. So I would think I either want to go with Raid 6, Raid 1 or Xraid. Obviously, Xraid has the benefit of giving me more space. In the end the raid 10/raid 6 only give me 5.45TB of usable space. The problem is that now my confidence in the Raid6/Raid10 implementation is not high. I would assume the simplicity of Raid 1 makes it effective. But I am not sure what to do now. Should I just go with Xraid and cross my fingers there is no failure or that the failure never exceeds a disk? Or should I trust one of these other implementations and sacrifice the disk space? Decisions decisions...