The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the QNAP TS-453mini, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, Iometer and the Intel NAS Performance Toolkit. The tests were first run using four Seagate Barracuda 1TB (ST1000DM003) hard drives configured as RAID 0, 10 and 5 volumes. The TS-453mini was connected to the computer using CAT6 ethernet cables and a gigabit Cisco switch.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 4KB and 512KB in size.
 RAID 0 |
 RAID 10 |
 RAID 5 |
According to QNAP, the TS-453mini is able to read and write at speeds as high as 220 MB/s when both networks ports are bonded. Using only one of the gigabit network ports, the NAS was able to read at about 97 MB/s and write at more than 107 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the DL4100's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 32MB and 256MB.
 RAID 0 |
 RAID 10 |
 RAID 5 |
The TS-453mini performed better when tested with ATTO. With the four hard drives in a RAID 5 array, the unit topped out at 102 MB/s when reading and 117 MB/s when writing.
Iometer:
Next, I ran a series of tests using Iometer. This tool can be configured to benchmark a number of things. In this case, I used it to measure the TS-453mini's sequential read and write speeds using blocks ranging from 512B to 2MB in size. The tests were run using random bytes and a queue depth of 3.
The TS-453mini's sequential read performance varied a bit when tested with Iometer. While it was able to read at more than 112 MB/s when configured for RAID 0, its read speed topped out at only 96 MB/s when using RAID 10 and RAID 5.
The RAID configuration had very little impact on the TS-453mini's sequential write performance. In all three cases, the NAS was able to write at speeds as high as 107 MB/s.
Intel NAS Performance Toolkit:
The Intel NAS Performance Toolkit (Intel NASPT) is a file system exerciser and analysis tool designed to enable performance comparisons between network attached storage (NAS) devices. Intel NASPT focuses on user level performance using real world workload traces gathered from typical digital home applications: HD video playback and record, data backup and restore utilities, office productivity applications, video rendering/content creation and more.
 RAID 0 |
 RAID 10 |
 RAID 5 |
The TS-453mini reached some respectable speeds when streaming HD video and copying large files to and from the server. As with other NAS devices though, its transfer rates dropped considerably when creating content and copying directories full of small files to the NAS.
