Performance:

Next, we will put the NAS through the ringer and test all three RAID modes for speed.  In order to test the speed, I used a 1080p .mkv file that measures 10,621,635 kilobytes in size.  A friend of mine was kind enough to write up a Perl script that initiates the file transfer, and spits out both the time of transfer and the average transfer rate.  Gigabit Ethernet connections were used throughout; from the NAS itself, to the DGL-4500 router, to the Gigabit connection on the DFI P35-T2R motherboard. 

The first test was in RAID 0.  For those unfamiliar, RAID 0 promises to increase performance and partition size by splitting the writing duties between both drives.  A RAID 0 partition will be equal to the size of all the physical drives combined, and parts of each file will be written on each drive.  This RAID mode is a misnomer, as there is no redundancy; if any disk in the array dies, all data is lost.  As we can see here, the write speed was actually the slowest of the bunch, though the read speed was the fastest.  Writing the file took about 12.5 minutes, and reading the file took about 23 minutes. 

The second test was in JBOD mode.  JBOD is technically not a RAID mode, as it also does not provide any redundancy; it just takes the disks in the array and joins them together.  So, like RAID 0, the available size is equal to the cumulative size of the disks in the array.  Unlike RAID 0, however, the files that are written are only written on one of the drives, so the overall risk of data loss is reduced.  The JBOD speeds were very comparable to RAID 1 in this test, as writing to the array took  9.8 minutes, while the read time took nearly 27 minutes. 

The final test was in RAID 1.  RAID 1 offers full redundancy, which means all data is fully copied to both drives.  This means that if a drive dies, no data is lost.  The drawback is, you only have the capacity of a single drive available to you.  The speed test for RAID 1 was on par with JBOD, with the write time taking 9.8 minutes and the read taking 27.1 minutes. 

All tests exceeded the theoretical limits of a 100Mb Ethernet connection, which is around 12.5MB/s, so we can see the value of the Gigabit connection here.  Surprisingly, RAID 0 offered the worst write performance, and the best read performance, but nothing that makes it sufficiently better over JBOD.  The oddest thing, however is that the read speeds across the board were much slower than the write speeds; typically it is the other way around.  However, retesting shows these results to be consistent. 

The next test I performed was to simulate a drive failure in a RAID 1 configuration.  I copied some files to the RAID 1 array, and while it was still powered on, I pulled one of the drives out.  I took that drive and formatted it in a different PC and plugged it back in to see how it would react.  It immediately began repairing the array, and the status could be monitored under the "Disk" page on the Configuration URL.  Overall, rebuilding the array took about 3 hours. 

Conclusion:

So there we have it for the Muse X-Duo RAID NAS box.  In general, I feel the device has a lot of potential, however there are still improvements to be made.  The firmware support for Vista is still a bit immature, in my opinion, and I hope Thermaltake continues the trend of releasing updates in a timely manner to improve support.  Until this happens, however, I have to knock the NAS device for stability. 

The software package is just how I like it: lean.  The web configuration is feature packed yet still simple, and all the features there worked like expected, though the non-Java discovery tool still needs to be fixed.  Since this is a feature added with the new firmware, I won't knock it too badly for that. 

As performance goes, the write speeds in all modes are fairly impressive, but the read speeds are apparently lacking.  I say this because most reviews use a 700MB file as a transfer medium to test speeds, and I chose a 10GB file to represent the potential for HD movies or game images.  It appears that file size plays a huge role in transfer speeds, as both a 150MB and 700MB file will both write and read at about 25-30 MB/s in RAID 1, while both write and read speeds suffered with the 10GB file.  Since these large file sizes are going to be a more accurate representation of usage in the future, I am hoping other review sites will start using them as well.  Because of this, I gave performance a pretty high score. 

Note: Club Overclocker is now using a new rating system based on a score of 1 to 5.
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Performance:	4 out of 5
Innovation:	4 out of 5
Quality:	4 out of 5
Stability:	2 out of 5
Aesthetics:	3 out of 5
Software/Drivers Pack:	4 out of 5
Overclocking:	N/A
Value:	3 out of 5
Project Skill Level (5 being most difficult)	3 out of 5