Thecus N2100 2.1.01.4 Beta firmware SMB performance
September 5th, 2006 by ktula
Finally figured out why i was not able to mount the share folder in SMB earlier. When i rebooted my Powerbook, i found myself staring at the spinning wheel of the OS X startup. No matter how many times i rebooted it and no matter how many devices i disconnected from it, my Powerbook would remain stuck at the startup screen. After i boot into single-user mode (press cmd-s during startup), i realized that i forgot to rename the mount command back, so basically, on startup, OS X was running the shell script i created for the IOzone performance test. After mounting the root filesystem in write mode (by default, starting OS X in single-user mode mounts the root filesystem in read-only mode), i restored the original mount command. Duh!
The results from the IOzone test is pretty amazing. The improvement in the write transfer rates range from 76% to 96%. The improved write transfer rates are now better than the theoretical transfer rate of a 100 Mbps LAN! Except for a 9% gain in read transfer rate for the 32-meg test file, the rest of the read transfer rates range from 52% to 101%!
I am extremely pleased with the performance improvement in this firmware. Prior to this firmware, i pretty much gave up on any hope that the transfer rate for the N2100 would increase beyond what it was. Kudos to the engineers at Thecus for making this possible.
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sundevil
Says
sleep mode?
Sep 5th, 2006 at 23:45
ktula
Says
I don’t believe there has ever been a sleep mode for the N2100. I don’t think it’s in this version of the beta firmware.
Sep 5th, 2006 at 23:56
ktula
Says
There is no sleep mode for the N2100 but according to Thecus, HDD sleep is enabled if iTunes service is off. If iTunes service is not enabled, the HDD should spin down after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Sep 6th, 2006 at 19:22
sundevil
Says
I have n2100 2x 250 wd25000 RAID 1 itunes off but N2100 NO sleep.
Sep 7th, 2006 at 13:34
ryebank
Says
n2100 2 x Seagate 300MB no iTunes no sleep .. which is a real pain as the drives get smoking hot
ktula you seeme to have some sort of hotline to Thecus … maybe you could activate for some sleep control via the GUI - the Linux hdparm appears to allow such control we just need a simple way of setting it …
Sep 8th, 2006 at 08:52
ktula
Says
According to the Thecus support personnel i talked to, they will try to make HDD spin down as an user option in future release.
Sep 8th, 2006 at 10:57
sundevil
Says
I had synology 101gs+ and super firmware. This hd has very very very good soft. sql, php, manual sleep mode, supoer log ftp error log from internet to ftp sql (phpadmin) etc. but is only 1 hd. and procesor 200 Mhz. N2100 has 600 Mhz and good ram etc.
Sep 8th, 2006 at 11:14
ktula
Says
Sundevil,
How do you determine if the HD is not in sleep mode?
Sep 8th, 2006 at 11:19
n2100man
Says
Indeed this is great news. The speed increase is very welcome and due I guess to the fact that ip_conntrack is now compiled as a module, most probably after Harald suggestion (http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/weblog/2006/02/24/#20060224-thecus)
Sep 8th, 2006 at 13:23
sundevil
Says
I determine In ds 101g+ manual from 10 min to 2 hours in http://x.x.x.x/ but in N2100 I can’t determine manual.
Sep 8th, 2006 at 13:27
sundevil
Says
http://www.thecus.com/download.php?pid=1
I have MacBook Pro.
new soft for OS X apple hmhm
Sep 8th, 2006 at 13:30
sundevil
Says
It is only for PPC. The best is backup from apple
Sep 8th, 2006 at 13:39
ktula
Says
The hard drive sleep seems to be working for me, even with the share folders from the N2100 mounted. I was doing some performance tests last night and this morning when i attempted to unmount the share folder, it took a good few seconds before share folder was unmounted. The internal temperature was 40 degrees C and the HD temperature was 44 degrees C.
Sep 11th, 2006 at 09:54
ktula
Says
I received a newer firmware (i believe it is still beta) version 2.1.01 just yesterday night. For those having issue with the disk drives in their N2100 not sleeping after 30 minutes of inactivity, there is now an option to configure the sleep time. Let me know if you are interested in trying out this firmware. Here’s a screenshot of the new option:
I have discovered an issue with this version of firmware and 2.1.01.4 (older). When i was transferring files back to the N2100, it hung. The only way i could reboot it was by disconnecting/reconnecting the power supply.
Sep 12th, 2006 at 10:12