NAS Configuration

Test Setup for Single-Client Tests

The test system (client PC) for single-client tests consists of the following components:

Methodology

We have a varied range of tests that we run on NAS devices, starting with a set of synthetic benchmarks to measure the theoretical performance and then a set of data copying tests with various file types to get some real world performance figures. The synthetic benchmarks consist of CrystalDiskMark, iPerf3, AJA System Test, NAS performance tester and Helios LanTest. We used a pair of Seagate IronWolf ST4000VN006 4 TB drives to test the Asustor Drivestor 2 Gen2 AS1202T. The drives have a maximum sustained transfer rate of up 202 MB/s along with a spindle speed of 5400 RPM, besides 256 MB of cache.


CrystalDiskMark for those that aren't familiar with the benchmark, is a popular Japanese drive benchmark that tests sequential and random read and write performance of a drive. CDM can be used to test network locations, which means you have to browse the network for a shared folder to run the test, but beyond that, it's just like testing a local drive.

iPerf3 is a command line network throughput tests that is a simple, yet powerful way of testing network throughput. Although it's possible to perform drive performance tests with iPerf, it's normally only used for testing raw network throughput, which is what we use it for in our NAS reviews. It's also a good way to make sure that there are no network configuration issues which would cause slowdowns of any kind.


New for 2026 is the addition of the AJA System Test, which is another synthetic benchmark that works similar to CrystalDiskMark, but with a focus on video files. We set it up to emulate a 4K video file using a 10-bit YUV codec and tested with both a 1 GB and a 64 GB file size.


The NAS performance tester is an open source tool for testing NAS appliances. It creates a file that is written or read from the NAS, then deleted to prevent any kind of caching happening, as normally this test is looped at least five times and an average is calculated of the five runs. We chose to use a large data set of 8 GB here, which puts some strain on the NAS under testing.


The Helios LanTest is another NAS benchmarking tool, but this time around we're looking at a tool that performs multiple tests. It has five response time tests of increasing difficulty as well as two sequential performance tests. It also has a default setting for 10 Gbps Ethernet, which we use for testing 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps Ethernet, as the 1 Gbps test is simply not enough of a challenge. In case of the responsiveness/latency tests, a lower number is always better, and obviously it's the opposite for the sequential read and write tests.

This is then followed by three data copying tests. The first of these three tests is a game library that consists of 10,458 files for a total of 96.2 GB worth of data. The second test is a single 66.9 GB file, and the third test is 4,084 photos which in total adds up to 10.6 GB worth of data. These files are copied from an SSD to the NAS and then from the NAS back to an SSD. This gives us a result in minutes and seconds that is then converted to an average MB/s transfer rate. Note that the actual transfer rate can vary a lot during these tests, especially in the first test due to both very large and very small files being copied and when using mechanical drives, the performance can drop to mere Megabytes per second due to the nature of how hard drives work. In other words, these tests also end up testing the caching abilities of the NAS device we test to a degree.