Game Data

A DAS can be just as useful as a NAS when it comes to backing up data and as such we used the same file copy tests as we did in our recent NAS review. We're seeing a similar behavior here as we did in the synthetic tests, where RAID 1 is a smidgen slower than using a single drive. The RAID 0 implementation is a bit slower in the real world tests compared to the synthetic tests, but only marginally so when compared to the Helios LanTest. The game copy tests put some strain on the SSD, but this was also expected as it includes a huge mix of file sizes.

Single Large File

In the single 66.9 GB large file test, the SSD clearly dominates the mechanical drives by a wide margin. When it comes to the write performance, this is also the test where the RAID 0 configuration can really shine.

Photos

Copying 10.6 GB of photos across 4,084 files puts some strain on the drives, with the single drive and the RAID 1 test showing little to no performance loss compared to the large single file test. The RAID 0 setup loses out quite a bit when it comes to writing the files, but on the other hand, this is also where RAID 0 performs the best—by a small margin—when it comes to reading the files and copying them back to the host PC. This is also where the SSD has the least advantage over the mechanical drives.

Outside the normal benchmarks, we also tested copying data to the two RAID 0 drives, as well as a separate set of data to each of the two non RAID drives and there was no discernible drop in performance doing this. In other words, the D8 Hybrid can handle multiple data streams to different drives at the same time—within the limit of the 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface—without slowing down. This can be handy if data is being split between multiple drives from the host system, but it also shows that the D8 Hybrid should work well as a NAS expansion unit if multiple users are accessing different drives on the D8 Hybrid simultaneously.